An ongoing sour relationship between neighbors in the Orchards area reportedly prompted a shooting Thursday morning, which put a nearby elementary school on lockdown, according to a Clark County sheriff’s sergeant.
Eugene P. O, 39, was arrested on suspicion of first-degree assault for discharging a firearm in the direction of Bruce F. Fournier, 58, according to Sgt. Craig Randall. The two men live next door to each other, county property records show.
Deputies were dispatched at 8:26 a.m. to the 15200 block of Northeast 91st Street for a report of an assault with a weapon.
Fournier told responding deputies that O had shot at him, and he believed he’d been struck in the leg, Randall said. It turned out Fournier hadn’t been wounded, but his pants had been ripped by something, according to the sergeant.
O had already left the area, but deputies reached him by phone and he agreed to return to the scene of the alleged shooting. O gave his own version of events, Randall said, but deputies determined a crime had been committed.
Detectives retrieved denim fibers from the lawn of Fournier’s home, where he’d been standing when O allegedly accosted him. By Thursday afternoon, they were working on obtaining and executing a search warrant on O’s vehicle, so they can seize and test a firearm against other evidence, Randall said.
The response from deputies caused a lockdown at York Elementary School, 9301 N.E. 152nd Ave., around 8:30 a.m., according to Gail Spolar, spokeswoman for Evergreen Public Schools.
The lockdown lasted about a half-hour, Spolar said. The school day starts at 9:20 a.m., so buses arriving in the area prior to 9 a.m. were diverted for a few minutes, she said.
“Any staff and students already at the school were held safely in the school,” Spolar said.
Randall said the early-morning response was due to “bad blood between two people.”
Fournier was arrested in March 2019 for pointing a gun at O’s head and then firing it into the ground and air, according to a probable cause affidavit. He was charged with second-degree assault.
However, the case was dismissed in November after doctors determined that Fournier did not have the capacity to understand or assist in his defense following an evaluation at Western State Hospital, court records say.
