Little Egg Harbor, N.J. ? The night custodian was going about her rounds when she heard the patter of what sounded like footsteps on the roof of the Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School. She thought someone might be running atop the building, but police found nothing.

The next morning, authorities realized what had made the sound: 20 mm rounds fired by a National Guard F-16 fighter on a nighttime training flight over a target range four miles away.

The incident has divided residents of the fast-growing region around the Warren Grove Gunnery Range: Some fear for their safety, while others consider it profoundly unpatriotic to question the U.S. military during a time of war.

“Had it missed the school and hit one of our houses, we’d be talking about dead bodies now,” said Township Committeeman Arthur Midgley. “We can’t have this. This must never happen again.”

But Terry Hickman, a 10-year Army special forces veteran, defended the range and the pilots who train there.

“Let ’em alone; they’re over there putting their lives on the line for us,” Hickman said as he prepared to hunt deer in Bass River, near the edge of the range. “That guy (the pilot) probably feels so bad about this. He’s probably going to get sent overseas, and he might not even come back. As long as no one got hurt, this whole thing should just be forgotten.”

The National Guard is still investigating what it describes as an accidental release of gunfire. Results are expected in about two weeks.

The range is shut down until the investigation is completed.

The pilot’s commander, Maj. Gen. David F. Wherley Jr. Wherley, told reporters in Washington there were three possible explanations: plane malfunction, computer error or pilot error.

When the range was opened in 1942 during World War II, there were 2,000 people living nearby; now there are more than 50,000.

Lisamarie Saccomagno’s daughter attends the school.

“Because we’re at war now, I’m very sensitive to all the military’s burdens,” she said. “We all want to be safe and secure. But we’re also concerned about our children. I’m afraid something’s going to go wrong. We really need to know where those bullets are going.”