Teen in Custody Grabs AR-15, Fires Shot at Buncombe Jail

Angel Blanding, 19, was already in handcuffs and headed for intake when, authorities say, she slipped her restraints, worked open a partition window inside an Asheville Police Department transport vehicle, and grabbed the AR-15 secured in a gun rack directly behind the driver's head.

The shot she fired just before 10:45 p.m. on March 7 rang out in the sally port of the Buncombe County Detention Center, the enclosed outdoor transfer zone where detainees move from transport vehicles to the jail's intake area. One round struck two APD cruisers. No one was injured. The weapon never crossed the threshold into the facility itself.

A sally port is engineered as a hard buffer: a controlled, contained space that isolates the transfer process from both the public street and the jail interior. That buffer held in one critical respect on March 7 — the gun stayed outside the building. But it could not account for the department's own firearm already inside the perimeter, mounted in a rack with a round in the chamber.

Detectives reconstructed the sequence at a probable-cause hearing on March 30. According to testimony, Blanding had slipped her handcuffs during transport, and the partition separating the front and back seats of the APD vehicle was left unlocked. Det. William Small of the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office told the court: "In the process of transporting her to the jail and getting parked in the jail, the slide had become open, and it was Ms. Blanding who opened the slide."

The Buncombe County Detention Center went on lockdown immediately after the shot, consistent with standard procedure, and was cleared without further incident. The one fired round damaged both APD vehicles; neither agency has publicly released a repair cost estimate, and neither the Sheriff's Office nor APD has addressed whether the incident will trigger changes to transport protocols, partition-lock procedures, or firearms-storage policies for detainee transfers — or whether any such changes would require county appropriations.

The Buncombe County Sheriff's Office charged Blanding with discharge of a firearm in an enclosure, damage to property, assault on a law enforcement officer or public official with a firearm, assault on a detention employee with a firearm, and resisting a public officer. The Asheville Police Department filed additional charges; the specific APD counts have not been publicly enumerated by either agency.

At the March 30 hearing, a Buncombe County judge found probable cause to continue holding Blanding on all allegations. Both the Sheriff's Office and APD investigations remain open.