JACKSON TOWNSHIP — A 61-year-old Zelienople woman was wounded Monday afternoon while at the firing range of the Evans City Sportsman’s Club, in what police are calling a freak accident.

Police and EMS were called to the club on Textor School Road at about 2:30 p.m., after the woman was struck in the thigh by a bullet from a .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun.

Jackson Township Police Sgt. Tim Amrhein said the woman and her husband were at the range when the gun either jammed or “double-loaded,” and the woman gave the weapon to her husband, who pointed it in a safe direction and attempted to clear the weapon.

Somehow, Amrhein said, the gun fired a single bullet, which ricocheted at least twice before striking the woman in the back of the thigh and exiting through the front of her thigh.

“There’s absolutely nothing to indicate it was anything other than a freak accident,” Amrhein said.

He praised the husband for quick thinking; the man constructed a tourniquet out of his belt to stem the bleeding of his wife’s leg until emergency responders arrived and transported her to Allegheny General Hospital.

“It was a pretty damn good job,” on the husband’s part, Amrhein said.

He said police were not releasing the couple’s names.