No bullets required!
Posted on 08/05/2007 6:29:48 AM PDT by LouAvul
Noble, Oklahoma - A five-year-old boy is dead after a tragic mistake in which a stray bullet, meant to kill a snake, struck the boy.
It happened Friday night in Noble, about 100 miles southwest of Tulsa in Cleveland County. Officers had responded to a rural area after a family called about a snake.
Noble City Manager Bob Wade says the snake was apparently in the rafters of a home and that officers decided to shoot the snake. But, when they did so, they later heard the boy screaming.
The boy, who was apparently fishing at a nearby pond, had been struck by the gunfire. The boy was airlifted to a nearby hospital, but was pronounced dead. He was identified Saturday evening as Austin Haley.
Noble City Manager Bob Wade says he is 'devastated' by the tragedy. Meanwhile, the officer who fired the shots has been placed on routine administrative leave while the investigation continues.
But is that reasonably foreseeable?
"I shot an arrow into the air/It came to Earth I know not where."
It is irresponsible to needlessly launch a lethal projectile without knowing where it will stop. There was no imminent threat to life to justify shooting; even if the snake was venomous, if there was time for a cop to take potshots at it, there was time to pull everyone out of range and wait for someone to show up with a stick or a machete and the skill to use it. The rest is cowboy BS.
If any douchebag says “I feel sorry for the officers”, I’m going to puke.
Not me, I've already had surgery on one hand.
Or in your teeth. You look much cooler that way.
Only under ideal circumstances; a bullet will almost always be pulled to the ground by gravity long before it slows down that much, assuming that it doesn't hit anything else along the way.
As I posted elsewhere on the thread, "one in a million" does not mean impossible. Fire millions of rounds into the air, and "one in a million," its statistical validity aside, isn't a measure of whether something will happen, but how often.
No bullets required!
The boy wasn’t the one who was screaming, it was the grandfather.
The first shot didn’t hit anything, including the snake. The second shot hit and killed the snake and went on to pass through the boy’s head and immediately kill him.
FWIW I am not the only one who claims this. Guys with names Einstein and Bohr also believe as I do.
Nice try with the global warning stunt. Bring out the boogeyman when you can't make your case.
You were the one that made the crack about the not believing the physics teacher - not me.
Oh, please. You're pretending there weren't seventeen shots from the grassy knoll.
A rake or a hoe would have done nicely. The advantage of the hoe is that you can cut the snake into two pieces with one down swing.
Naw, there were two shots, that’s all. The first shot that this Barney Fife like character shot went into the water that the old man and his grandson were standing by. At that point the old man says he started yelling that there were people down there and he grabbed his grandson and held him close. Unfortunately that did no good because the second shot hit not only its target, the snake, but also the boy.
How low of a degee do you claim you can shoot a gun and catch a bullet in your hand without injury?
I feel sorry for all kinds of sinners, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get punished by the law.
As a public employee authorized to carry a firearm, cops are taught all of the safety issuses. I am positive this officer was taught to be aware of the backstop when he prepares to fire a round. If the backstop is a group of people then the lowest IQ possible would be aware what the consequences are if he misses the target or if the bullet passes through the target.
To think that this man would fire his weapon into the air without a solid backstop behind the trajectory belittles the intellingence of every officer I know. There was no immediate danger and therefore no reason to fire the weapon in an unsafe manner.
I would sue him, the department, the city and any firearms intructors who gave the man a passing grade.
I have allowed deer to continue walking because I wasn’t 100% positive that there wasn’t another hunter beyond the bushes that I couldn’t see through. Not knowing the possible consequences was enough to stop me. But then I was thinking and this man wasn’t.
I have been through many law enforcement academy firearms certifications. I have repeatedly been instructed that once a bullet leaves the muzzle, you can not call it back. The person firing the round is responsible for its action until its' energy is spent.
Boiler plate Force Continuum training would have told these officers that this was far from a life or death situation that required a deadly force answer. Especially with the chance that it would put innocent bystanders at risk.
For this cop, the question is whether he acted within state or department standards. If not, he could be liable. If so, and if the courts decide the standards are to blame, then it's the folks who set the standards who are liable.
Tennessee vs. Garner showed that State Law and Department Policy is not always the final answer on the subject. Without being familiar with this state's law, I'd also guess that this scenario could be prosecuted criminally.
>If you were close to the end of the arc you could, theoretically, catch the bullet in your hand since it’s speed is approaching zero.<
We used to have some mortarmen whom you would love to play catch with.
Since you don't seem to know the difference between a bullet and a mortar why bother. Same applies to the word theoretically, which has a meaning.
“If you as a civilian had done the same thing, would you be at fault? Yes or no?”
Mother raised no fools. Your question is therefore not applicable to me. And, I have shot loads for my Redhawk.
If the snake was not an immediate threat to human health or life, the cop would seem to have, as they say in the poultry industry, ‘clucked up’ seriously.
I know he wasn’t screaming, I was pointing out that the article itself says they heard the boy screaming. That’s a good indication that somebody isn’t telling the truth (either the reporter or the police).
I was kidding. Dig at conspiracy theorists. I don’t even know if this house had a grassy knoll.
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