Man killed by stray bullet in SE Houston

click2houston ^ | 1/1/15 | Frank Espinoza

[eastforker]

A man is dead Thursday after a stray bullet hit him in the head in southeast Houston.

Police say the victim and his wife were watching fireworks around 1 a.m. on their front lawn on the 800 block East Lake and Theta Street near Edgebrook.

Investigators say someone shot a gun in the air and the bullet came down and hit the victim in the head. He died at the scene.

[School of Rational Thought]

I have heard that a bullet shot horizontally to the earth will hit the dirt at the same time as if dropped to the ground from point of fire.

True or false

[Yardstick]

That is true.

[BobL]

The guys could have died in a car accident and no one would care. We have 320 Million people in this country. On any given day, at least 100 kids (probably a lot more) lose a parent to cancer...when you have a lot of people, you will have a lot of people dying young and needlessly.

Having said that, gun owners STILL need to be RESPONSIBLE and not be shooting off the damn thing into the air, in heavily populated areas, as somebody, eventually, will get hit.

[Bogey78O]

True. Gravity affects them both equally.

[Rodamala]

Long story short... I was at the stoplight at Dal Paso and East Broadway in Hobbs, NM back in 2012 and all the sudden something hit my truck. It was a little before noon.

Light turned green and I pull through the light, pull over, and get out to look. The matte black plastic film on the doorpost of the truck had a hole through it. Got back in the truck and got to the worksite up towards Lovington and peeled back the film... obviously a bullet... and if I had stopped 4 inches shorter at that traffic light, the bullet would have came in through my open window and gone right into my ear.

.

When I got hit, I was sitting next to the only strip club in town, Playmates, so I took it as a sign telling me, "You only get one chance, so be sure to make the most of it while you can". So that night I went right to that club and "Celebrated Life" stuffing dollar bills between every set of 19 year-old titties I could.

[Yardstick]

The problem is that a bullet fired at an angle rather than straight up is “in the dirt” (or in somebody’s skull) before air resistance has had a chance to reduce the bullet to a non-lethal velocity. The more horizontal the firing angle, the less time the bullet spends in the air before it is at head level.

[muir_redwoods]

I was told, at the age of nine, that I was responsible for a bullet until it stopped if I pulled the trigger. It’s a stretch, I know, but this sounds like manslaughter

[Yardstick]

ROFL! at your “celebration of life” afterwards.

(...and the fact that the dent is in the horizontal direction shows that the gun was fired not upward but at an angle.)

[MeshugeMikey]

I remember when the city I lived in at the time held what they called “the Millenium blast”..a new years eve celebration...with massive entertainment food etc...

http://echoes.devin.com/articles/np/millennium.html

they warned the attendees not to wander out from under cover...near midnight for fear that they’d be hit by descending bullets...

[Hawthorn]

>> someone shot a gun in the air and the bullet came down <<

News scoop of the year?

[Rodamala]

The girls were extra beautiful that night.

[Scrambler Bob]

A stray?

Should have been nutered, then released.

[mware]

I live in a small rural town in South Jersey, and it sounded like a rifle range in my town.

It was a little concerning when some of the fire seemed to be coming from the center of town rather than homes that shared property with the pine barrens.

[ought-six]

Mexicans have a love affair with shooting off firearms to celebrate something. Apparently the don’t understand the very basic principles of Newtonian Law.

I lived in Southern California many years ago, and I never wanted to be anywhere near where two or Mexicans gathered for some celebratory rite.

[Scrambler Bob]

Hatchers Notebook:

As I recall, if fired straight up, bullet (still spinning) will fall back, base first.

[logi_cal869]

For what it’s worth

http://forensicoutreach.com/the-falling-bullet-myths-legends-and-terminal-velocity/

Very little science on this, though we can all agree stupid people breeding is a bad idea...

[MHGinTN]

As a kid hunting squirrels or doves I was rained upon by pellets on more than one occasion. I suppose a pellet could have put my eye out, but all that rained down on me just bounced off clothing or my shotgun.

[17th Miss Regt]

Correct. It will have a downward velocity the same as if you had dropped it from the apex of the trajectory (ignoring air resistance). But that may be enough to penetrate the top of the skull.

[Jed Eckert]

You were very fortunate. There was a case several years ago where a young lady was driving on the Long Island Expressway and was killed by a stray bullet. I believe an off duty cop was behind her at the time and saw her lose control of the vehicle after she was hit in the head.

This happened where the highway runs parallel to the Ocean and/or Long Island Sound. Autopsy showed it was .303 bullet. Some good detective work led them to a guy who owned an old surplus British Enfield rifle, cal .303. He was out on his boat that day shooting at jugs in the water about mile or more away from the highway. Ballistics later confirmed it was his rifle.

[Blue Collar Christian]

The terminal velocity of a bullet falling is MUCH slower than that. Bullets that come from the sky and kill on New Years, and the 4th of July, etc. come in somewhat sideways, or less that 45*.