Errant Bullet Travels 1.5 Miles, Kills Amish Girl

WLWT ^ | 12:01 pm EST December 20, 2011 | WLWT

[TSgt]

FREDERICKSBURG, Ohio -- An Ohio sheriff says a man cleaning his muzzle-loading rifle accidentally shot and killed a 15-year-old Amish girl driving a horse-drawn buggy more than a mile away.

Holmes County Sheriff Timothy Zimmerly said Tuesday that the accident occurred Thursday night when a man fired his loaded rifle to clean it. He says the victim, Rachel Yoder of Fredericksburg, was nearly 1.5 miles away when she was shot in the head.

No charges have been filed.

Yoder was shot while traveling to her home in adjacent Wayne County, between Columbus and Akron. She was riding alone after attending a Christmas party for employees, most under 18 years old, who work at an Amish produce farm.

[clee1]

Agreed, FRiend. This was pure negligence on the part of the shooter... and the charge should be “negligent homicide”.

[TYVets]

See post 122

Thank you, the beauty of FR, ask and you will receive an answer.

2,500 yards equals 1.4 miles if fired at an angle of 12.5 degrees.

I recall some maximum distances listed in The NRA Fact Book. For some reason the angle of 37 degrees is rolling around in my near empty head as the firing angle for maximum range in some calibers.

Dunno where the fact book is now (the wife hid it again).

Have you tried some steeper angles in your program?

I like most of us here are talking about ballistics,,, the most important thing is this guy did not fire into a backstop

[catfish1957]

Thanks.... So how come these crazy middle eastern muzzies don’t do more damage when they fire their rifles in the air?

[clee1]

There’s no way to know the shot came from THAT firearm.

In a word, Friend..... bullsqueeze!

[clee1]

Again, FRiend..... bullsqueeze!

You apparently don’t have a clue what you are talking about!

[JudgemAll]

On a direct curved trajectory, she got the inherent force of the bullet (diminished by air viscosity forces) but added by a vertical drop component regained after dropping from the top of it. A "drop only" energy or force of work into her head would be much smaller, but from a 50 slug still significant. A hail storm of that size is painful, let alone of that mass or density. I dunno, if people can hit and kill animals with long barreled muzzle loaders at these distances, it still is possible, I guess, to kill someone that way by accident, imo. Heavy bullets have inherent higher inertia and thus are less prone to energy dissipation than lighter bullet. It has to do with Reynolds' number of a ball of lead. Check the ration of Inertia to air viscosity... http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/BGH/reynolds.html The higher the density and linear density of the bullet the more energy it keeps. An arrow is light but has great length and thus comparatively large linear density and could be deadly when merely dropped, and so may be a large calliber bullet compared to a pellet size one. And also the following http://slinging.org/wiki/index.php?title=Reynolds_Number&redirect=no "" Reynolds Number From Slinging.org Wiki The Reynolds number is one of the main variables used in sling ballistics calculations. As a general rule, if two bullets have the same shape and Reynolds number, they will show the same aerodynamic behavior, even if they have different sizes or move with different velocities. Therefore, ballistic tables and formulas are greatly simplified when put in terms of the Reynolds number. Another advantage of the Reynolds number is that it is dimensionless, that is, its value is independent of the unit system used to measure it. The formula for the Reynolds number is: where is the air density, η is the air's viscosity, v is the velocity of the projectile, and D is the characteristic lenght of the bullet. Conventions for Reynolds number determination.The characteristic length of the bullet is computed as follows: since most sling bullets are bodies of revolution, they posses an axis of rotation, which is generally called the principal chord line of the bullet (see image to the right). The characteristic length of the bullet is simply the length of the segment that results from intersecting the bullet with its principal chord line. Therefore, the characteristic length for a sphere is its diameter, for a cylinder its length, and so on. ""

[depressed in 06]

...a man fired his loaded rifle to clean it.

A cleaning method I was not aware of.

I suspect the term should have been "clear it."

[fruser1]

“someone on this thread can give us some decent estimates of the rate of velocity lost due to air resistance”

There are none really. Most are “calculated” by measuring test shots. Even so, these are basically averages based on a common starting shape. Any deformation skews that.

Mathmatical models exist but are not accurate for long ranges and are also skewed by varying shapes and conditions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_ballistics

[Harold Shea]

Way back in VN at New Years Eve time you could tell where all

The fire bases were from all the tracer rounds going up

Sad story this tragic death of this young girl....prayers up

[JudgemAll]

On a direct curved trajectory, she got the inherent force of the bullet (diminished by air viscosity forces) but added by a vertical drop component regained after dropping from the top of it. A “drop only” energy or force of work into her head would be much smaller, but from a 50 slug still significant. A hail storm of that size is painful, let alone of that mass or density. I dunno, if people can hit and kill animals with long barreled muzzle loaders at these distances, it still is possible, I guess, to kill someone that way by accident, imo. Heavy bullets have inherent higher inertia and thus are less prone to energy dissipation than lighter bullet. It has to do with Reynolds’ number of a ball of lead. Check the ration of Inertia to air viscosity...

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/BGH/reynolds.html

The higher the density and linear density of the bullet the more energy it keeps. An arrow is light but has great length and thus comparatively large linear density and could be deadly when merely dropped, and so may be a large calliber bullet compared to a pellet size one. And also the following

http://slinging.org/wiki/index.php?title=Reynolds_Number&redirect=no

“” Reynolds Number From Slinging.org Wiki The Reynolds number is one of the main variables used in sling ballistics calculations. As a general rule, if two bullets have the same shape and Reynolds number, they will show the same aerodynamic behavior, even if they have different sizes or move with different velocities. Therefore, ballistic tables and formulas are greatly simplified when put in terms of the Reynolds number. Another advantage of the Reynolds number is that it is dimensionless, that is, its value is independent of the unit system used to measure it.

[Okieshooter]

My program does not allow inputiting the angle, only the range up to 3000 yd max which gives an angle of almost 21 degrees and terminal velocity of 375 fps.

[SVTCobra03]

“There was a case about two or three years ago where two men were firing into a lake. The projectile skipped off the water and struck a young boy that was standing on the opposite side of the lake. The young boy was standing beside his grandfather holding his hand. He was killed instantly.

I never heard the outcome of the incident. I don’t recall where it happened either.”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292168,00.html

[buffaloguy]

One of the most popular NRA events is the long distance black powder competition at 800, 900 and 1,000 yards. Very accurate shooting at those distances using .45-70s and 50-80s and some other rounds.

Another competition was so tough that they moved the targets out to 1238 yards. A woman won the competition.

Black powder rifles are very capable.

[old gringo]

not someone a lot of people here don’t have a clue.it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

[DoughtyOne]

If he in fact was the person whose bullet hit the girl, I totally agree. This was negligent manslaughter.

I don’t understand why the gun was loaded in the first place. This type of gun isn’t all that stable if loaded for a period of time prior to being used is it?

I would store that gun empty.

Why he had to shoot the gun to clean it is just strange. Perhaps I’m not understanding something as a person who hasn’t owned or shot those guns before.

[DoughtyOne]

The odds of this happening must be massive.

You’ve got the 360 degree horizon to match up to the point you’re having to hit something on the order of 0.00002% of a single degree.

As for elevation, the same type of dynamic comes into play.

Then you’ve got a non-rifling bore with the ball moving like a knuckle ball, varying winds on the trajectory, humidity, earth rotation, you’re wife’s current cycle... well okay that last one is iffy, but this was an unbelievable series of things that had to be just right for this guy to have hit that girl from 1.5 miles away with that sort of gun.

[verga]

If it was a sabot round, how do you ballistically fingerprint it? The rifling marks would be in the discarded sabot. You could match powder residue, but considering there’s probably very few brands of black powder, that may not mean much.

For a sabot round you would be correct, but even on the Damascus BPR's they would leave a pattern, but you would have to have identical wadding.

[Okieshooter]

Normally a muzzle loader gun remains loaded for an entire hunting season, but the percussion cap is removed when it is not in use. At the end of the season the most practical way to unload it is to fire it so it my be cleaned and stored for next year.

[buffaloguy]

“This type of gun isn’t all that stable if loaded for a period of time prior to being used is it?”

Black powder is quite stable. Black powder does not deteriorate over time at all.