NORRIDGEWOCK — A Canaan man is accused of firing a shotgun from his pickup truck after getting into an altercation Wednesday afternoon at a Main Street convenience store.
Alex James Brickett, 20, has been charged with reckless conduct with a firearm, a class D crime, and may face other charges, according to Somerset County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy James Ross. Police were sent in response to a complaint shortly after 1:30 p.m. on Martin Stream Road, and Brickett was booked at 3:14 p.m. at Somerset County Jail in Madison.
According to Ross, Brickett was involved in a dispute with someone at the Cumberland Farms convenience store on Main Street shortly before the incident happened.
“I do not know what the underlying issue was that caused the altercation,” Ross said.
Brickett left the store in a pickup truck and drove south on Martin Stream Road toward Fairfield, and the other party in the dispute apparently was following him in another vehicle, Ross said.
At some point during the drive, Brickett pointed a pump-action shotgun out the window of the driver’s side and fired three times into the woods on the side of the road, according to Ross.
The gun “was not fired at the following vehicle; it was fired perpendicularly into the woods,” he said.
The incident was captured on a cellphone video by the occupants of the vehicle behind Brickett, he said. Somerset County deputies and Fairfield police responded to the call, he said.
A woman and a 3-year-old child were passengers in the truck when Brickett fired the shotgun, Ross added.
The shotgun was the only firearm in the vehicle and there is nothing that would have prohibited Brickett from possessing the gun, Ross said.
It is illegal in Maine to have a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle, and the case has been sent to the district attorney’s office for review, Ross said.
According to court records, in October 2014, Brickett was fined $100 for using illegal fishing bait in artificial-lure-only water and $120 for violating fish number, size and weight, from a case in Solon in July 2014.
Peter McGuire — 861-9239
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