A Butler man charged with firing a shotgun blast into a city apartment in October was held for trial Monday at a preliminary hearing.

Dominic R. Hutchens, 18, is charged with aggravated assault, discharging a firearm into an occupied structure, conspiracy and reckless endangerment.

District Judge Pete Shaffer at the hearing also ordered Hutchens’ alleged accomplice, Jesse J. Eaton, 20, of Butler, held for court on a conspiracy charge in the 8-month-old shooting.

Butler police suspect Hutchens fired a sawed-off shotgun Oct. 5 that shattered a window at Colleen Biondo’s apartment in the 400 block of West New Castle Street.

The gunshot narrowly missed Biondo’s 6-year-old son who was sleeping on a love seat inches below the window. No one was hurt in the shooting.

Police believe Eaton was one of several men who accompanied Hutchens to the apartment that night.

Brandon Dolan of Butler, who also was with the defendants that night, provided eyewitness testimony at the hearing.

He said he was at home when he got a call from Eaton’s cell phone.

“(Eaton) called to tell me, ‘Hey, we’re on the way to your house.’” Dolan testified.

Moments later, Eaton drove up in a car with Hutchens and two other men identified as Jahote Dorsey and Todd Gable.

Dolan said the defendants went to get him because they knew he had a shotgun. Eaton also told Dolan that he had been robbed two weeks earlier.

“They said they just needed the gun to get back whatever (the supposed robbers) took from Jesse,” Dolan said.

The gun equipped with a pistol grip, Dolan testified, belonged to a friend. He was only keeping it at his home.

He told Hutchens’ court-appointed attorney, Dennis McCurdy, that when he went off with the others he did not know where they were going.

He was surprised when the 15-minute trip ended at Biondo’s apartment about 10:30 p.m. Dolan said that’s when he said the defendants changed their motive for being out that night.

“That’s when I tried to stop it,” he said.

But Dolan, during questioning by McCurdy and Eaton’s attorney, public defender Kimberly Hudak, was unable to elaborate in detail about the defendants’ new motive.

He said Eaton pulled the car up the curb in front of the apartment. Hutchens got out of the car with the gun.

“(Hutchens) put it to his shoulder and pulled the trigger,” Dolan said.

Biondo, 51, said she and her husband were sleeping when a noise awakened her. She initially thought someone threw a brick through the window.

“All I heard was a loud bang.” She went into the living room to inspect and found smoke and broken glass throughout the room.

“My 6-year-old son was covered in glass,” she recounted. The boy had been sleeping on the love seat near the window where the gunshot was fired.

Biondo’s two other children, ages 14 and 17, and one of the child’s 65-year-old godfather was also at the apartment but no one was hurt.

Along with the smoke and shattered glass, she found BB holes, from the shotgun blast, in the wall and ceiling.

On cross-examination, Biondo said she saw no one or no getaway car after the shooting.

Police subsequently found wadding from a 12-gauge shotgun shell outside, below the apartment window.

Dolan said that after the shooting, Eaton drove off with the others. Dolan admitted he hid the gun.

“I panicked,” he told McCurdy, “and buried it.”

Police said they only solved the case in early May, following numerous interviews of witnesses and suspects.

No one else, including Dolan, is charged in connection with the shooting.

City police in January, meanwhile, arrested Hutchens and Eaton in the Oct. 1 strong-armed robbery of a 33-year-old Butler man.

The victim had just withdrawn $700 from an automated teller machine when he was robbed of the money walking on South Chestnut Street, court documents said.

Eaton last month pleaded guilty in county court to a lesser charge of receiving stolen property and was sentenced to 4 to 8 months in the Butler County Prison.

Hutchens is awaiting trial on robbery and other charges in that same case. He remains in the county prison on $125,000 bail.