I can give you better than documentation. Back in my ER days, I helped to treat 3 different gunshot patients who were hit by bullets falling out of the sky, when neither witnesses nor the patient ever heard the shot fired. The least hurt person was badly hurt. One of them ultimately died from the effects of the injury. I'll start with him.macavity wrote:It's my understanding that shooting into the air is potentially dangerous (what goes up, must come down, at the same velocity minus air resistance). Is there any law about this or documented instances where people have been injured/killed from falling bullets?
- Patient and two of his buddies are shooting at a Forest Service owned shooting area in the mountains above Los Angeles, located just off the Angeles Forest Hwy, just above the ranger station above Hidden Springs. (I've shot there myself before the range was closed.) Victim walks out to target stand to put up a new target, and while he is stooped over, a .308 round arcs in and strikes him in the temple, destroying a large part of his brain and skull. The shot was fired from so far away that neither of his two friends nor any of the other witnesses at the range heard the shot fired. Sadly, he lived for another couple of years, curled up like a fetus in an awake but vegetative state before succumbing to pneumonia.
- Patient is a man, driving a rag-top Jeep northbound up Lake Avenue in Pasadena. While sitting at a red light at Orange Grove Blvd, a .45 ACP FMJ round comes down through the top of his Jeep, striking him in the top of his thigh. The bullet broke his femur. There are no tall buildings anywhere near that intersection.
- Patient is a woman, walking along the Rose Parade route on New Years Eve, on Colorado Blvd. There are literally thousands of witnesses within 75 yards of where she is standing, when a .223 bullet falls out of the sky, striking her in the top of her left shoulder. Nobody heard the shot. The bullet goes down through her left chest, tunneling through her lung, punctures her diaphragm, holes her stomach and intestines in several places, hits the inside of her left pelvis, ricochets at a 90º angle, destroys her bladder, ricochets upwards off the inside of her right pelvis, and finally comes to rest in her liver. 14 hours of surgery (all that night and into the next day) and 24 units of blood later, she survives. She is able to eventually walk out of the hospital, but she was in for a long, long time.
I don't really care what Mythbusters or anyone like that says if they deny the possibility, because I have personal and intimate knowledge of such incidents. So anyone who would deny that this can happen is either very much mistaken (not to mention foolish), or they are calling me a liar..... .....and I'm not a liar, nor am I crazy. These things can and do happen.
