COLUMBUS, Ohio – Columbus police are warning people to use paintball guns only as intended in safe spaces after a series of related crimes damaged homes and left a bicyclist partially blind.
Columbus police say games involving paintball shootings in uncontrolled spaces have injured people and damaged property. They also warn that many paintball guns can easily be mistaken for assault weapons.
“Many of the paint ball guns being sold today are easily mistaken for assault weapons and are gaining popularity,” police officials said in a release on Monday. “Games of ‘tag’ where groups of individuals shoot at one another, have resulted in property damage and serious personal injury. These games or pranks have escalated to serious criminal offenses.”
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In the most serious incident, a man was charged with felonious assault for allegedly firing at a 72-year-old bicyclist with a paintball gun at the intersection of Whittier Street and Ohio Avenue Friday, leaving him blind in one eye, according to spokespersons for the Division of Police.
Thomas Woodruff, 20, of Columbus, made an initial court appearance and posted about $10,000 bond on Monday.
The municipal court clerk’s office said no attorney was listed for him.
The Columbus Dispatch reports police found the victim, Morris McCarty, bleeding from his right eye on the ground next to his bicycle. McCarty told officers that the backseat passenger of a passing vehicle had shot him with a paintball gun.
Police say McCarty lost all sight in his right eye.
Police say officers responded May26 to a report of two young men firing at each other with large guns in the area of McGuffey Road and E. Hudson Street and found one that had a paintball gun. Officers ordered him to drop it and they determined the weapon was a paintball gun that was an exact replica of an AR-15 assault rifle.
Police say several homes on Arlington Avenue had been shot with paintballs Saturday morning.
Saturday afternoon, an employee at Paintball Ohio was shot in the back with a paintball after he confronted young men throwing trash on the business’s property, police said.