Posted on 12/20/2011 9:38:28 AM PST by 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.
As always a bullet has got to go somewhere and there is Murphy’s law.
Thank you guys. I appreciate the correction and additional information.
I think Murphy worked overtime here.
Thanks SVTC.., I didn’t have the exact details but the basics. Do you know the outcome of the incident. Was anyone charged?
I'm glad you corrected that. I just thought that perhaps your King James English needed some work.
I recall seeing a show on a great Civil War shot, something like 1 mile, if so then perhaps a mile and a half is believable. Very sad, terrible story.
You’re welcome. I sort of had to chuckle because long distance shooting is very popular with the black powder crowd, much more so than with the modern powder guys.
I think I read the other day that in Wyoming there is an annual one mile shoot. I would love try it with my .45-70.
I will be shooting at 1,000 yards this year but I am spending a good deal of time making adjustments to the bullets I pour to make them nearly perfect for the specific rifle that I shoot. It takes a bit of time, lead and powder.
” ...not ever seen a buggy driven by one of their females ...”
Around here, half of the buggy drivers are women or girls. There’s a sub-category of buggy horses especially for women. Dawdy horses for Grandma and Grandpa, “women drivers” for women and girls, school hacks or school ponies for the little ones and the notorious “boy’s horse” for the thrill-seekers.
That said, what a tragedy for the family, and how can the shooter ever show his face in public again. What a disgrace.
My 10-year-old and 13-year-old use better sense with their BB guns.
Yep. In this case we know where the shooter was and what direction the weapon was pointed.
Look down range from the point of origin, it will be within a dozen or so yards of the muzzle, and within maybe 10-15° of the aim direction.
You could match powder residue, but considering there’s probably very few brands of black powder, that may not mean much.
Yes, but our betters require microtaggents in black powder.
This provides the ability to trace to a single batch of powder.
See post #169
Before the cartridge era, circa 1870 or so, it was very common to discharge your muzzle loader in order to clean it. I even have comments that my great-grandfather wrote in his Civil War diary about firing his rifle so that it could be cleaned due to concerns of the powder getting damp in the barrel in humid conditions.
I have been shooting muzzle loaders for over 45 years, pistol, rifle, and shotgun, and firing my flintlock rifle into a dirt burm is the easiest, and safest, way to unload it.
You can leave a gun loaded with black powder for well over a 100 years and it will fire right off with no problem. Very stable powder.
“I never heard the outcome of the incident. I don’t recall where it happened either.”
I had to look.
http://xavierthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/03/austin-haley-update.html
I can’t vouch for the veracity of the site.
I found the link here.
http://austinhaley.com/news.php
I, on the other hand, am not the slightest bit surprised that you are unable to cite a single factoid to support your original statement.
I find that enlightening...
I have also thought it would be a blast to shoot long range. I’ve seldom shot at things farther than fifty yards away.
BTW: Good luck in your 1000 yard competition. Let me know how you do. I’m sure it will be months away.
Thanks Inyo-Mono. It was nice to hear of your great-grandfather, and your knowledge and history with these guns. Excellent. 100 years? That’s really something.
Take care bud.
We have a combined muzzle loader and bow deer hunting season here in Vermont, for a week after the regular rifle season ends. And I think there may be another one earlier. (I can’t check on that, because the Vermont Fish and Wildlife people scrub the earlier part of the hunting calendar after it’s past.)
Not nearly as many muzzle loader hunters around these parts, but there are a few.
So they would be patch marks not rifling marks.
Granted with a ball with little windage and a tight patch you could get an image of the rifling transfered to the ball but they would be depressions in the lead and not true rifling marks.
A book on gun collecting that I picked up a few years back warns that any blackpowder arm newly found after many years (like in Grandpa’s attic) should always be regarded as loaded.
When I was a teen, we lived in a declining neighborhood. One day a bullet whizzed over my bed and went through a poster on my wall. The police said it could have come from anywhere in the hills and couldn’t [or wouldn’t] trace it. That incident was the last straw that convinced my parents that it was time to move.
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