Husband of hunting accident victim: 'Her life was cut way too short'
By Maki Becker
The Buffalo News
November 24, 2017
Jamie Billquist was watching TV at his home on Armenian Road in Sherman Wednesday night when he heard his dogs barking.
His wife, Rosemary, had just taken their Labs, Sugar and Stella, out for a walk in the field behind their house after getting home from work.
He went outside to see why the dogs were barking and saw an ambulance pull into his driveway.
"Jamie, we've got a gunshot wound," an EMT who happened to be a friend of Billquist's said to him as he rushed into the field.
The victim was Rosemary. He rode with her in the ambulance to UPMC Hamot in Erie, Pa., where she was pronounced dead.
A neighbor, Thomas B. Jadlowski, 34, of Cornish Street, thought he saw a deer in the field and fired his pistol, according to the Chautauqua County Sheriff's Office. Then he heard a scream, sheriff's officials said.
Jadlowski told investigators he found Rosemary Billquist about 200 yards away. He called 911 and applied pressure to her wound.
Jamie Billquist said his 43-year-old wife had been shot in the hip roughly 100 yards from their house.
"They tried saving her," her husband said Friday morning. "It was just too bad. ... It's horrific. It will be with me the rest of my life."
Sheriff's officials said Jadlowski has been cooperating with investigators but so far no charges have been filed. The investigation showed that Jadlowski reported the shooting at 5:24 p.m., which was 40 minutes after sunset. It is a violation of state hunting laws to hunt deer after sunset, sheriff's officials said.
The pistol was a high-powered, single shot handgun often used for deer hunting, said Sheriff Joe Gerace.
Jamie Billquist said that his wife was on the property of their next-door neighbor when she was shot. He said that Jadlowski didn't have permission to be hunting on the neighbor's property.
The sheriff's office is working with state Department of Environmental Conservation investigators on the case and are conferring with the Chautauqua County District Attorney's Office which would decide whether charges will be filed. Jadlowski could not be reached for comment Friday.
"This is a horrific incident," Gerace said. "....This destroyed two lives."
He recalled a similar incident five years in the Town of Stockton when a 33-year-old man was killed while field-dressing a deer he had shot shortly after sunset on Dec. 3, 2012. The man's father fired the shot from about 100 yards away.
Jamie Billquist remembered his wife as a loving and selfless woman.
"She was always out to help somebody. She never wanted credit and was always quiet about it," Jamie Billquist said. "She's just an angel. An angel for sure."
"I think he needs to learn a lesson," he said of Thomas Jadlowski. "There's rules. You should abide by them.... It's disturbing. It's a two-second decision that he'll regret for the rest of his life."
And now his wife is gone.
"Her life was cut way too short," he said.
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