A St. Charles County Woman, 60, Is Charged With Firing a Gun at Her Neighbor’s Husband as He Cut a Fence Post in a Property-
Infrogmation - CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons
Charged with two felonies after a Sunday-night confrontation over a fence line, a 60-year-old St. Charles County, Missouri, woman now faces a $500,000 bond. Police say Paula Kohensky fired a handgun toward her neighbor’s husband while he was cutting a fence post on the property line the two households had been disputing. Kohensky told police the gun went off by accident.
The case, first reported by First Alert 4 (KMOV) on Oct. 14, is now headed for a preliminary hearing in December.
What police say happened at the fence
According to the probable cause statement described by KMOV, the neighbor’s husband was working on the fence that separates the two properties. He was using an electric grinder to cut a post that was out of alignment.
He told police he heard yelling, then someone counting down from three, then a gunshot. He ran into his house and asked his wife to call police. She reported that someone had shot at her husband, and St. Charles County police opened an investigation.
No injuries were described in the reports on the case.
Surveillance video from the neighbors’ home became a central piece of the police account. In the Gray News version of the report published Oct. 16, the footage is described as showing Kohensky and her husband standing side by side while she pointed a gun at the fence. The gun then appeared to fire. Her husband took the gun from her, and both went back inside.
Police said Kohensky at first refused to leave her home to speak with officers. She came out about 30 minutes later.
Her account to officers
Kohensky gave police a different picture of the night. She told them she had a “history of harassment and stalking issues” with the neighbors.
She said she went into her backyard carrying a handgun to walk her dog. Under a tarp covering the fence, she said, she heard metal scraping and saw sparks, then saw a shadow she believed was her neighbor. She said she yelled at him to move away.
According to the charging documents as reported, she told officers the gun “accidentally went off while she was holding it.”
Those statements are part of the record the court will weigh. Kohensky has not been convicted of any crime, and the charges are allegations at this stage.
Two accounts of the same few seconds
The two versions of the night overlap on several points. Both place Kohensky in her backyard with a handgun. Both place the neighbor’s husband at the fence, cutting metal, with sparks visible. Both describe yelling before the shot.
Where they split is intent. The husband described a countdown from three before the gun fired. Kohensky described a gun that discharged while she held it. The surveillance video, as summarized in the probable cause statement, shows her pointing the gun at the fence when it appeared to fire, and her husband taking it from her afterward.
The reports do not say what, if anything, came of the earlier harassment and stalking concerns Kohensky described, or whether either household had sought a survey or a court ruling on the boundary before that night.
The charges and what comes next
Kohensky faces two felony counts. KMOV listed them as first-degree assault, described in its photo caption as attempted first-degree assault, and armed criminal action.
Under Missouri law, a person commits assault in the first degree by attempting to kill another person, or by knowingly causing or attempting to cause them severe bodily injury. Because the statute covers attempts, a first-degree assault charge can be filed even when no one is hurt. It is generally a class B felony. The statute raises it to a class A felony when the person inflicts serious harm on the victim, which neither report describes in this case.
Armed criminal action is a separate felony under Chapter 571 of Missouri’s weapons laws, in Section 571.015. It applies when a felony is committed with a dangerous instrument or deadly weapon. A first offense carries a prison term of “not less than three years and not to exceed fifteen years,” served “in addition to and consecutive to” the sentence for the underlying crime. The statute also says a person convicted of a first offense is not eligible for parole, probation or conditional release for three calendar years.
Court records show a preliminary hearing set for Dec. 2. Missouri court filings, including future hearing dates, can be followed on the state judiciary’s public Case.net system.
The neighbors involved were not named in the reports.
Why property-line disputes escalate
The fence at the center of this case was the subject of a property-line disagreement between the two households, according to police. That kind of dispute is common in residential neighborhoods, and it usually turns on a narrow question: where the legal boundary actually runs.
The usual way to settle it is a professional survey of the lot lines, not an old fence, a row of shrubs or a neighbor’s memory.
Disagreements over where a fence belongs, and who gets to touch it, have come up again and again among homeowners, from fruit trees that straddle a boundary to an HOA-approved privacy fence a neighbor objected to. This one ended with a call to police.
A recorded survey gives both sides a document they can point to. When it does not settle the matter, the dispute moves to civil court.
For now, the dispute over a single misaligned fence post has become a felony case. The preliminary hearing is set for Dec. 2.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: Infrogmation – CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons
Source: Crime
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