Nov 28, 2002 By Jennifer Harr 4 min read

A panel of Fayette County Coroner’s jurors ruled the Nov. 27, 2001, shooting death of Meriel R. Bowser an avoidable accident, and assigned no blame to the hunter who may have shot her. The 66-year-old MillRun woman was walking out the bedroom in her 8 Hampton Church Loop Road home when a .30-06 bullet hit her in the left side of the neck and killed her. Her husband, Donald Bowser, found her on the floor and called for an ambulance.

Volunteer firefighter Shane Edward Treacher, who was sitting at his vehicle after hunting in a wooded area about 300 yards from Bowser’s home, heard the call go out on his radio and responded to her home around 3:30 p.m.

Inside the home, Treacher noticed a bullet hole in the bedroom door and through the living room wall. When police arrived at the scene, he told them he had been hunting in the woods and fired a single shot at a deer. It could have been his bullet that hit Bowser, Treacher told state police trooper Daniel Ekis.

Ekis testified that police were able to trace the path of the bullet through a picture glass window and a lamp shade before it pierced the living room wall and bedroom door to hit Bowser.

Between the Bowser home and Treacher, said Ekis, was a wooded area, making it impossible for Treacher to have seen a deer on Bowser’s property and fired at it.

Against the advice of his attorney, Sean Boyle, Treacher testified at the inquest that he did fire one shot shortly before police believe Bowser was hit, but said he also heard other guns firing within a five-minute time frame.

“The only reason we talked to Mr. Treacher is because he came forward,” said Ekis, who determined Bowser’s death to be accidental.

Treacher testified he felt he had a safe shot, and grew up in the area so had a frame of reference as to where there are houses. Ekis also pointed out that Bowser’s home was up a slope from where Treacher was hunting.

Treacher, said Ekis, gave police a five-page statement and turned over his rifle so that it could be tested. Ekis said ballistics tests could not conclusively prove that the bullet came from Treacher’s gun.

“We don’t know who did this for sure,” Boyle said.

The attorney also noted that the Pennsylvania Game Commission was called in to investigate and found that Treacher did not violate the rule that he stay 150 yards away from a residence when hunting based on his accounting of events.

Dr. Phillip E. Reilly said that a representative of the Game Commission was asked to participate in the inquest, but did not attend.

Pamela Hughes, Bowser’s eldest daughter, asked Reilly to leave the inquest open until a member of the Game Commission came in to testify. He refused, however, noting that any representative would testify similarly to a report prepared by the commission and brought to light by Boyle.

Hughes also said that despite Treacher’s claims that others hunt in that area, she has never seen another hunter in those woods in the 46 years she’s lived in Mill Run.

In an unrelated matter, jurors also ruled in a second hunting-related death.

The six-person panel ruled that Daniel E. Pyeritz’s death last Oct. 30 was an avoidable accident, but stopped short of blaming the torn harness of Pyeritz’s tree stand.

Ekis, who also investigated this case, testified that he felt Pyeritz, 47, of 172 Berry Street, Imperial, fell asleep after heading out for a morning of bow hunting and fell 15 to 17 feet to the ground when his restraint snapped.

Pyeritz was in a hunting area he frequented in Henry Clay Township, about 1 mile off Route 40.

Although Reilly said he felt the belt which looped around Pyeritz’s waist and hooked to the tree was “flimsy” and “skimpy,” jurors said they decided not to make any determinations to that affect because they did not possess that expertise.

Van Watt, one of three men who discovered Pyeritz’s body, testified that there are other restraint systems for portable tree stands, including a full body harness.

Reilly said he felt the accident was avoidable due to the inadequate safety restraint Pyeritz was wearing.