"Also, neighbors in the past have complained about the range being too close to their homes and occasional stray bullets ending up on their properties."

this is amazing to me. if this is true, that bullets are landing on their property.......i can't believe they would actually put up with that. how do you not contact someone/call the police/do something if you see bullets landing on your property?

Gun accident kills firing range worker

By Andrew Scott
Pocono Record Writer
February 15, 2008

POCONO TOWNSHIP ? Anton Bonifacic, the owner of the Sunset Hill Shooting Range on Route 314, has been handling guns for 35 years.

For Bonifacic, who lives by the commandments of gun safety, what happened Thursday morning to his friend and employee, Russell Stephens Jr., was a nightmare come true.

At 9:40 a.m., Stephens, 38, of Delaware Water Gap, an instructor at the range for the past two years, was removing firearms from the overnight storage safe to take out onto the range.

This is part of the daily routine of opening up for business. But this time, one of the guns, a 9 mm Uzi, went off in Stephens' face.

"I was in my office and I heard a loud noise," Bonifacic said Thursday evening. "When I ran out to see what was going on, Russ was already slumped on the floor."

Bonifacic said three other employees were present at the time. None of the guns were supposed to be loaded at that time, and no one knows why the Uzi was.

"The terrible irony is that Russ was one of the safest people on this range," Bonifacic said.

Stephens was flown to Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, where he was pronounced dead by the Lehigh County Coroner's Office.

"This has been devastating for us," Bonifacic said. "Any one of us could have been the one handling that gun when it went off.

"This is a day I never wanted to see come," he said. "It's tragic. Russ was a fantastic man."

Survived by his wife and teenage son, Stephens had served in the U.S. military, then worked as a cement truck driver in New Jersey and was a customer at the range prior to becoming an instructor there, Bonifacic said.

This isn't the first time there has been a shooting accident at the range.

In November 2000, Peter D'Elia, then 51, of Jersey City, N.J., was putting a hunting rifle into a carrying case when the rifle discharged. D'Elia's friend, Walter Bierdzycki, then 45, also of Jersey City, was shot in the stomach and later listed in critical condition at Lehigh Valley Hospital.

Bierdzycki later recovered and sued D'Elia, Shotlock Corp. of South Carolina, which he claimed made the malfunctioning trigger lock on D'Elia's rifle, and Sunset Hill. Bierdzycki claimed the range was operated in a dangerous environment.

The suit was filed in New Jersey Superior Court, then moved to New Jersey federal court and finally to U.S. District Court in Scranton, where it was dismissed, according to online records.

Also, neighbors in the past have complained about the range being too close to their homes and occasional stray bullets ending up on their properties.