By John Miller
Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho – A Gooding County Sheriff’s deputy shot accidentally by another deputy at his home is back at work after four weeks recuperation.
Deputy Jeremy Smith, who returned to work Monday, was shot in the hand Aug. 31 by a .22 caliber Ruger Mark IV handgun at the Hagerman home of Sgt. Dave Kiger, the agency’s armorer. Kiger was cleaning the weapon when it apparently misfired. The incident in this southern Idaho county of about 14,200 residents didn’t become public until this week, in part because no formal law enforcement report was filed and no other Idaho agency was called to assist the investigation.
“The firearm was excessively dirty, causing the extractor, the part that grabs the chambered round and removes it from the gun, to malfunction and not remove the round,” Gough said Tuesday. “What we did find was some procedural errors on the part of both deputies by not visually checking the chamber to make sure that the gun was unloaded.”
Read full story: Idaho deputy shot by colleague during gun cleaning