An FBI agent whose gun went off after doing a backflip on the dance floor was taken into custody today, more than a week after he shot a man in the leg.
In a now viral video, Chase Bishop was recorded negligently firing his service weapon while trying to pick it up after it dropped out of its holster inside a Denver nightclub.
One club-goer was struck, but apparently the 29-year-old agent seemed unaware that he hit anyone, walking off the dance floor with his hands in the air as if to apologize.
Bishop is being held in a detention center in Downtown Denver. He is facing charges of second-degree assault but KUSA reports that he hasn’t been formally charged.
Bishop turned himself into authorities, the Denver Sheriff’s Department, Tuesday and remains under investigation.
The club-goer who was struck by Bishop’s stray bullet was transported to the local hospital and is listed in good condition.
The Denver Post initially reported:
An off-duty FBI agent dancing at a Denver nightclub accidentally discharged a firearm, wounding another patron in the leg, police said Saturday. The victim, an adult male, was rushed to a local hospital in good condition, said Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson.
Police have refused to identify the hospital.
Jackson said the agent, whose identity wasn’t released, was dancing at the downtown club around 12:45 a.m. Saturday when the firearm fell from the agent’s waistband holster onto the floor. It discharged when the agent picked it up.
Police investigators interviewed the agent before releasing the agent to an FBI supervisor. The police investigation was continuing, and any charges would be determined by the Denver District Attorney’s Office, said Officer Marika Putnam.
Denver FBI spokeswoman Amy Sanders declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation.
The victim, Thomas Reddington, 24, said he first thought the gunshot was the sound of a firecracker but then he noticed his leg bleeding, he said during an Good Morning, America interview.
“We sat down at one of those picnic tables — I heard a loud bang and I thought some idiot set off a firecracker,” Reddington told GMA. “Then I looked down at my leg and see some brown residue … I’m still thinking it’s a firework … all of a sudden from the knee down my leg became completely red. And that’s when it clicked in my head, ‘Oh, I’ve been shot.'”
Authorities interrogated the agent prior to turning himself in and released him pending the recommendation by the district attorney’s office.
Maybe stricter gun control laws should be considered law enforcement as well.
These trained civil servants have found themselves in the spotlight as of late with the latest incident being an officer who left his gun in the bathroom of a Burger King, which we reported here.
