Man shot, killed in Manchester

Posted Thursday, November 25, 2010 9:13 pm

MANCHESTER -- Authorities say a 24-year-old Manchester man was shot and killed Thursday morning after an apparent prank went wrong.

Jeffrey Charbonneau, of Manchester, was shot with a .22 caliber rifle around 8 a.m. Thursday at 121 Eagle Rise Road, according to the Manchester Police Department. The shooter, 23-year-old Nicholas Bell, also of Manchester, thought he was using an air rifle and was planning to wake Charbonneau up with it, Police said.

A member of the Manchester Rescue Squad determined that Charbonneau was dead when they arrived on scene and found him in a second-story bedroom with a gunshot wound. A 911 one call concerning the shooting was placed at 8:13 a.m., police said.

Charbonneau and Bell were guests at a friend's house, according to police. Two other people were in the home at the time of the shooting but are not being identified because of the ongoing investigation, police said.

The scene was processed by the Vermont State Police's crime scene team, according to the Manchester Police.

Bennington County State's Attorney Erica Marthage responded to the scene and requested that Bell be charged with manslaughter. Bell was being held Thursday evening at the Marble Valley Correctional facility on $250,000 bail, which was set by Judge David Suntag.

Bell will likely be arraigned on Monday, according to Marthage. She said there was no evident to suggest that Charbonneau's death was not an accident. However, Bell deliberately pulled the trigger, Marthage said.

"It's looking like he mistook it or thought it might have been an air gun," Marthage said. "It was reckless behavior and he meant to shoot the gun. Everything indicates that the actually discharge of the gun was not accidental. This was not like they were hunting together or they were cleaning a gun. That was not what happened," she said.

A Facebook profile that appears to be Charbonneau's indicates he was a 2005 graduate of Burr and Burton Academy.