While we're all doing mental gymnastics, anyone ever heard of this case?

J

Jack 99

New member
I heard about this years ago.

A woman sitting in traffic in NY City was struck by a bullet in the temple. Her windsheild was rolled down about an inch and the bullet came in through the open crack and killed her. The bullet was determined to be a rare caliber fired from an obscure rifle. It was also determined from the lack of penetration that the bullet had most likely travelled a great distance.

Investigators were mystified. They couldn't find any evidence that anyone had reason to kill her. The estimated range the bullet would have had to travel and the precision involved in shooting her through the crack in the window was unfathomable. They felt that if the bullet had hit the window, it probably would have saved her life.

Only by painstakingly searching for all owners of rifles in that particular rare caliber were they able to track down the person who fired the bullet. It was someone out in NY Harbor, showing the gun to a friend. It accidently went off and the owner thought the bullet had fired harmlessly into the ocean. Instead, it skipped off the water and headed for Manhattan. They recreated the path of the bullet and it missed skyscrapers by inches, finding its way through the maze of buildings and eventually coming in a downward trajectory through the woman's cracked window and striking her in the temple.

Bullets will do some weird stuff sometimes.
 
Was the owner of the rifle charged with any kind of crime?

[This message has been edited by jcoyoung (edited February 18, 2000).]
 
I recall this case. The window rolled down was a rear window not the windshield. The car was being followed by a off duty "or plain cloths" police officer. I don't recall if the "shooter" was charged. I think he claimed the rifle was to shoot sharks that attacked the catch of the day.
If I remember it correctly it was presented as a true story.
 
As I recall it is a REAL case and the gun was a .303 British Enfield and the slug even hit the water as it traveled just over a mile.
One of those one in a zillion things. I have a similar case on my web page under "Thingees" where a kid was hit in the leg by a 9mm fired from 1836 yards away at a gun range. Picture shows wound and airial view of the area. Odds of the slug hitting the kid were astronomical. Lab tests conected the gun and slug.
 
Thanks, pluspinc. I heard this from a cop friend who was also a criminal justice major. The facts may be a little jumbled (first thing to go is the memory) but it did happen.

Window, not windsheild.

Didn't know it was .303. That should have been nearly impossible to trace.
 
Some time ago on one of the investigative, educational networks (Discovery, TLC, etc..do not remember which) there was a show on with a case similar to this, can't remember the name of the show either. Anyway, there was a child that was killed by a stray .45 round that struck him in the head. There was a fairly intensive investigation, including a large forensic, accident reconstruction type organization (they were actually the one's that solved the mystery and I believe the show was profiling company's like this one). It was found that a shooter on the outside range was practicing with a somewhat modified 1911 model. The fellow had fired and during the recoil, with the pistol still being directed upward, another round was discharged (I think the firing pin stuck or something like that). Now to fully understand what happened, you must know a little about the layout of this place. The range building and the firing range were adjacent to each other, but the building was down range from the firing lines'. That is to say if you fired down range at this place, you would be shooting at the range building. The actual range had several overhead baffles and some rather high berms surrounding it. To look at it, it seemed fairly safe; still I wouldn't be comfortable shooting down range in the direction of a building even with the baffles and barriers. It seems this guy had ignored one of the range rules that stated no one was to shoot forward of a certain line. Well, he was forward of this line and when his pistol malfunctioned, the misfired slug went between the protective baffles, missed one by inches. The round continued on and just barely topped the berm at the end of the range; inches again. As misfortune would be, about a foot or two of the range building was higher than this soil barrier and the .45 round penetrated the metal siding and traveled inside. Once inside the projectile struck the ceiling tiles and ricocheted back down toward the floor. It passed through another interior wall just missing a wall stud and some other obstructions (an electrical wiring harness and some cleaning tools...broom, mop...) and then went on to strike the boy in the head. This bullet somehow found the path of least resistance, missing 7 or 8 different things that would have most likely stopped it before ever reching the child. Ballistic testing matched the round to the pistol and quite a bit of computer recostruction determined the exact route of the slug and that the shooter's handgun had indeed accidentally discharged during recoil. If memory serves there was a lawsuit, against the range and the shooter. Once again my poor brain cannot recall the outcome... I had to record and watch the show a couple of times before I was really able to comprehend how it all happened. Very strange and equally, if not more so, tragic...


Medic
 
Not gun-related, but just as bizarre. My brother told me that some poor guy driving down a South Carolina freeway about six months ago, and was killed by a screwdriver that flew in his driver's side window (down).
Damn thing nailed him like an arrow in the side of his head. The only thing they could think of was that one of the lawn mowers they had out that day hit an abandoned screwdriver with one of it's blades and flung it at the guy.

If you consider all the variables in this or any of the above incidents, it gives new meaning to the phrase "When your number is up ...".
 
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