ST. LOUIS, Jan. 22 A college student in the St. Louis area was shot accidentally when a friend's gun fired as he unloaded it, police said.
Megan Piontek, 22, died of a bullet wound in the head Saturday night, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. She was watching television in the house she shared with a cousin in Sunset Hills.
Lisa Piontek of Washington, Mo., the dead woman's mother, said the friend, a young man, was distraught.
"We seriously think it was an accident in our hearts, too," she said.
While police do not believe the killing was deliberate, the man could still face charges. Investigators plan to present their findings to the prosecutor once their work is done.
Piontek was in a master's degree program in rehabilitation and counseling at Maryville University. She worked at the Independence Center, a program in St. Louis that helps the mentally ill find jobs and also had worked on a crisis hotline and at the Judevine Center for Autism.
Copyright 2008 by UPI
