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Wrightsville Beach
Friday, March 29, 2024

Diver swims under fire to end shooting episode at marina

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It was a typical Thursday afternoon at Wrightsville Marina when diver Chris Wilshire was working on cleaning a boat at the marina.  Suddenly, an all-too-familiar crack in the air brought Wilshire back to his Marine Corps training.

“I heard the gunshots, heard the rounds whistle by,” Wilshire said. “They came in one after the other. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.”

The next sound on April 28 wasn’t a whistle, it was a crack. With more than nine years’ experience as a Marine that included two tours of duty in Afghanistan, Wilshire understood what that meant.

“When you hear a round whistle, you’re all right. When you hear it crack, it’s dangerously close,” Wilshire said.

That round hit the boat down the dock from where Wilshire was standing, nearly hitting another man who was making repairs.

“It was one foot, maybe three feet from where he was standing,” Wilshire said. “Holy cow, that round was so close.”

What happened next on this suddenly unusual day at the marina was something that Wilshire’s employer said was only typical for his nature. Seeing that the shots were coming from people firing a rifle on a spoil island across from the marina,Wilshire swam about 100 yards to the island, confronted the two young men firing the gun, and ordered them to turn themselves into the police, which they did.

“Being an experienced Marine, he confronted them and put an end to a scary situation,” said Jeff Saunders, who owns the boat cleaning service where Wilshire serves as dive team leader. “There was a serious chance of someone getting hurt or killed.”

Wilshire said that the two Wilmington men that were firing the high-caliber rifle at about 2:30 p.m. at first did not believe that they had hit the boat. He said the 30 caliber rifle they were firing was far too powerful for the setting, easily cutting through the trees and brush they figured would catch the rounds.

After making the swim to the island, Wilshire said he made them unload the rifle and take their boat back to the dock, where they waited for Wrightsville Beach police.

“They kept saying, ‘We didn’t hit the boat,’” Wilshire said. “But when they saw where the round impacted, their expressions sank. It put it in perspective. They said ‘Aw man, we could have killed someone.’”

The owner of the gun, Samuel Jarrell, 19, was issued a citation for damage to personal property while the other man, 20-year-old Cooper Hale, was not cited.

While Wilshire said he doesn’t think the two men were intentionally trying to harm people, their actions were reckless and deserved more serious charges.

Wrightsville Beach police said that since the rifle was fired on land managed by the county, they weren’t able to charge Jarrell with the town’s ordinance prohibiting firing a weapon.

Wilshire said he still believed the citation was too lenient for the hazard they posed.

“Especially for Wrightsville Beach, there should be a harsher punishment,” Wilshire said, adding that he often takes his family down to the marina. “A guy’s life was almost taken because of these kids’ stupidity. There are people who for not less of a stupid incident received a lot more punishment. The police may not have thought it was not big deal, but it’s a huge deal to me.”

The Lumina News received an email describing the incident, in which a witness said Wilshire “literally swam into gunfire” and said he “selflessly stopped a very bad situation without regards to his personal safety.”

For Saunders, the actions were entirely in Wilshire’s character.

“It’s his nature to solve things and get them done,” Saunders said. “It’s the way he is.”

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