Football players face battery charges

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Four Riverside-Brookfield High School varsity football players face charges of battery and disorderly conduct after allegedly shooting BB-type guns at two people walking along

According to Riverside police, all of the teens were equipped with Airsoft guns and shot at two women from a vehicle. The alleged shooting occurred at 11:30 a.m., just after football practice. Three of the guns, one pistol and two rifles, had orange tips on the barrels. A fourth gun that looks like a shotgun did not have an orange tip, said Police Chief Thomas Weitzel.

“If that weapon was pointed at a police officer, we’d return fire,” Weitzel said.

The Airsoft guns fire hard, round plastic pellets.

Weitzel said the teens were still wearing their Bulldogs jerseys at the time of their arrest.

Detective Sgt. David Krull said that a 34-year-old woman from LaGrange was struck by a BB in the left hip, leaving a large welt. She was treated by Riverside paramedics, but was not hospitalized.

Another woman in her company was not struck, but told police that she felt a pellet fly by her face, Weitzel said. The women phoned police and gave them a partial license plate number of a vehicle they saw drive from the scene.

Police are withholding the names of those charged until all charges are processed.