By Mike Wereschagin
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
PITTSBURGH — A Wilkinsburg police officer accidentally fired his sidearm into the ground inside the intake area of Allegheny County Jail on Wednesday night, injuring two volunteers leading 80 high school students through the facility, officials said.
The volunteers, one 18 years old and the other a retired deputy warden, were transported to UPMC Mercy, Uptown, and treated for minor injuries, Warden Ramon Rustin said.
The 80 Central Catholic High School students were touring the jail. Some were in the intake area when the officer’s gun fired, county police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said. The intake area is a garagelike entrance to the jail on Second Avenue, which is sealed behind metal doors after prisoners are brought in.
“I would hate to lose this program because of” this, said Kurt Vogelsberger, a board member of Greenfield Organized Against Drugs, the group running the tour.
The Wilkinsburg officer — whose name authorities did not release — had dropped a suspect off at the jail and was returning to his car inside the intake area about 7:30 p.m. Police are not allowed to carry guns in the cell block area of the lockup. The gun fired as the officer was trying to put it back in his holster before leaving, Rustin said.
The bullet hit the concrete floor, and the two volunteers’ legs were cut by fragments.
“They were minor injuries. Both walked into the nursing station (at the jail),” Rustin said. Jail personnel then called for ambulances.
The volunteers did not want to go the hospital, but were told they had to because the accident happened at the jail and involved a gunshot, Vogelsberger said.
County and Wilkinsburg police are investigating the incident, Rustin said.
The anti-drug program has taken students through the jail for the past five years.
“We’re trying to get them before they go through there,” Vogelsberger said.
The program shows students what it’s like to be arrested, taken to jail and booked. They are shown a movie documenting the grim treatment doctors give to victims of drug overdoses, and then listen to a speech by a jail inmate.
The anti-drug program has reached about 1,700 children since its inception, Vogelsberger said.
“You can’t really count how many lives we’ve saved,” he said.
Copyright 2009 Tribune Review Publishing Company