A Marion County, Florida Sheriff’s deputy has been charged with manslaughter after shooting his girlfriend in the head, claiming he accidentally discharged his firearm while showing her how to clean weapons. According to a press release from the Ocala Police Department, the deputy, 32-year-old Leslie Boileau, told police during questioning that he and his girlfriend, 25-year-old Polina Wright, were “handling and dry-firing the firearms” on Thursday night when the “accidental discharge” occurred. Dry-firing is the act of activating the firing mechanism (i.e. pulling the trigger) on a weapon when it is not loaded.
According to an arrest report obtained by local news station FOX 13, Boileau told officers that as they were cleaning the weapons, he “grabbed the rifle and dry-fired it one time.” He then did so a second time, forgetting that in the meantime he had loaded a magazine into the rifle, “which shot one live round in the direction of [his girlfriend], ultimately killing her.” Polina Wright was found sitting in a chair holding Boileau’s Glock pistol in her lap, with a gunshot wound to the head. The Ocala Police Department stated that physical evidence at the scene corroborated the deputy’s account of events.
Boileau was terminated from his position as a result of the incident, having worked for the Marion County Sheriff’s Department for over 8 years. He was arrested on Friday and released on $30,000 bond on Saturday.
One of the most basic tenets of gun safety, according to the overwhelming majority of gun-enthusiast publications and information sources, is to “treat every gun as if it were loaded” even when absolutely certain that it is not – pointing an unloaded gun at a person, never mind pulling the trigger–is considered extremely reckless. The NRA emphasizes that “the rules don’t change regardless of experience.” Boileau told police that he knew that what they were doing was “wrong” and went against his law enforcement training.
According to the CDC’s interactive WONDER database, 463 people were killed by unintentional firearm discharges in 2023, the last full year for which the data was available. That figure is higher than many countries’ total gun deaths per year, such as Japan and England, although it remains a relatively rare occurrence in America compared to the over 40,000 total gun deaths that same year. A 2022 study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that “people living in homes with firearms have higher risks for dying by homicide.”
