Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

No Charges Expected In Student's Shooting

What began as a shooting at Prescott High School turned into something entirely different.

A call came in Thursday morning at about 9 concerning a student being shot at the high school.

When officers arrived, they found a 15-year-old male with a bullet wound to his left shoulder.

The youth was stabilized and transported to Medical Park Hospital by the Nevada County Ambulance Service after telling officers he had been walking down the street east of the school when he was shot.

At the scene, the youth said he had not seen nor heard anything.

Nevada County Sheriff Harold Vines said after looking at the wound, he knew there was more to the case than met the eye.

Vines said it was obviously a contact wound, with the shooting done at close range. He was able to determine this because of the powder burns on the youth's clothing and skin.

While at MPH, the youth confessed to having shot himself to Vines.

He said he and his girlfriend had a fight earlier in the day and he had returned home, where he got a .25 caliber semiautomatic handgun.

According to Vines, the youth shot himself while walking back to school and threw the weapon in a field nearby.

The weapon was later found by deputy Wally Hulan.

Vines said the case has been wrapped up and no charged will be filed. "The shooting," he said, "did not happen on school grounds. We want everyone to know this."

In another case solved Thursday, a burglary suspect who fled from officers while being transported from the Nevada County Courthouse back to the Nevada County Jail, was caught a few hours later.

The suspect, 17-year-old Joe Dansby, Jr., had made his first appearance in court on burglary charges and was being taken back to jail.

Vines said most of his deputies were investigating the shooting incident near PHS at the time, which gave Dansby the opportunity to break and run -- which he did.

The NCSO received a call from a local resident giving them a location where the youth had been seen, near the railroad track near Highway 371.

Jim Westmoreland, criminal investigator with the Prescott Police Department and NCSO, chased Dansby on foot, when the suspect ran into the woods.

It was in the woods where deputy Roy Frazier and auxiliary deputy David Crews, along with Westmoreland, found him.

Dansby was then taken back to jail, where the felony charge of escape will be added onto his burglary charges.