30 Contestants – Top 6 Chute Out- Bullfight – Bull Poker – Bull Boxing – Mounted Shooting – Large crowd at Bathville Rd Summerland Event Saturday

Eyewitness report: “Then came the mounted shooting. Balloons set up so the gals could shoot them with their trusty pellet guns while mounted on horses. The first one (and the only one it came to be) comes out. Her gun doesn’t fire for the first three balloons, but then she gets it together and shoots some. On the way back she ends up falling off her horse. But what happened afterwards was ……. She’s walking out the gate, without her gun holstered, in her hand and she ends up shooting a little girl in the belly, just feet from where we were standing. The girl was rushed over to the paramedics –  All they said was there would be no more mounted shooting.”

Photo submitted by Shannon Ford

Update from Castanet

A 15-year-old girl was accidentally shot in the thigh Saturday afternoon during a mounted shooting event at the Summerland rodeo.

“The pellet hit her in the hip, but it barely broke the skin,” said Pete Williams who was a spectator within seeing distance of the incident. “She was crying and scared, but St. John Ambulance disinfected it.

BC Ambulance crews were not on the scene at this particular moment, having been called away to respond to a more serious rodeo accident according to Nancy Krystolovich, event secretary for the Summerland Rodeo.

“A bullrider had his leg crushed, so the ambulance crew had been looking after him,” she said.

The mounted shooting event was cancelled after the incident took place. The event where balloons are set up and contestants shoot them with pellet guns fired from one hand. Shooting takes place while contestants are mounted on their horses and riding. The first rider fell off her mount after one attempt in the competition, and this may have created some visual confusion among the spectators.

“Everybody thought the rider was injured, nobody knew about the girl getting hit with the pellet,” she explained.