A bullet was shot through the ceiling of a family’s apartment at the Oldham Oaks apartment complex on Saturday night, according to the family and police.
La Grange resident William Todd called 911 shortly after 6 p.m. on Nov. 16 and said a bullet had come through the ceiling of his apartment at Oldham Oaks. He told dispatchers that three Kentucky State Police (KSP) troopers live above him and none of them were answering the door.
When the bullet came through the ceiling of the apartment, Ke’liam, Sa’rinity and Kay’leah Todd, William and KeeKee Todd’s children, were all home. Grandmother Beverly Todd was home watching the children at the time. No one was injured.
The bullet hole is in the living room of the apartment, just a few inches away from where the two girls were, one sitting on the couch and the other standing behind the couch.
“I thought it was a firecracker and I ran in here and looked and I said ‘Oh my god, it’s a bullet hole,” Beverly Todd said.
The Oldham County Sheriff’s Office and the La Grange Police Department responded to the scene at the 1000 block of Fredrick Lane in La Grange.
KSP Troopers Dustin Gross and Landon Terry live in the apartment, according to a police report. Both men graduated as troopers on Oct. 25 and were assigned to KSP Post 5, which covers Oldham County, according to a KSP press release.
According to the police report, Trooper Terry asked the Oldham County Sheriff deputy if he was there about the gunshot, and he responded “absolutely.”
He then told the deputy that they had just moved in and had taken the magazine of out of the rifle.
“They thought it was empty and the trigger was pulled and the rifle went off because there was a round in the chamber,” according to the police report.
It’s unclear from the report who shot the gun.
The troopers also told police they were still in the field-training phase and had not told their supervisor what happened yet. After graduating, each trooper is supervised by a training officer for 12 weeks, according to a press release.
“I told them they need to get out in front of it and contact their sergeants as soon as possible. Their response was, ‘we are getting ready to go out,’” the deputy wrote in the run report.
“Once again, I told the two they needed to contact their supervisors and let them know what had happened, before this took on a life of its own and the media found out or someone else tells KSP about it before they did,” the deputy wrote.
“Neither of the two acted like they were going to contact their supervisor,” the deputy added.
A KSP sergeant arrived on scene later that night to interview the troopers, according to the police report.
The Era spoke with William, KeeKee and Beverly Todd at their apartment Monday. The couple said they moved to La Grange just a few months ago from Louisville. They said they moved to the county for change and to enroll their kids in the Oldham County school system.
William and KeeKee were out of the house at the time. When William came back home, he went upstairs to the apartment and knocked on the door but nobody answered.
William Todd said he saw two women leave the apartment after he had knocked on the door and then return 15 minutes later with pizza and went about their evening.
“They were just up there eating pizza like nothing had ever happened,” he said.
It wasn’t until Sunday the two troopers came down to their apartment to apologize and check on the family.
Beverly Todd said she was smoking a cigarette outside on Sunday when she heard the troopers above her on the patio and she told them that she knew they were up there.
After that they came downstairs to apologize. Beverly Todd asked them why it had taken them so long and they responded it was because they were scared and was “doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing.”
“They’re trained to know what to do with these guns and it just shouldn’t have happened,” she said.
The Oldham Era reached out to Kentucky State Police Post 5 for comment but they did not respond by the time of press.
“This is a big deal to me because if this was a regular citizen, like maybe that was me up there, who was playing around with a gun, even if I was unloading or cleaning my gun, I would be in handcuffs right now,” KeeKee Todd said.
Andrew Henderson 