Authorities in Harrisburg are still trying to piece together what happened at the Nathan and Adrian Hill home on Sunday, July 5.
SALINE CO.—Recriminations are flying in the wake of an accident with a shotgun on the evening of Sunday, July 5.
And there appears to be good reason, if the wife of the victim is to be believed.
Nathan Hill, 27, was disfigured and is fortunate to have not ended his life when a shotgun he was waving around that evening—in what his wife Adrian Hill, 23, says was a fit of rage—discharged and struck him on the left side of his face.
The Hills had been at a pool party outing with friends and had just arrived at their home on Raymond Street when it’s reported that Nathan Hill began behaving irrationally, this, said his wife, after he had been drinking whiskey at the pool party.
Adrian—who is the younger sister of locally-infamous badge bunny Brittany Lane, but who, relatives say, is nothing like her—explained in an online post that her husband got out of their car and began beating her up.
When she was able to get away from him, and with all three of their kids in the house, she was able to call friends, and saw Hill come out of their house with what she thought was a foam baseball bat.
As it turned out, it was a shotgun.
With two friends she’d called having already arrived on the scene, they and Adrian watched as Hill stuck the gun under his jaw and managed to discharge it.
Miraculously, the shot didn’t go through his head, but instead carved a path outward away from his brain and across the left side of his face, most of which was blown off. The male friend who had arrived to help the two was able to “hold his head together,” according to one account, as Hill lay on the ground and emergency services were called.
Hill was transported to Harrisburg Medical Center, then on to a St. Louis hospital. There, the treating physicians waited for the swelling to go down before they began attempting to close the hole. Hill had lost bone, teeth, and a lot of tissue on the left side of his face, but at that point (and as of press time, July 12), not his left eye.
Adrian Hill said that she couldn’t go visit her husband at the hospital at first. However, as the week progressed, she was able to do so, and it appears they are working through the problems and the crisis that this disfiguring injury is bringing into their lives.
What prompted Nathan Hill to behave in such a manner, however, is something that investigating officials are still working through. Other than the fact that Hill had been drinking something other than his usual adult beverage of choice, there’s no clear indication of what was in his system that may have prompted him to act the way he did…if there was anything at all.
The investigation, and Hill’s recovery, continues.