READSBORO, Vt. — State police are investigating a double fatal shooting that occurred early Saturday.
Police say Benjamin Birch, 39, of Readsboro was killed in a hunting accident near Howe Pond. Birch was reportedly chasing a deer with two other hunters when one of his companions, Timothy Bolognani, accidently shot him. Bolognani, 49, of Readsboro, was so distraught, said police, he used his rifle to take his own life.
Police and ambulance personnel originally responded to a report of one injured man, then two men, discovered at a camp in the small town. Unconfirmed reports had said there were two men, one in his 20s and the other in 40s, both dead of gunshot wounds.
This is the second tragedy in barely a year for the Bolognani family. Timothy Bolognani's 18-year-old daughter, Jessica, was killed in a snowmobile accident last January. Bolognani is the son of Betty Bolognani, former state representative.
While accidental, this is also the second double-fatality connected to guns in the last year in Readsboro. On Dec. 2, 2010, 47-year-old Robert Finley shot and killed his father, James Finley, 69, before turning the gun on himself in a domestic fight.
No further information was immediately available.
Updated and rewritten throughout, 11 p.m., Nov. 26.
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