Five people were wounded in accidents at gun shows in North Carolina, Ohio and Indiana on Saturday, according to authorities.

In Raleigh, N.C., authorities said three people were wounded when a loaded shotgun accidentally discharged at the Dixie Gun and Knife Show at the N.C. State Fairgrounds.

Officials say Gary Lynn Wilson, 36, was having his shotgun checked before entering the show when the incident happened. He was unzipping his 12-gauge shotgun's case when it accidentally fired birdshot pellets, hitting three people, The News & Observer in Raleigh reported. Wilson was planning on privately selling the gun at the show, according to NBC affiliate WNCN.

The three victims, Janet Hoover, Linwood Hester and Jake Alderman, were hit, respectively, in the right torso, left hand and right hand, WNCN reported. They were taken to the hospital for non-life threatening injuries.

Witness Daniel Peadan told WNCN he was about to enter the building, when he heard a loud pop: "The people right there at the door, a lot of them ran ... They scattered because it was chaotic."

"This was an accidental discharge," said Brian Long, a spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, in a statement.

The show closed early Saturday because of the shooting, according to The News & Observer. When the show reopens Sunday private gun sales will not be permitted, but only sales by licensed dealers at the show are allowed, Long said. By Saturday evening, the event's website clearly stipulated: "No personal firearms are to be brought into the show."

The Wake County Sheriff's Department is investigating Saturday's incident, and it's not clear yet whether there are pending charges, according to Long.

In Medina, Ohio, an exhibitor at a local gun show was opening a box containing a gun when the weapon went off, striking his partner, who was sitting next to him, NBC station WKYC of Cleveland reported.

The victim suffered non-life threatening injuries in the arm and thigh and was taken to a hospital.

Police told WKYC the shooting was accidental, and a man who attended the show had sold that gun to the exhibitor.

In Indianapolis, state police said a 54-year-old man was loading his .45 caliber semi-automatic gun when he shot himself in the hand, The Associated Press reported. The victim, Emory L. Cozee, had been leaving the Indy 1500 Gun and Knife show at the state fairgrounds, officials told the AP. Loaded personal weapons are not permitted inside this show, according to the AP.

Cozee was hospitalized. Police told the AP no charges will be filed and the shooting was accidental.

These incidents all happened on the first "National Gun Appreciation Day," which was organized by Political Media, a Republican consulting firm.

In Raleigh, police say around 200 gun-rights supporters marched around the legislative building in downtown Raleigh on Saturday, The News & Observer reported.

Across the country Saturday, there were similar rallies by gun-rights advocates. In Brooksville, Fla., about 1,000 people gathered holding signs like "Stop the Gun Grabbers," Reuters reported. In Denver, just miles away from the scene of the July 2012 movie theater massacre, about 500 people were outside the state capitol rallying, according to Reuters.

The attack on an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 first-graders and six staffers dead in December has sparked a new debate over gun control. Last week, President Barack Obama proposed new gun controls to reduce violence.

Firearms expert Greg A. Danas told NBC News while it's up to a gun show owner to determine safety rules, he recommends measures like inspecting guns and ensuring firing pins are disabled.

"Even people with the best intentions, screw up, occasionally make mistakes," Danas said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Thousands of dead fish washed up on a mile and a half stretch of beach in South Carolina Tuesday, officials said, at least the second such occurrence in the region in a week.

Roughly 30,000 to 40,000 menhaden fish, 6 to 8 inches long, were spread along the shore from DeBordieu Beach in Georgetown County, S.C., to Pawleys Island, a town on the state's Atlantic Coast, and thousands more were expected, Pawleys Island Police Chief Michael Fanning said.

Similar incidents have happened in the area before, including late last week when hundreds of thousands of the small, oily fish were washed ashore near Masonboro Island, N.C., and last year when an influx of dead starfish were found on the same beaches.

The fish were first spotted by beachgoers taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather.

"We came down to the beach for the day just to have, you know, a nice day on the beach, smell the fish smell, came down to look for shells and all these fish -- dead," Pawleys Island resident Pat Hawkins told NBC station WMBF in Myrtle Beach, S.C. "It's a shame. I don't know what's causing it."

Officials from the Department of Health and Environmental Control and the Department of Natural Resources visited the area Tuesday and took water samples in an effort to determine what killed the fish.

Marine experts determined the fish died from hypoxia, which occurs when the amount of oxygen in the water drops.

Pawleys Island Police

Thousands of dead fish washed up on a Pawleys Island, S.C., beach Tuesday afternoon.

Mel Bell, director of the Office of Fisheries Management for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, said the occurrence was an entirely natural event.

“On Friday we had a new moon (which caused) real high high tides and real low low tides,” Bell told The Sun News. “Probably what happened was a school (of menhaden) got in an area of water on a high tide, in a hole or depression, and at low tide they were trapped and depleted the oxygen in the water. Then, all the fish would suffocate. Then, when the tide came back in, it washed the dead fish out and they washed up on the beach.”

"When it's one species like that, that's usually indicative of a low dissolved oxygen situation because they tend to be more fragile," added Dan Hitchcock, an assistant professor at the Baruch Institute of Coastal Ecology and Forest Science at Clemson University in Georgetown, S.C.

Fanning said the city has no plans to clean up the fish and will let the seagulls and the tide clear the sand. 

“We’re just dealing with it as a force of nature," Fanning said. "There are some residual fish, most of it has gotten washed away, there were a ton of birds down there. If you went down there (Thursday), you’d get more birds than fish.”  

Menhaden fish, typically used by fishermen as bait, are a small, silver fish, whose oil is used in vitamin supplements, lipstick and livestock feed. 

U.S. Army via Reuters

Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair, a U.S. Army general facing charges of forcible sodomy and engaging in inappropriate relationships stemming from allegations that got him sent home from Afghanistan this year, is seen in this handout photo received September 26, 2012.

Updated at 12:39 p.m. ET: FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- A former subordinate to an Army general facing sex crimes charges testified Tuesday that the general started an affair with her in Iraq and later threatened to kill her and her family if she told anyone.

The woman said she was honored at first by the attention from Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, who she said was highly regarded. They first had sex in 2008 at a forward operating base in Iraq, she said.

"I was extremely intimidated by him. Everybody in the brigade spoke about him like he was a god," she said. NBC News and The Associated Press do not identify victims of alleged sexual assaults.

Now a captain, she testified on the second day of a military hearing at Fort Bragg on whether there was enough evidence to court-martial Sinclair on charges including forcible sodomy, wrongful sexual conduct and engaging in inappropriate relationships.

It is a rare criminal case against a general and the details from the hearing are the first public narrative of the alleged offenses that prosecutors say involved a total of five women: four of them military subordinates and one a civilian.

The Fort Bragg-based general is accused of 26 violations of military law including forcible sodomy, wrongful sexual conduct, possessing pornography while deployed and conduct unbecoming of an officer.

Prosecutors seek death for soldier accused of Afghan massacre

Prosecutors said the alleged sexual contacts took place in Afghanistan, Iraq and Germany, as well as at military bases in the United States. Sinclair was sent home in May from Afghanistan, where he had served as a deputy commander for support, officials said. 

During testimony on Tuesday, Sinclair repeatedly rolled his eyes, sighed audibly and stared at his former aide from the defense table. She did not look at him.

The captain testified that she believed Sinclair's threats because he had gone through special forces training, knew how to kill with his hands and had a reputation as a killer in battle.

Sinclair was deputy commander in charge of logistics and support for the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan before being abruptly relieved in May amid a criminal probe. He has been on special assignment since then at Fort Bragg, the sprawling post that is home to the 82nd Airborne.

Sinclair's former commanding officer, Maj. Gen. James Huggins, testified Monday that he launched the criminal investigation that led to the charges after the female captain told him Sinclair forced her to have sex.

Nearly 30 Air Force Academy cadets injured as ritual turns into 'brawl'

Huggins said that on March 19, the captain came to his office late at night in tears. She reported that she had been involved in a three-year sexual affair with Sinclair, then her direct commander and a married man. Adultery is a crime under the military code of justice.

According to Huggins, the captain said Sinclair had once forced her to perform oral sex on him, but that she also had sex willingly with her boss at Army bases in the United States and on deployments to Germany, Iraq and at the airborne division's headquarters in Afghanistan.

When she had tried to end the affair, Sinclair had threatened her and persisted in pushing for sex, according to Huggins' testimony. But she also told Huggins she finally decided to report Sinclair after finding emails exchanged with other women in his account.

The captain testified that Sinclair could be cold and demeaning to her and other women in the brigade, calling some of the other women degrading names.

She testified she told him he shouldn't talk about female officers that way.

"He said, 'He was a general and he could say whatever the (expletive) he wanted," she testified.

She said Sinclair was extremely controlling, even telling her when and where she could use the bathroom.

She described two instances where he forced her to perform oral sex. Prosecutors asked if he would have been able to determine that she did not want to participate and she responded: "Yes, I was crying."

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Two bodies found in a submerged car in a South Carolina river are those of two North Carolina teenagers who went missing two weeks ago after telling friends they were driving to the beach, authorities said.

Kershaw County, S.C., authorities on Monday confirmed the bodies found Sunday afternoon in a car in the Wateree River off Interstate 20 were those of Jake Zigler, 18 and Ray Pierce, 17, the Charlotte Observer reported. 

Authorities said it appeared that the car, a Pontiac G-6, veered across the median and went down an embankment into the dark water of the river.

“They ran off the bridge or just in front of the bridge,” said Catawba, N.C., Sheriff Coy Reid told the newspaper.

An autopsy was scheduled Monday to determine the cause of death.

Zigler and Pierce, seniors at Bandys High School in Catawba County, were last seen alive in the early morning of Oct. 13, when they left a party near Sherrills Ford, N.C., and told friends they were driving to Myrtle Beach to see the sunrise, according to the Observer.

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The last known contact the teens had with anyone was through a text message to a friend at 2:44 a.m. on Oct. 13.

A  search team from the CUE Center for Missing Persons spotted the bumper of the missing teen’s car on Sunday afternoon on an embankment leading down to the Wateree River, according to WCNC-TV.

Crews then fund the car submerged in the water between two bridges, WCNC reported.

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WAKE FOREST, N.C. -- A Wake Forest community is in an uproar after learning the state of North Carolina knew a resident’s water had been contaminated with toxic chemicals and failed to alert other residents for more than six years.

“It makes me feel horrible,” homeowner Michele Hamilton said of unknowingly giving the toxic water to her kids. “They’re the most important things to me.”

The EPA called families in the community this past summer, saying their water is contaminated with a cancer-causing chemical called trichloroethylene, or TCE, and to not drink, bathe or cook with the water.

“I remember where we were when we got the phone call - we were on vacation this summer with our family,” Hamilton said.

Neighbors Monica Stonefield and Frances Cuda got the same call.

“Of course we were frightened and scared,” Stonefield said.

“I was very nervous,” Cuda said. “I think anybody would be.”

Within days of the calls to homeowners, the EPA set up an emergency command post and placed safe water on their doorsteps regularly. The EPA installed water filters in the homes with contamination levels above the EPA’s safety standard. And the EPA called a community meeting to explain what neighbors had been drinking.

Gerald LeBlanc, the head of N.C. State University’s Department of Environmental and molecular toxicology, said TCE is a chemical that cleaning industries have used for years to remove grease. It is cheap, highly effective – and very toxic.

“Based upon animal studies, we know that it has the ability to do harm,” LeBlanc said.

LeBlanc said TCE “has been known to cause cancer” specifically leukemia, breast cancer, lung cancer, and there are symptoms associated with TCE exposure that are like Parkinson’s disease.

Cuda said she has Parkinson’s disease. She also said she has gotten cysts, including “a lot of them in this left breast.”

Doctors have not confirmed it, but Cuda believes the development of many large cysts in her left breast and having Parkinson’s disease is due to TCE.

Cuda said a neighbor died from breast cancer. “And you know, she was a lovely person,” Cuda said. “She was in her 50s.”

The problem dates back to 10 years ago, where circuit boards were cleaned with the toxin inside a shed on Stony Hill Road in Wake Forest. The TCE exited the building through a pipe and poured straight onto the ground. About three years later, the chemical showed up in a well at the house next door.

At the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Charlotte Jesneck’s division took the case.

“It looked to be that the contamination was confined to that well,” Jesneck said.

So in 2005, DENR moved on.

Through a Freedom of Information Act, NBC-17 obtained 800 pages from DENR’s files. Inside those pages, NBC-17 found dozens of red flags, including a two-page summary sent from DENR staff to senior managers in 2008 saying, “There are other wells along Stony Hill Road that should be sampled to check their status.”

Also in 2008 was a DENR letter, where the department admitted “the extent of the contamination has not been defined.”

Larry Kusan is an engineer and resident living near the contamination. In 2008, he learned about the contamination that happened in 2005 and was concerned about the potential for the contamination to spread.

“I wanted to make sure that my family wasn’t in trouble,” Kusan said in an interview. “Our home is about a mile away from that location.”

Kusan said he was “shocked” by what he found.

He wrote DENR and the governor’s office, saying, “The area is slated for significant expansion.”

He noted, “It is the cost to human health that is of greatest concern.”

He then demanded the situation be addressed, or said, “It will result in harm to some residents, current and future.”

DENR admits those warning sat in their files for years because they were focused on “bigger issues.”

Kusan called that a “missed opportunity.”

While the contamination problem brewed underground the area became a popular residential community with several new housing developments.

One resident, Stonefield, said, “We moved here to make a better life for our family.”

Asked if DENR ever notified them of concerns, Stonefield said, “Never.”

Cuda, too, couldn’t remember any official notices about the problem.

Environmental engineer Jim Halley said it is reasonable to assume TCE will spread. TCE sinks because it is heavier than water and when it sinks into the groundwater it spreads through the water table and into nearby wells.

“And that’s when we really start seeing problems with groundwater and drinking water contamination,” Halley said.

DENR’s Jesneck, asked about TCE sinking and spreading, said, “There were higher risk sites on the radar at that time,” and they hoped it wouldn’t spread.

The first time many neighbors learned of the contamination was this past June when DENR sent some neighbors a letter asking if they would like to have their wells sampled.

“That’s not good enough,” Frank Cuda said. “You bring someone up in uniform, in a vehicle that you know represents them who says, ‘Excuse me. There is an emergency. I need to test your water.’”

DENR called in the EPA for help.

More from News-17: Cleaning up toxic mess will cost taxpayers

By late August, the EPA had sampled about 100 wells. They found the TCE contamination had spread from the source nearly 500 acres and contaminated the wells of 21 families in the area.

Mark Stonefield’s well tested positive for dangerous levels of TCE contamination.

“I’m furious,” homeowner Stonefield said. “I’m very upset about it.  That’s the biggest problem I’ve had with this whole situation is the state knew about it in 2005. We bought this land in 2007 and built a house on it in 2008 and our kids have been drinking the water for over 4 years now and no one notified us there was even the possibility that the water could be contaminated.”

Jesneck said, “We have a finite number of resources.”

NBC-17 pointed out that it does not require any money to call residents and alert them about potential contamination in the area.

“If we had all the resources in the world, it would be a fantastic thing to do,” Jesneck said. “But given the resources we are given, we have to work on the highest risk known problems first.”

Jesneck added, “We had sites where people actually had detections in their water supply wells or living on contaminated soils. Those are higher priorities than people living near a contaminated site.”

But in the Wake Forest community, that answer is not good enough.

“I don’t care about funding,” said Cuda. “All I care about is that someone starts doing their job in the world!”

Cuda pointed out that he drank the water daily for years.

“That’s a lot of poison to put in your body for all those years,” he said.

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Pamlico County Sheriff handout

Odessa Clay is accused of tattooing her 11-year-old daughter.

A North Carolina woman is in trouble with the law for tattooing her 11-year-old daughter, according to a published report.

Odessa Clay, 30, of Grantsboro in Pamlico County has been charged with one count of tattooing a person under age 18, WCTI-TV reported. 

In North Carolina, it’s illegal to tattoo a minor.

Clay was arrested and charged in late September after police in Havelock, where she used to live, found out she gave her daughter a small, heart-shaped tattoo near her right shoulder, according to WCTI. Clay, who herself is heavily tattooed, said she used her own tools.

"She asked me to do it," Clay told WCTI.

Related video: Tattooed 10-year-old removed from grandfather’s care

Clay said she numbed her daughter's arm for the procedure and her daughter was never in pain.

Clay said she did not know that tattooing a minor is illegal. She told WCRI that she believes a former in-law reported the tattoo.

She is due in court next month.

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Updated at 4:17 p.m. ET: Evangelist Billy Graham is being treated at a North Carolina hospital for bronchitis, officials said Sunday.

Graham, 93, was admitted overnight to Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C., near his home in Montreat, for evaluation and treatment of a pulmonary infection. He was resting comfortably Sunday and his condition was stable, the hospital said in a statement.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images file

Billy Graham, seen here in 2005, has been admitted to a hospital in North Carolina for treatment of a pulmonary infection.

David Pucci, the pulmonologist treating Graham, said earlier that Graham was being given antibiotics.

"This morning, Mr. Graham watched his grandson, Will Graham, on television preaching at First Baptist Church of Spartanburg, S.C. Later, he enjoyed a visit from his daughter, Gigi, and one of his grandchildren. They ate lunch together and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon," Graham's spokesman, A. Larry Ross, said in a statement.

Graham was previously hospitalized for successful treatment of pneumonia in November. He resumed his ongoing program of physical therapy and normal activity shortly after his release, according to his staff.

Graham was expected to remain in the hospital for several days, Ross said. No date has been set for discharge.

Slideshow: The life and times of Billy Graham

Ed Betz / AP

The most well-known and influential American preacher of the 20th century, Graham traveled the world and was the confidant of a dozen presidents. Take a look back at his life and career.

Launch slideshow

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Police say Dickson and Skipper kept their son locked in a room for days without anything to eat or drink

A North Carolina couple has been arrested for allegedly locking their 14-year-old son in a bedroom without food or water for days, NBC station WCNC in Charlotte reported. 

The station reported that Joy Evonne Skipper, 45, and Johnny Rufus Dickson, 41, have been charged with child abuse, inflicting serious bodily injury and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile. 

The couple boarded up the windows to the bedroom the boy was staying in, WCNC reported. 

The Associated Press reported that the boy tried to escape to beg for food from neighbors. 

When police found him he was dehydrated, but is expected to recover. 

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Skipper and Dickson were released Saturday on $15,000 and $25,000 bonds, WCNC reported. 

A mother in Kansas City, Mo., was also arrested and charged over the weekend after her 10-year-old daughter was found locked inside a closet. The girl weighed only 32 pounds.

She was charged with child abuse and assault. 

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