Concord teen pleads guilty in shooting of younger brother
Dominick Drumsta faces up to a year in jail for incident that family says was an accident
A man who admitted he shot his brother last fall in what the family insists was an accident should not go back to jail, his lawyer said.
The November 2007 incident in an East Concord farmhouse nearly cost Ryan Drumsta his life, but according to defense attorney John K. Jordan, the incident also took an emotional toll on Dominick “Nick” Drumsta III, who pleaded guilty to third-degree assault Monday before State Supreme Court Justice Christopher J. Burns.
Ryan Drumsta, then 16, spent nearly two months recovering from the stomach wound caused by a deer slug his brother fired from a shotgun after they wrestled in the family’s kitchen Nov. 24.
Meanwhile, Nick, 19, was locked away in the Erie County Holding Center on an attempted murder charge.
The older sibling was freed and the charge reduced — first to felony second-degree assault and later to
third-degree assault, a misdemeanor — after the Erie County district attorney’s office “finally saw the light,” Jordan said.
His client will face up to a year in jail, three years on probation or a combination of jail time and probation when he returns to court Oct. 6.
During the plea hearing, Nick Drumsta told Burns he did not know the shotgun was loaded when he pointed it at Ryan and pulled the trigger.
“I’m going to present Nick in the most favorable light I can” at sentencing, Jordan said. “There will be many letters of support, and I think [a sentence without jail] would serve everybody best.”
Burns made no sentencing commitment.
“Ryan was touch-and-go in the beginning,” Jordan said, but eventually improved enough to go home from Erie County Medical Center. Meanwhile, “the boy who shoots him is in jail.”
The defendant came to court with his parents and brother, who turned 17 May 1 and is slowly regaining his health, though he faces “at least one more surgery,” said his mother, Linda.
Ryan felt well enough to go for a dirt-bike ride with his youth pastor over the weekend, his mother said.
Both boys finished the school year at home under instruction from tutors. Nick graduated from Springville- Griffith Institute and works with his father, Dominick Jr., in the family computer repair shop.
Though she and her husband believe all charges should have been dropped, “all in all, we were pleased” with the plea arrangement, Linda Drumsta said.
The district attorney’s office is not conceding that the shooting was accidental, said prosecutor Kristin St. Mary.
Cases pitting family members against one another “are always very difficult,” said District Attorney Frank J. Clark. “The family just wants it to go away — particularly when there is a plausible explanation.”
Clark said his office will make no sentencing recommendation.
