A young man who claims he accidentally shot and killed his friend last month while handling a rifle at his Muddy Creek Township home is headed for trial in Butler County Court.

District Judge Lewis Stoughton at a preliminary hearing Friday ordered 22-year-old Jeremey D. Sickenberger held for court on a general charge of homicide, which includes murder and manslaughter.

The only witness to testify at the 20-minute hearing, held in a county courtroom, was a friend of Sickenberger and Thomas J. “T.J.” Stockman, 21, of Portersville.

The defendant is accused of shooting Stockman in the chest with a .22-caliber rifle April 17 while the two hung out with other friends at the suspect’s mobile home in the 100 block of Robbie Way.

Stockman was taken to Butler Memorial Hospital after the shooting about 8 p.m. and immediately pronounced dead. An autopsy determined he died of a single gunshot that struck both lungs and heart.

Ashley Homison, 21, of Evans City testified she was in the living room with Sickenberger and Stockman watching television early that night.

She recounted that everyone was friendly and there was discussion about plans, maybe going out for dinner and drinks together, later that night.

About 8 p.m., Homison saw the defendant leave the living room and walk down the hall.

When he returned, he was holding what Homison described for prosecutor Christine Studeny, a Butler County assistant district attorney, as a “longer gun; an older gun.”

She acknowledged she was not familiar with guns.

Sickenberger claimed it was a pellet gun, Homison testified. Stockman apparently thought it was, too.

She said the defendant “pointed (the rifle) straight to (Stockman’s) stomach area. Sickenberger stated the gun was not loaded.

On cross-examination by Sickenberger’s attorney, James Donohue, she said the two men, who considered themselves “like “brothers, seemed to be “joking around.”

During the apparent horseplay, Stockman told the others he had previously been shot with a pellet gun.

Homison testified the gun’s barrel was touching Stockman’s sweatshirt when she saw Sickenberger rack the rifle and pull the trigger. She heard the gun go off.

“(Stockman) fell straight to the ground and started shaking a little bit,” she recalled.

Sickenberger called 911.

State police in court documents, said Michael Lively, another friend at Sickenberger’s house that night, attempted CPR but the victim stopped breathing.

An autopsy would later determine the death a homicide. Investigators at the home conducted preliminary interviews with Sickenberger and the others who were there.

Questioned by Studeny, Homison admitted that she initially lied to police when she claimed she was outside the home when Stockman was shot.

“I was in so much shock,” she told the prosecutor, in explaining the lie.

She said she also was concerned over potential child custody issues that could arise from her being present at a shooting scene.

Donohue pressed Homison on that first story she gave to police, trying to get her to admit she was a lair.

But police in court documents detail several different accounts that Sickenberger gave investigators about what happened.

The defendant at first claimed he had nothing to do with the shooting. He later suggested the gun somehow went off without him working the pump action or pulling the trigger.

He denied aiming the gun at Stockman before he conceded it was pointed at the victim.

One consistency in all of Sickenberger’s stories, once he admitted firing the gun, was that it was an accident. Donohue argued that same claim in asking Stoughton to dismiss the case against his client.

The shooting, he said, was “an accidental discharge of a weapon” while “two young men in their 20s were joking around.”

But Studeny, in response suggested the killing rises to third-degree murder because Sickenberger acted recklessly and with disregard for human life when he pointed the gun at a vital part of Stockman’s body.

Sickenberger remains in the county prison without bail.