HANSVILLE — It was about 8 p.m. Jan. 26 when Mark John Nielsen and a neighbor saw what they believed to be suspicious behavior going on down near the Driftwood Key boat ramp, so they drove down together to check it out.

Nielsen got out of the truck and three teens, he told a sheriff’s investigator, “popped out” of the brush where they had been hiding. When he asked them what they had been doing, they said they had been “playing basketball.” He got nervous when the three began to walk around each side of him — one of the boys seemed to be carrying something, he said — so he pulled his coat back to reveal a Bersa .380 semiautomatic handgun.

“I’m not playing around,” he said he told them, then ordered the boys to their knees. He let them go after he and the neighbor determined they had done nothing wrong.

The boys have a different story, according to the investigator’s reports. They say they were walking home from the neighborhood basketball court when a truck approached, a man walked up shining a flashlight on them, and asked them what they were doing. They said he pointed his handgun at them with a “shaky hand” and told them to turn around and lay on the ground.

The parents of one of the boys — all three are 13 — told the court in a written statement that he “described this memory as being scared for his life,” and that he feared he would be “murdered, mugged or kidnapped.” Since the incident, “He has had difficulty sleeping and is fearful of going away from home when it is dark outside.”

They added, “We are thankful every day that the firearm did not discharge and our son is safe with us.”

Nielsen, 71, is scheduled to appear in Superior Court at 10:30 a.m. March 24 to answer to a charge of second-degree assault, which was filed by the Kitsap County Prosecuting Attorney’s office.

Nielsen’s attorney is John E. Turner of Olympia. The prosecutor is Kelly M. Montgomery.

The investigator wrote that the boys said Nielsen told them their behavior had been suspicious, that there had been a lot of crime in the area, and that “A lot of people have guns around here.”

In a separate interview, Nielsen’s friend told the investigator he had checked the area and advised Nielsen that there was no sign of criminal activity or damage. The friend said it was he who told the boys their behavior had been suspicious, that “there has been a lot of crime in the area, that neighbors are armed and that the incident could have ended up differently.”

The friend said Nielsen “never mentioned” that he had pointed a gun at the boys. Nielsen told the investigator he never removed his gun from its holster.