Hilltown Township Police. Photo by James Short.
A Hilltown Township man has been charged with felony weapons and endangerment offenses after investigators said he fired a 9mm handgun behind his home and sent a bullet through the wall of a nearby business building, the second such incident allegedly linked to him in recent years.
Michael Gresko, 55, of the 4300 block of Bethlehem Pike, is accused of felony discharging a firearm into an occupied structure and misdemeanor recklessly endangering another person in connection with a bullet hole discovered in November in the metal wall of the Vulcan Springs building on Schoolhouse Road in Hilltown, according to a criminal complaint filed by Hilltown Township Police.
Police said an employee and the property owner discovered a small hole on the inside of the building’s west wall on Nov. 11, 2025, and later found a matching hole on the outside. Police responded on Nov. 13 and determined the damage appeared consistent with a projectile passing through the metal from outside the structure.
Using a metal rod to align the interior and exterior openings, an investigator reported that the trajectory pointed directly to the rear porch of Gresko’s residence, which sits north of the business and overlooks a line of chicken coops.
According to the affidavit of probable cause, investigators recognized the pattern from a prior case. In 2018, police investigated a nearly identical incident in which a round believed to have been fired behind the same residence entered the same Vulcan Springs building.
At that time, Gresko was suspected of shooting at a fox near his chickens. In a later conversation documented by police, Gresko acknowledged that a round struck the building when he “jerked the gun” while firing his 9mm handgun, per the affidavit.
Police interviewed Gresko again in November 2025. The affidavit stated that Gresko initially told officers he only used a shotgun when he shot at foxes that threatened his chickens. The following day, police spoke with Gresko at his home.
Gresko allegeldy admitted using his 9mm handgun in the 2018 incident and produced the weapon, identified in court papers as a Kel-Tec P-11 pistol loaded with one round in the chamber and nine rounds in a magazine designed to hold 10 rounds.
Investigators reported that the barrel and chamber showed evidence consistent with recent use, and that the Federal brand 9mm full metal jacket ammunition in the gun matched the type of round believed to have pierced the wall, according to the affidavit.
When asked about the missing 10th round from the magazine, Gresko could not explain where it went, detectives said. He first told police he had not fired the pistol since the 2018 shot that struck the building, but later admitted that he had again fired at a fox behind his house with the Kel-Tec sometime within the past year, according to the complaint.
According to the affidavit, Gresko said, “Yeah, just like the last time, or the last time I shot the building, I did not do it intentionally. I was trying to shoot the fox.”
Detectives used mapping software to plot a straight line from the bullet hole in the Vulcan Springs wall to the back porch of Gresko’s property and measured a distance of about 220 yards. Drawing on ballistics data from Federal Ammunition, Bell noted in the affidavit that a 115–grain 9mm full metal jacket round has a listed muzzle velocity of 1,180 feet per second and remains capable of traveling more than 200 yards with sufficient energy to penetrate metal siding at that range.
Gresko is free on $100,000 unsecured bail ahead of a Dec. 23 preliminary hearing before Magisterial District Judge Regina Armitage.
All suspects and defendants are innocent until proven guilty. This story was compiled using public court records.
