Lawful Florida Gun Owner Shoots at Snake Hits Friend - No Charges Naturally

Orlando Sentinal An 18-year-old Seminole County man will have a permanent souvenir of a late-night encounter with a snake: a bullet in his thigh. Brandon Rapé was in a pickup truck with two friends Thursday about 11 p.m. when they pulled to the side of Sylvan Lake Drive near Sanford so that Rapé could answer the call of nature, a Sheriff's Office report states. The men saw a large snake in the road, and Jared Hemphill, also 18, decided to shoot it with a semiautomatic rifle that belongs to Dustin Downer, 21. Hemphill heard a noise in the bushes and assumed it was the snake, so he fired the Remington Speedmaster and accidentally struck Rapé in the left thigh, he told investigators. Hemphill threw down the rifle, and he and Downer put Rapé in the truck, started driving to a hospital and called 911, according to the report. A dispatcher told them to stop, so they pulled into the parking lot at Wilson Elementary School, 985 S. Orange Blvd., where deputies and emergency medical technicians met them. Doctors at Orlando Regional Medical Center decided to leave the .22-caliber bullet in Rapé's leg, the report states. Rapé, a cashier at a hardware store, did not want to press charges, and no one will be arrested, sheriff's spokeswoman Kim Cannaday said. Deputies found the rifle in the bushes near where Rapé was shot.