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Marine Accused of Firing on Crowd in Mass.

LAWRENCE, Mass. (AP) -- A veteran recently named "Marine of the Year" for his service in Iraq was charged with attempted murder after firing a shotgun from his apartment window as a group of noisy revelers stood outside a nightclub, police said.

Two people were hit by bullet fragments and suffered minor injuries.

Daniel Cotnoir, 33, had called police minutes earlier to complain about the noise coming from the street shortly before 3 a.m. Saturday, The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune reported.

He later told authorities someone had thrown an empty bottle through his bedroom window and he feared for the safety of his wife and two daughters, who were home, the newspaper reported.

Cotnoir was being held on $100,000 bail and scheduled to be arraigned Monday.

"It was the craziest night of my life," said Kelvin Castro, 20, one of the two people injured. "I don't know what that guy's intentions were."

Cotnoir has frequently called police to complain about noise and fights outside the Punto Finale nightclub. Last year, police said, he claimed someone leaving the club had fired a gunshot at his apartment.

During his tour in Iraq last year, Cotnoir had been a military mortician responsible for preparing soldiers for open-casket funerals.

The job took a heavy psychological toll, he told the Eagle-Tribune in an interview last month after the Marine Corps Times named Cotnoir its "Marine of the Year," an award presented to him at a ceremony in Washington. At the time, he was getting counseling at a veterans hospital.

"It's a lot harder to talk about the job now than it was at the time to actually do it," Cotnoir told the newspaper then. "The stories I've gained from my deployment aren't the kind of stories you share."

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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