ROCKLAND — A trial has begun for a Maine lobsterman charged with shooting a fellow fisherman in the neck in a dispute over fishing territory in the lobster-rich waters off Matinicus Island.

Vance Bunker’s trial got under way today in Knox County Superior Court in Rockland. The 68-year-old fisherman has pleaded not guilty to two counts of elevated aggravated assault, criminal threatening and reckless conduct in last July’s shooting of Christopher Young.

Bunker’s daughter, Janan Miller, is being tried at the same time on a reckless conduct charge for her role in the incident.

The shooting took place on a wharf on Matinicus, which is 20 miles offshore and is the most remote of Maine’s 15 year-round island communities.
 


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