Stray-Bullet Probe Keeps Police Firing Range Closed Worker At Day-Care Center Hit; Another Bullet Found By Sandbox

A firing range for police officers and sheriff’s deputies remained closed Thursday as investigators tried to determine how two stray bullets found their way to a day-care center.

One bullet grazed the leg of a woman working at the Liberty Christian School on Wednesday morning; the other was found near a sandbox that afternoon.

“Everybody showed up today,” Joan Winner, a director at the Mukilteo center, said Thursday.

“It kind of raised some concerns, but no one felt it was very likely to ever happen again,” Winner added.

The day-care center is more than a mile from the Paine Field Gun Range, which is used as a firing range by law enforcement officers.

About a dozen toddlers were in the schoolyard when day-care worker Jennifer Jorgensen felt a sharp sting at about 10:20 a.m. Wednesday while she was speaking to a parent outside the building.

Winner said the bullet did not break Jorgensen’s skin but left a bruise on her thigh.

“It must have bounced off of something and then bounced off of her,” Winner said.

A young girl playing near a school sandbox found the second bullet a few hours later.

The sheriff’s office said a gun manufacturer’s representative was test-firing a rifle at the gun range Wednesday morning when it discharged accidentally.

Officials on Thursday were awaiting the results of ballistics tests as they continued their investigation.

The sheriff’s office is working to develop a new firing range in a more remote area of the county.