By KEN BYRON, Courant Staff Writer
Hartford Courant
Primitive as it is, a blowgun is now on the list of things people use in drive-by shootings.
In an incident that at first left police incredulous, two men were charged Thursday in Southington with shooting a man in the leg with a blowgun. Police said the man was shot as he walked out of a store on Queen Street.
The man was one of three people shot apparently at random in the space of half an hour Thursday in Plainville and Southington. In all three cases, the attackers drove past their victim as they fired, police said.
Police in Plainville said two people were shot with blowgun darts there shortly before the Southington incident. They believe the two men arrested in Southington are the culprits in the Plainville attacks also.
Arrested were Jason Plourde, 27, of Waterbury, and Edward Youle, 33, of Southington. Police said they found three blowguns and a box of darts in their sport-utility vehicle.
“They thought it was funny,” Southington Police spokesman Sgt. Lowell DePalma said.
No one was seriously hurt, but one of the victims in Plainville went to the hospital to get a tetanus shot, said Plainville police Lt. Brian Mullins.
“The guy walked up to the officer and said he had been shot in the leg with a dart, and at first it was like, `What do you mean?’” DePalma said about the Southington incident.
The attacks occurred on busy stretches of road, and the two in Plainville occurred less than half a mile apart.
The first incident occurred at the Connecticut Commons shopping complex on New Britain Avenue in Plainville, where a man walking out of a store was shot in the leg.
The man, Jason Warner of Bristol, said he felt as if he had been hit by a paintball. “I thought I would just wipe off the paint, but then I looked down and saw the needle sticking out.
“I had seen blowgun darts before and knew what it was, but I was still shocked. I thought, ‘That’s interesting,’ and then yanked it out.”
A few minutes later, a woman pumping gas at a service station a short distance from the shopping center was hit in the back.
The Southington attack occurred a few minutes later, police said.
The victim there gave police a description of the vehicle the suspects were in, and a Southington officer stopped the sport-utility vehicle a short distance away on Queen Street.
Southington police charged Plourde and Youle with reckless endangerment, breach of peace, conspiracy to commit second-degree assault and carrying a dangerous weapon. Youle was also charged with possession of narcotics, and Plourde was charged with attempted second-degree assault.
Mullins said that the vehicle used in Southington matched the one witnesses described in the attack at the Connecticut Commons and that Plainville police plan to seek warrants in that case. He said the woman did not see who shot her.
Plourde and Youle posted $25,000 bail and will be arraigned in Superior Court in Bristol on March 12.
Although dating to the Stone Age and not commonly associated with 21st century culture, blowguns are readily available on the Internet. They are legal to own except in California and Massachusetts.
Modern blowguns are made out of aluminum and plastic, and one of those seized Thursday had a sight to improve the shooter’s aim.
Copyright 2007 Hartford Courant