Man Shoots Friend In Back 'On Bigfoot Hunt'

Three people have been arrested after an apparent hunt for Bigfoot went wrong when a man accidentally shot his friend in the back.

Police say Omar Pineda claimed he fired his gun by mistake when he was startled by a "barking noise" during the expedition in Rogers County, Oklahoma.

His friend was wounded in the incident but is expected to survive.

Rogers County Sheriff Scott Walton told Oklahoma's News On 6 that police had initially been given a dishonest account of the shooting.

"If (they) had just been factual, upfront and truthful with us and explained that this was truly an accident, as strange as it might sound, we would have went ahead and investigated and probably nobody would have (gone) to jail,"

Pineda, 21, was arrested on suspicion of reckless conduct with a firearm and obstruction.

His father-in-law, Perry Don James, allegedly threw his son-in-law's gun in a pond because he is a convicted felon and was afraid to have the weapon on his property,

The 53-year-old was arrested over the alleged offences of being a felon in possession of a firearm and destruction of evidence.

And deputies also arrested Omar's wife, 22-year-old Lacey Jane Pineda, on charges of obstruction.

Police say she initially claimed someone else had shot at her husband and his friend.

Sheriff Walton said: "To our knowledge, (there have been) no Bigfoot sightings in Rogers County.

"I think our focus is career criminals and thugs, and we're going to stay focused on that and let somebody else go after Bigfoot.

"When you start off with an explanation like that, do you believe anything after that?

"The aggravating part of this whole deal is that their dishonesty wasted several man hours of not only the Rogers County Sheriff's Office, but our partners at the Tulsa County Sheriff's."