NEW YORK (AP) – A soldier on leave from the Army was arrested Thursday on charges he fired his gun in the air and accidentally killed a mother looking out an apartment window.
Prosecutors said Pvt. Danny Carpio, 23, had been drinking at a relative’s house when he shot his gun three or four times in the air outside a Queens apartment complex.
The stray bullet hit Selina Akthel who was standing at her fifth-floor window. Akthel, who died late Wednesday, would have turned 29 on New Year’s Eve.
Her husband, Golam Maola, said he was on the phone with relatives in Bangladesh just before midnight when he heard two shots outside.
“I didn’t know what happened. I went into the bedroom and she was lying in blood,” Maola said.
The couple’s two young children, also in the apartment at the time, were unharmed, police said.
Carpio was jailed pending arraignment on charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said.
A spokesman for the district attorney’s office said prosecutors would not have information about a lawyer for Carpio until his arraignment.
AP-ES-12-29-05 2221EST
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