Man's shooting death in Olivehurst possible accident

A man was killed Wednesday evening in Olivehurst, in what the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department believed could be an accidental shooting.

At about 5:45 p.m., the department received a call about a man being shot on the 4200 block of Rose Avenue, about 50 yards south of McGowan Parkway.

Department Capt. Ron Johnson said deputies found a 35-year-old man from Olivehurst, as yet unidentified, who had an upper-body wound he’d received from a small-caliber rifle.

Johnson said an initial investigation suggested the man and another person, either a friend or family member, were beginning the process of cleaning out a shed on the property when one of them picked up the rifle and it went off.

Department deputies initially closed much of the road to through traffic, and the man was taken away by Bi-County Ambulance about 30 minutes after the initial call to Rideout Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Shortly before the ambulance left, a man who’d arrived at the house began wailing loudly after speaking with officers, saying, “My brother! My brother!” He followed the ambulance in another vehicle, as did several other people.

Another man who left with a sheriff’s deputy in a department vehicle had the front of his shirt covered in blood.

Johnson said no one had been taken into custody in connection with the shooting. He also said it wasn’t clear whether the man lived at the site of the incident, but the investigation suggested he at least knew the people living there.

“Obviously we’ve frozen the scene, and we’re in the very early stages of processing that scene,” Johnson said, adding investigators had only listed an accidental death as a possibility and not definitive.

Neighbors reported hearing a loud noise, followed by sirens and barking dogs, but were unsure of what had happened.

In addition to the sheriff’s department, responders from Wheatland Fire Department, Olivehurst Fire and the Yuba College police department came to the scene. The road was reopened to traffic shortly after the ambulance left.

A woman who said she’d lived for 40 years next door to the home where the shooting happened said she liked the people who lived there.

“My husband passed away in November, and they’ve bent over backwards to help,” said Vickey London. “They’re coming over, mowing my lawn.”

CONTACT Ben van der Meer at bvandermeer@appealdemocrat.com or 749-4786. Find him on Facebook at /ADbvandermeer or on Twitter at @ADbvandermeer.