PITTSFIELD – Defense attorney Walter McKee of Augusta confirmed Thursday that negotiations between the Maine Attorney General’s Office and a Norridgewock teenager are moving towards a plea agreement in the March shooting death of Joshua Sawyer, 15, of Pittsfield.

“We do not have any agreement at this time,” McKee said. “We may have something worked out by next month.”

Although Cody Rioux, 14, is scheduled to stand trial in late October for the manslaughter shooting of Sawyer, no trial will be held if an agreement is reached.

Rioux fired a bizarre, one-in-a-million shot that killed his friend and soon-to-be stepbrother in March, McKee maintained at Rioux’s court appearance in June in Skowhegan’s 13th District Court.

“This was an unfathomable accident,” he said.

At that hearing, held before Judge Charles LaVerdiere, Rioux denied the charges of manslaughter and reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon. Rioux has been in his parents’ custody pending a trial. If convicted on the original charges, Rioux could be committed to a juvenile facility for the next seven years.

According to the defense attorney, Rioux, Sawyer and Sawyer’s 14-year-old brother, Nathan Sawyer, were in a cornfield in Norridgewock on Sunday, March 19, hunting and target shooting.

Rioux was using a .22-caliber rifle, Joshua Sawyer had a shotgun and Nathan Sawyer also had a rifle.

McKee said Rioux shot in the direction of Joshua, but that he had no idea Sawyer was there because he was obscured by bushes and trees. McKee said that state police testing of the rifle indicated that the sighting was highly inaccurate. The fatal shot was fired from a distance of several hundred feet, McKee said.

Sawyer, a standout athlete and well-liked student at Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield, died at the scene from a gunshot to the neck.

The father of the accused, Scott Rioux, 34, of Martin Stream Road, Norridgewock, who was engaged to the Sawyer boys’ mother, has been charged with providing the guns the boys were using.

He has entered a plea of not guilty to three counts of endangering the welfare of a child and one count of hunting on Sunday. No trial date has been set.