VIDEO Man fires a gun at Todd Hoffman crew in tense Gold Rush preview clip

We reported over the summer that Gold Rush miner Todd Hoffman’s crew members were the targets of gunfire by a local resident upset over mining operations in the area, but at the time it was unclear if cameras were rolling or if the incident would be featured this season. Although it doesn’t appear as though the cameras were rolling when the shots were fired, they captured the moments shortly afterward — all of which will be included in tonight’s episode!

Here is the preview clip:

In the clip we see a very flustered Logan Pierce getting out of his snow-covered truck. “Dude! Somebody just shot at us out on the road!” he exclaims.

“You’re kidding?” Todd exclaims, before instructing everyone to pack up and leave.

We are then shown footage from inside Logan’s truck as the entire crew leaves the mining site, and he explains what happened to a producer. “Basically, one of the guys on our crew got his Subaru stuck, so a bunch of us went up there to kind of go pull him out and help.” Logan says that as they were driving back he saw a man run out into the road behind him waving his arms. He stopped his truck and backed up as the man came up to the window. The second Logan rolled the window down, the man ran up to the door and starts yelling at Logan, telling him that the Hoffman mining operations are not welcome and that if the crew members keep coming up that road, they are going to get shot.

“It turned really ugly really fast,” Logan says. The man was instructed (in perhaps not-so-polite terms) to step away from the truck. “As I put it in drive, we’re creeping forward,” Logan continues, “homeboy puts his hand on a gun! The second I saw him getting a gun out, I hammered it and we got out of there!” But, as they were pulling away, the man “draws up, he pulls down on us, and starts shooting.”

Logan rubs his face in disbelief. “Never in a million years would I imagine that that wold happen.”

As we previously reported, the man who shot at Logan and the other members of mining and TV crews was a man named Aaron Borth:

Members of the Gold Rush crew told the Park County Sheriff’s Office Borth flagged down their truck on County Road 14. They said Borth shouted obscenities and threats before pulling a handgun and firing four shots in the direction of their vehicles. Borth was arrested after a traffic stop, and “expressed his frustration with the mining that is going on around Fairplay,” court documents said. Borth faces three counts of Felony Menacing and three counts of Reckless Endangerment.

As we have also previously reported, Todd Hoffman and his mining crew have faced a lot of opposition by locals, including an issue over how the land for one of their mining sites was zoned — which resulted in a cease and desist order and a halt in mining operations. Doing a little research, I found Aaron Borth’s name listed as someone who made “public comments” during two different Board of County Commissioners meetings not long before the shooting incident. Aaron was arrested for firing his gun at the Hoffman crew on May 18. He spoke on the record at Park County BOCC meetings on April 13 and May 11. The records do not indicate what he said at those meetings, but I assume it was to protest the Gold Rush mining operations.

Regardless of your opinion on Todd Hoffman and his crew, CLEARLY taking shots at him is not the answer. Be sure to tune in to the new episode of Gold Rush tonight at 9/8c on Discovery to find out how the rest of the incident plays out on screen!

I’m assuming it won’t look like this: