Member of U.S. Shooting Team Holds Gun to His Head, Is Killed

PARKER, Colo. — A member of the U.S. shooting team accidentally shot himself in the head at a home where he and two members of the Spanish national shooting team had gone to buy a pistol, authorities said Monday.

Authorities said Robert Plante, 29, of Westland, Mich., was sitting at a table inspecting pistols Sunday night when he displayed a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol he had brought with him.

“In a joking manner, Mr. Plante placed the pistol to his head and pulled the trigger, discharging the firearm,” Douglas County sheriff’s Capt. William Walker said. Witnesses to the incident were not identified.

Plante had been a resident athlete at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs since January of 1990, said Lones Wigger, director of the U.S. shooting team.

Wigger said Plante was one of 30 athletes in contention for a berth on the 1992 Olympic pistol team. Earlier this year he won gold and bronze team medals in the Mexico World Cup, as well as silver and bronze medals at the U.S. Olympic Festival.