Men’s soccer player arrested after shooting BYU students with BB gun
A Utah Valley men’s soccer player was arrested on Tuesday and charged with three counts of aggravated assault after he allegedly shot three people with a BB gun.
According to police, James “Jamie” Dunning, 18, fired several shots from a moving vehicle with a “CO2 BB pistol” into a crowd of students outside of Helaman Halls on the campus of Brigham Young University. The incident occurred just after 10 p.m. on Sunday night.
Three students were struck by BBs, according to a probable cause statement, and one required medical treatment to remove a BB from where it had punctured the skin above his left ear.
Police said Dunning was one of five occupants in a white Nissan Rogue. All other occupants told police that Dunning fired the shots. The driver of the vehicle had “yelled at Dunning and told him to stop,” and eventually drove back to the scene to see if anyone had been hurt.
“The driver was concerned but Dunning did not want to report the incident and they left the area,” the probable cause statement read. “Dunning was indifferent about shooting a BB gun into a group of people and not concerned by any possible injuries that may have been caused from his actions.”
Another passenger told police that Dunning had shot him in the leg with the same BB pistol earlier in the day, breaking his skin.
A spokesperson for the university confirmed to The Review that Dunning is a student at UVU and joined the men’s soccer team at the beginning of the 2020 fall semester.
“As per team and university rules, he has been suspended from the team while the investigation runs its course,” said an official statement from UVU. “We are aware of the allegations but cannot comment on pending investigations.”
UVU announced that Dunning had signed a letter of intent to play for the Wolverines in January of this year. Dunning had been a member of the U-15 and U-17 National Teams for the United States and Canada, and was playing for Sparta Rotterdam’s U-19 team in the Netherlands at the time of signing with UVU.
Editor-in-Chief
Bridger Beal-Cvetko is a senior at Utah Valley University where he is studying journalism. He has been with the UVU Review since 2019, where he has covered the UVU men’s basketball team and the softball team during his time as Sports Editor. Bridger has also worked as a producer for ESPN 960 AM. Aside from sports, Bridger is an ardent cinephile, and loves reading fantasy and science fiction novels.