A 38-year-old Fort Plain woman is facing felony charges after Montgomery County Sheriff's deputies say she fired a handgun into the ground while trying to break up a fight between two men during a property dispute in the Town of Minden. Amanda Trumbull was taken into custody after the discharge, which deputies say happened last Tuesday, and no injuries were reported.
According to deputies, as reported by WRGB, deputies responded to an active property dispute in Minden and determined that an argument over the property had escalated into a physical altercation between two men. Trumbull reportedly came out of her home with a handgun during the confrontation and fired it into the ground, which deputies say she did to scare a neighbor and stop the fight.
Felony Charges Carry Years of Prison Exposure
Trumbull was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and first-degree reckless endangerment, both felonies under New York law. Under New York Penal Law § 120.25, first-degree reckless endangerment is a Class D felony punishable by up to seven years in state prison, requiring prosecutors to prove a defendant acted with “depraved indifference to human life” and created a grave risk of death, according to The Law Office of Benjamin Greenwald. The charge applies regardless of whether anyone was actually hurt.
Firearm possession charges in New York carry their own steep penalties. Criminal Possession of a Firearm under New York Penal Law § 265.01-b is a Class E felony carrying up to four years in prison, while possessing an unlicensed loaded handgun outside a residence or business can escalate to a Class C violent felony with a mandatory minimum 3.5-year sentence, per Tully Rinckey PLLC.
Arraigned in Palatine, Held Without Immediate Release
Because the Town of Minden's own court was not in session, Trumbull was arraigned in neighboring Palatine Town Court instead. Centralized Arraignment Part procedures allow off-hours or weekend arraignments to be routed to a designated municipal court like Palatine when the court of local territorial jurisdiction isn't available, according to the Center for Justice Innovation. She was remanded to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in lieu of bail, per the sheriff's office.
Revisions to New York's bail laws give local judges statutory discretion to set monetary bail or remand defendants outright on felony charges involving firearms or alleged threats of serious harm, amendments that followed the state's 2020 bail reform and expanded judicial authority in gun-related felony cases. That discretion appears consistent with regional patterns: criminal justice data compiled by the Data Collaborative for Justice shows that judges in Upstate New York counties set bail or order remand in felony weapon cases at higher rates than judges in New York City.
A Small Mohawk Valley Village in the Spotlight
The Town of Minden is a rural municipality in western Montgomery County spanning 51.4 square miles along the Mohawk River, home to 4,166 residents as of the 2020 U.S. Census, per Wikipedia. Fort Plain, the incorporated village within Minden where Trumbull lives, had an estimated population of 2,001 in 2026 and a median household income of $34,738, according to the World Population Review. The village sits along Otsquago Creek near the Mohawk River and takes its name from a Revolutionary War-era fort built in 1776.
Trumbull is not entirely unfamiliar to area media. In June 2025, WRGB's sister station CBS 6 featured her in a viewer photo segment on summer temperatures in the Mohawk Valley. She has also run a small local business, Home Interiors by Amanda, which she registered in Fort Plain in 2022 to offer home repair, light remodeling and interior work, according to a 2022 Facebook post.
