Pound man sentenced to prison for shooting friend

A Pound man was sentenced to 3½ years in prison Aug. 11 after he shot his friend in the leg in June 2025.

Cody Race, 37, pleaded no contest June 24 to aggravated battery-intending bodily harm with the use of a dangerous weapon, according to court records. That charge was reduced from attempted first-degree intentional homicide through a plea agreement.

A second-degree reckless injury charge and three counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, all with dangerous weapons modifiers, were dismissed through the plea agreement.

Race received 420 days of jail credit toward his prison sentence. After being released, he will be on extended supervision for another three years.

Race’s friends told authorities he had been smoking meth throughout the day on June 17, 2025, and acting crazy, according to a criminal complaint. Race became angry shortly after midnight June 18 when he couldn’t find his girlfriend, who had hidden upstairs, fearing for her life, the complaint said.

Race’s friends said he confronted them, demanding to know where his girlfriend was. He came out of his home with a semi-automatic assault rifle and asked, “Which one of you [expletives] wants to die?” according to the criminal complaint.

When one friend approached him with his arms up in an effort to deescalate the situation, Race fired a shot into the friend’s upper left leg, the complaint said. A witness said that after the shooting, Race said he wasn’t “going down for this” and wanted to come up with a story in which the shooting was an accident, threatening to kill the others if they didn’t cooperate.

Race faced up to seven years in prison.