‘It’s against the law’: Police warn against firing guns in air during holiday fireworks

Janice Kent and her husband woke up in the middle of the night last year when a bullet came plunging through the roof of their Fort Myers mobile home.

“All of a sudden, my husband jumped out of bed and was going ‘what, what what was that?'” Kent said. “It went through two layers of roofing and installation and the ceiling.”

Fortunately, no one was injured, but Kent says it was too close of a call.

“That bullet could have been a few inches in a different direction and hit either one of us in the head,” she said.

Investigators on the case say the bullet came from someone firing a gun into the air on a neighboring street.

It’s a stunt police say tends to increase on holidays like the Fourth of July. But Fort Myers Police say firing guns off for celebratory reasons is never okay.

“We do see a lot of report of injuries where people are sitting outside celebrating, whether it be New Years or Fourth of July then they get struck by a bullet,” said Captain Jay Rodriguez with FMPD.

The department plans to have extra man power on patrol on the Fourth and say they have a zero tolerance policy for anyone caught firing guns during the fireworks.

“We tell all our citizens not to do that ever, and obviously if we do catch you doing that, you will be arrested. It’s against the law,” Rodriguez said.

The department is also in the process of getting new technology that will allow officers to zero in on gunshots faster. The technology has the ability to triangulate noise from a gunshot and pinpoint the specific area it came from.