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.
Your physics teacher was wrong. I have read of several people being killed in Miami by bullets that were fired straight up in the air. It's a custom in the Cuban community to celebrate holidays and such by firing guns into the air, and Miami radio and TV warn people to get under a bridge or some other substantial covering before midnight on New Year's Eve.
thx!
“Where the dangers are greatest, funny thing, the expertise tends to be greatest.”
If you really believe that, try the various gun totin’ members of the Armed & Rangerous making a career of “managing” predators like puma, bear, wolves.
If you can “hold aim” for an extended length of time, let alone long enough for some ‘animal control’ goober to arrive:
1. “Hold aim”? Do you give lessons? I can’t hold on target for long, and snakes are capable of moving out of sight rather quickly when they so decide.
2. If you are able to “hold aim” that long, do you hold lunch in the other hand? ;-)
In theory. But they did this on Mythbusters. The flaw in the argument is it only applies if the bullet is fired exactly to the vertical. Any horizontal velocity component is not cancelled by gravity and stays with the bullet. In this case, at probably 45°, that could be as much as 800fps
I forgot that in my last post. If the bullet isn't tumbling, even the gravity induced terminal velocity will be a lot higher.
Bullchip
A civilian would be already charged with reckless indifference
Actually it does. It's called "relativistic mass". Einstein will explain
Oh man, you’re heavy.
Zero forward motion is zero forward motion. To talk of a bullet spending it’s energy and stopping forward motion, the angle of flight would only be that which was necessary to expand its energy before touching earth.
No snake is worth shooting horizontal 9mm rounds without a backstop in a residential neighborhood. Period. I don’t care if the damn thing was a confirmed rattler rattling, you can kill or capture a rattler a dozen ways that do not involve firing bullets horizontally in a residential area. This is a case of snake-aphobia hysterics going unglued at the sight of a snake. I've seen grown men run in terror from a 2 foot rat snake, so I know this stupid irrational fear exists. But that doesn't in any way excuse this idiot cop's negligent homicide of a five year old human boy.
The terminal velocity of something as small as a bullet (e.g., 38 special=158 grains) is not lethal.
However, when people randomly fire a bullet into the air they do not fire it directly perpendicular to the earth's surface. Especially not a bunch of drunken cubans and mexicans on New Year's. Such a random shot will be fired at an angle which makes the bullet lethal.
Mmmm, maybe I'm wrong, (I often am) but I thought that an object falling toward the earth through a vacuum would continue to accelerate until something acted on it to slow or stop it's rate of acceleration. In the earth's atmosphere that something would be the resistance of air to the object's passage through it. If I'm right (and I'm not claiming that I definitely am) an object that is dense and heavy relative to it's size, a lead bullet for instance, would accelerate to a higher velocity than would an object that is lighter in weight relative to it's size, a similar size piece of wood for example, before atmospheric resistance stopped it's acceleration. If I'm remembering high school physics classes correctly, that rate of acceleration in a vacuum is something like 64 feet per second per second, or thereabout.
Although you're no doubt right about the shooting skills, or lack thereof, of drunken holiday revelers, it seems logical to me that a bullet falling perpendicular to the earth's surface would reach a much higher terminal velocity than would, let's say a piece of styrofoam of the same size. That is of course an extreme example of what I'm trying to say, but IIRC (and I may not) either Galileo or da Vinci proved the validity of a similar theory by dropping a metal ball and a feather off the leaning tower of Pisa at the same time and observing which object hit the ground first.
In any case you seem to speak on the subject with a certain degree of authority, so I will defer to your knowledge of the matter until someone who seems to have even more knowledge on the subject posts a conflicting answer. There is no animosity on this end of the conversation, I'm always glad to learn something new. If it is true that is.
I'm so slow to comprehend technical stuff that it took a couple of read-throughs for me to get the gist of the article, but if I understood what it says it seems to confirm my ideas. Read it and see what you think.
The “GladesGuru” came from a state lawyer, one of the smarmiest of that rather nasty breed, who refused to email me with that screen name. Judgie Poo was not impressed with the state attitude.
“A Pox Upon Them All” was a valid if very old curse which seems most appropriate today.
On the other hand, looking at the decerebrate AgencyPersons in the panther project, sometimes I wonder - as Grandpa said, “In the valley of the blind, the one eyed man is king.”
The sum and substance of this thread seems to be:1.
1. Wait for the entire story (hopefully accurate), not what first is rushed into print or on the air by presstitutes.
2. Never underestimate human stupidity. I assumed, from the story line posted, the officer fired upwards, not horizontally.
After visiting the family and viewing the area first hand I see no way to justify this shooting. The lady that had called the police had asked for an animal control officer which was probably the proper thing to do. Noble officials had no animal control so they sent two police officers to the scene a senior officer and another officer. The lady that had called the police had placed a hoe, a rake, a set of long handled hedge shears out to use to kill the snake. The bird house was a small 4x6 inch birdhouse placed on the corner of a patio under an eve about 7 feet above the ground. The snake was a harmless king snake that had been seen in the garden several times by the childs parents, it had apparently swallowed some bird eggs or small birds and could not get back out of the birdhouse now that it was swollen and was hanging about 3 feet out. With the tools already available for use, how can you justify using a pistol in a residential neighborhood. I will grant the fact that on line-of-sight the child was not visible behind weeds and light brush and appears to be a wooded area. But there was also the sound of the boys mother on a riding mower near by, the boys father in his shop doing metal work on a car, not to mention there could easily be livestock. All of these were in the immediate area in the general direction of the direction he chose to shoot down the hill by the pond not to mention several other homes accross and around the pond. Just because you may not be able to see them does not mean there is nothing there. For a senior officer to reccommend shooting the snake with a high power bullets was sheer negligence. The boys grandfather a well known attorney in the area thought he was the one under attack and sought to cover the grandchildren, but was to late as a bullet killed the child
http://www.koco.com/news/13819962/detail.html
I don’t know if it’s been discussed, but this article mentions that it was the first year on the force for the officer who fired the shots. I suppose the homeowner and the other officer are pretty damned lucky that they didn’t get shot by this guy too.
Prison...
In the interest of truth.
According to the actual interview with Bob Wade. A lady called about having a snake (she thought a rattler) half in and half out of a birdhouse outside her home. Since Noble is a very small community they do not have an Animal Control, so three (don’t know why so many) officers were sent to the house. They tried to get the snake out of the birdhouse but evidently he had eaten and could not get back out through the opening. The house involved in this is located in a residential area with a lake and lots of tree’s and high grasses. So the officer that shot the snake was aiming up. And there is no way he could tell or see where the bullet may land. (IMO....there was no threat of this snake doing bodily harm to anyone, 1. A rattlesnake does not “climb” 2. The snake was “hissing” at them, not “rattling”. 3. This type snake is an asset in this type surroundings. If they had left it alone, I feel the snake would have gone back into the tall grass away from the house as soon as he could fit through the opening.
Sadly, these officers made a horrible decison. That resulted in this beautiful little boy being killed. I live not too far from Noble and we are all hearing and reading different scenarios. But I am more compelled to believe the Grandfather that was there on the dock with his beloved grandson. Time will tell how this will play out but I am doing a lot of praying for little Austin and his family. If you would like to leave condolances the guest book for Austin Haley is http://www.legacy.com/OKLAHOMAN/GB/GuestbookView.aspx?PersonId=92019586&PageNo=9
Hope this helps make things a little clearer.
So a trained snake wrangler is "some goober," but a trigger-happy cop is better able to handle the situation? There's a dead kids whose family will disagree.
1. “Hold aim”? Do you give lessons? I can’t hold on target for long,
Cops in standoffs with armed suspects keep a bead on him, often for hours, without nodding off.
and snakes are capable of moving out of sight rather quickly when they so decide.
That's why you get the civilians out of the house and stabilize the situation. It's not an acceptable excuse for the sloppy use of deadly force.
2. If you are able to “hold aim” that long, do you hold lunch in the other hand? ;-)
Nah. If you have to break for lunch, you let another cop keep tabs on things. No other cop? Well, if it isn't important enough to call for backup, it isn't important enough to fire two shots in the presence of bystanders.
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