ROCHESTER, Minn. (WCCO) – The Rochester grandfather who accidentally shot his granddaughter late at night thinking she was an intruder, has been charged with a felony.
Olmsted County Attorney Mark Ostrem has charged Stanley Warren Wilkinson, 58, with felony intentional discharge of a firearm under circumstances that endanger the safety of another.
According to the criminal complaint, Wilkinson had thought his granddaughter was already asleep upstairs, when he had heard someone possibly “trying to break into his house.”
Wilkinson said he didn’t have his glasses on when he turned on the outside lights, and saw someone standing on the other side of his sliding glass door. He fired a first shot, which didn’t hit the individual.
Wilkinson said the person then tried to open the door. He shot again, hit the person standing in the snow, and heard “Poppa” in response. The complaint says the granddaughter had slipped out after her grandparents had thought she was asleep, only to try and re-enter before midnight.
Her iPhone’s illuminating front may have been perceived as a flashlight, police say in the complaint.
Police say the girl sustained a gunshot wound to the left side of her neck, which damaged her carotid artery on the left side as the bullet struck two vertebrae in her neck, causing them to fracture.
The bullet, after striking the vertebrae, traveled downward striking a rib, fracturing it, and causing injury to the upper lobe of her right lung.
Wilkinson’s first court appearance is Feb. 25.
