Credit: Bucks County District Attorney’s Office
A 16-year-old girl’s life has changed forever due to the actions of a 28-year-old Bristol Borough man.
The girl has had to give up riding horses and roller coasters for fear that the BB pellet lodged in the pericardium around her heart could move into her heart.
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According to prosecutors, James Stanley shot the BB pellet at her chest last May while she was in the living room of the 28 year old’s house on Spruce Street looking at concert tickets online with his sister.
“I yelled, `Don’t shoot me,’ and he pulled the trigger and laughed at me as I was gasping for air,” the victim wrote in a statement that was read in court by the girl’s grandmother during Stanley’s sentencing last week.
“It felt like James and his family sat around and came up with a lie to tell so that he wouldn’t get in trouble,” the girl’s statement continued. “Which in turn held off my care for over an hour.”
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Stanley pleaded no contest in April to aggravated assault and other charges in April, according to the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office.
The teen was taken to Lower Bucks Hospital after the shooting and had a hole in her chest. She was struggling to breathe and was weak.
Due to her injuries, the girl was transferred to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She spent nine days in the hospital and will be a cardiac patient for life.
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“I will always be a cardiac patient,” the girl wrote in her statement. “Things I never had to do before are now things I have to do to help me live. Always checking my heart for fluid and making sure that the bullet or pellet didn’t move.”
Stanley initially mislead investigators, saying he was shooting at targets in the backyard when a pellet ricocheted off a fence and struck the girl.
Once his lie was uncovered, he admitted to having members of his family repeat the lie.
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“It’s the biggest mistake of my life,” Stanley said in court. “I regret it every day.”
Stanley told Bucks County Judge Diane Gibbons that the shooting was not intentional and he loves the victim “like a sister.”
Stanley told the judge that he did not know the BB gun was primed to fire and insisted he didn’t realize the weapon was pointed at the teen.
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“I’m a fidgety person,” he said. “We were talking and I guess I was playing with the safety and it went off … I didn’t realize I hit the trigger.”
Jack Slattery, Bucks County Detective put on the case, testified it would take much more force on the trigger than an accidental touch to make the gun fire.
“This wasn’t an accident, your honor,” Deputy District Attorney Thomas Gannon told Gibbons. “This doesn’t just happen.”
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“The grim reality is that [the victim] could have been murdered that day,” he further stated. “This could have been a criminal homicide.”
Gibbons sentenced Stanley to five to 10 years in state prison and a concurrent 10 years of probation, according to the district attorney’s office.
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The judge was not pleased that Stanley focused his courtroom statements on himself and failed to full admit his crimes.
“She was somewhere she thought she would be safe [but] you gave no thought to her at all,” the judge said. “You had your opportunities [to apologize]. I gave you multiple chances. It’s done. I find that these tears of yours are for yourself, not for her … You have shown a callousness and a hardness of heart that I have rarely seen.”
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Gibbons said she had initially planned to sentenced Stanley to a much-lesser county prison term.
“But I’m not going to do that,” she said, “because you have shown no empathy or sympathy or remorse to her.”
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