A New York man whose family is in the fireworks business was charged with assault for firing on his grandson during an argument about noise, police said.
Police said Christopher Giresi was hospitalized Thursday after being struck by shotgun pellets that "cut him up," the New York Daily News reported Friday.
He was shot by his grandfather, 70-year-old Joseph Grucci, after Grucci asked his grandson and friends to keep the noise down, police said.
Grucci said Giresi started threatening him in the driveway, causing him to go back into his house and get a loaded shotgun, police said. Grucci fired at his grandson then called emergency personnel.
"He was roughing up the grandfather, beating him up," Grucci's lawyer, Stephen McGiff, said, calling the incident a case of self-defense. "Both my client and his wife were fearful for their lives."
Prosecutors said Grucci was the aggressor. The grandfather, a cousin of former Republican New York congressman Felix Grucci and a member of the Grucci fireworks family, was arraigned Thursday on first-degree assault, a felony, for which a cash bail was set at $500,000, the Daily News said.