[Dog Gone]

That's a good question, of course. Another question is why the story refers to both a bullet and a pellet. Was it a slug, or was it the more common shot shell?

And if it was a shot shell, how was it able to penetrate an adjacent building and actually kill someone?

[azhenfud]

"And if it was a shot shell, how was it able to penetrate an adjacent building and actually kill someone?"

Some of the guys I work with went to a hunting preserve where pheasant were released from a tower and shot at, this time using steel shot. Normally the folk park their trucks with the windshields to the woods, but this time for some odd reason they backed into the parking spaces leaving their windshields smiling for all that steel. There were thirteen windshields shot that day. BOY am I glad I wasn't invited - since I don't "hunt".

Apparently the shot in the story in question was discharged into an open window from the second floor of an adjacent building.

In NC, a week or so ago, a girl went to move a shotgun from a recliner in a neighbor's house when it discharged and the shot went through the wall and killed her dad who was on the outside of the mobile home.