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Amish girl in Ohio accidentally shot; ...from 1.5 miles away
Topic Started: Dec 21 2011, 04:00 AM (336 Views)
The 89th Key
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FREDERICKSBURG, Ohio (AP) -- A man cleaning his muzzle-loading rifle shot the gun into the air, accidentally killing a 15-year-old Amish girl driving a horse-drawn buggy more than a mile away, a sheriff said Tuesday.

Rachel Yoder was shot in the head Thursday night while traveling to her home in Wayne County, between Columbus and Akron. She had attended a Christmas party for employees, most of them under 18 years old, at an Amish produce farm and was riding home alone when she was shot, Wayne County sheriff's Capt. Douglas Hunter said.

The horse continued to cart the girl after she was shot, and she fell out of the buggy near her home, Holmes County Sheriff Timothy Zimmerly said. Her brother found her after he saw the horse walking in circles and went to check it. Authorities initially believed she had fallen out of the buggy and hit her head until a hospital test revealed the gunshot wound.

Hunter said his department traced a trail of blood along the road for about three-eighths of a mile into Holmes County in an area of farms and rolling hills.

Zimmerly said the gun-cleaner's family came forward and his neighbors reported hearing a shot at about the time the girl was wounded.

The man had fired the gun in the air about 1.5 miles from where Yoder was shot, Zimmerly said. State investigators were checking the rifle for a ballistics match, he said.

"In all probability, it looks like an accidental shooting," Zimmerly said.

No charges have been filed.

Yoder was born in nearby Mount Eaton and attended the Old Order Amish Church, The (Wooster) Daily Record reported. She is survived by her father, 10 brothers and sisters, 26 nieces and nephews and two grandparents.

Hunter said earlier there was no indication the shooting was related to a rash of beard-cutting attacks against Amish men in a feud over church discipline.

Still, the mystery of the shooting in the wake of the beard-cutting attacks had left the Amish shaken and "on pins and needles," Zimmerly said.

Zimmerly said he informed the Yoder family that the shooting appeared to be accidental.

"Obviously, that makes them feel a lot better than if someone might have been targeting the Amish or (if it was) a random shooting murder," he said.

Gun violence in Amish communities is rare but not unheard of. A man shot 10 schoolgirls, killing five, inside a one-room schoolhouse five years ago in Nickel Mines, Pa. The Amish were praised for their forgiveness after the shooting and reaching out to comfort the gunman's widow.


http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BUGGY_SHOOTING_DEATH?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-12-20-17-50-11
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jon-nyc
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Cheers
Wow. The anti-lottery.
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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Piano*Dad
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Bull-Carp
And that next satellite to fall will ........
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brenda
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..............
What a sad thing for the family. Hubby and I visited that area many times when we were first married and lived near there. It's such a lovely region.
“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”
~A.A. Milne
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
It is. The gun owner is an idiot. You don't fire off into nothing like that.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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brenda
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..............
Mikhailoh
Dec 21 2011, 06:24 AM
It is. The gun owner is an idiot. You don't fire off into nothing like that.
Idiot indeed.
“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”
~A.A. Milne
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The 89th Key
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Mikhailoh
Dec 21 2011, 06:24 AM
It is. The gun owner is an idiot. You don't fire off into nothing like that.
I often see videos of folks (on farms, hunting, etc) shooting into the air. I've always thought "Hmm, the bullets are going SOMEWHERE".

If you're a gun owner, is it ALWAYS a no-no to shoot the gun into the air?
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George K
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Finally
As usual, Cecil at the Straight Dope has the answer:

Quote:
 
Can a bullet fired into the air kill someone when it comes down?

A Straight Dope Classic from Cecil's Storehouse of Human Knowledge

April 14, 1995

Dear Cecil:

Every so often you see it on the news: streets full of Middle Eastern men indiscriminately firing guns straight up into the air. If I learned anything from physics class, it's that what goes up must come down. I'm certain the returning projectiles don't float harmlessly to earth and wonder how often they plunge into bystanders.

— Kathy Johnson, Madison, Wisconsin


Cecil replies:

Those Middle Eastern men. You want to shake them and say: Guys! Is this the safe and sensible way to celebrate? Can't we just say "hooray!" and "whoa, baby"?

But you raise a good point. How dangerous is this really? The question is controversial. Let me lay it out point by point.

Datum 1. At first I thought being struck by a bullet falling straight down would be no worse than getting hit over the head with a two-by-four — not the average person's idea of fun, but not fatal either. What goes up must come down, but it needn't do so at the same speed. You run up against what's known as "terminal velocity." A bullet fired straight up will slow down, stop, then fall to earth again, accelerating until it reaches a point where its weight equals the resistance of the air. That's its terminal velocity.

For further insight, we turn to Hatcher's Notebook (1962) by Major General Julian S. Hatcher, a U.S. Army ordnance expert. Hatcher described military tests with, among other things, a .30 caliber bullet weighing .021 pounds. Using a special rig, the testers shot the bullet straight into the air. It came down bottom (not point) first at what was later computed to be about 300 feet per second. "With the [.021 pound] bullet, this corresponds to an energy of 30 foot pounds," Hatcher wrote. "Previously, the army had decided that on the average an energy of 60 foot pounds is required to produce a disabling wound. Thus, service bullets returning from extreme heights cannot be considered lethal by this standard."

If 30 foot pounds doesn't mean much to you, the bullet made a mark about one-sixteenth of an inch deep in a soft pine board — about what you'd get giving it a good whack with a hammer. Note that we're talking about bullets shot straight up. If the bullet is fired more or less horizontally, it may not lose much speed before returning to earth and could easily kill someone.

Datum 2. Then someone sent me an article from the Los Angeles Times about the problem of falling bullets in L.A. around New Year's and the Fourth of July. According to the article, doctors at King/Drew Medical Center, a major L.A. trauma center, published a report in a medical journal (Journal of Trauma, December 1994) saying that between 1985 and 1992 they treated 118 people for falling bullet injuries around New Year's Eve or the Fourth of July. Thirty-eight of the victims died.

"There is some skepticism about the numbers reported by the King/Drew team," the article continued. "The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the Los Angeles Police Department — which serve a vastly larger area — reported only about half a dozen deaths in the same period … Other hospitals contacted by The Times … reported few cases."

King/Drew handles a lot more gunshot cases than other L.A. hospitals. But the King/Drew doctors also used fairly liberal criteria to identify falling-bullet victims (no gunshot heard or weapon seen, wound consistent with bullet falling from above, etc.). Given how confused trauma victims and witnesses often are about what happened, the numbers reported are probably high.

Datum 3. Still, the question isn't how many people get injured or killed by falling bullets, it's whether such things are possible at all. On further investigation, it appears the 60 foot-pound injury threshold cited by Hatcher may be misleading — a falling bullet's kinetic energy (foot pounds) alone isn't a good predictor of the speed it needs to inflict a wound. B. N. Mattoo (Journal of Forensic Sciences, 1984) has proposed an equation relating mass and bullet diameter that seems to do a better job. Experiments on cadavers and such have shown, for example, that a .38 caliber revolver bullet will perforate the skin and lodge in the underlying tissue at 191 feet per second and that triple-ought buckshot will do so at 213 feet per second.

Mattoo's equation predicts that Hatcher's .30 caliber bullet, which has a small diameter in relation to its weight, will perforate the skin at only 124 feet per second. It's easy to believe such a bullet falling at 300 feet per second could kill you, especially if it struck you in the head. In fact, maybe I need to rethink my dismissive comments about the danger of throwing a penny off the Empire State Building, although I still think the penny's tumbling in the updrafts would render it harmless.

So there you have it, Middle Eastern men and gang bangers. Shooting guns randomly into the air has a high probability of being dangerous. Let's have no more of it, eh?
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LWpianistin
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HOLY CARP!!!
My family never shoots into the air.
And how are you today?
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Piano*Dad
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Mikhailoh
Dec 21 2011, 06:24 AM
It is. The gun owner is an idiot. You don't fire off into nothing like that.
Tell that to folks in the Middle East ..... :whome:


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kluurs
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Fulla-Carp
People do stupid things - I suspect every one of us has done something stupid enough to take the life of another - or certainly ourselves - whether driving distracted or too fast for conditions or what have you. Most people with children have a couple of stories that changed their hair color. I have a friend who was getting her infant out of the car and into her carriage - when carriage and baby went down the driveway - and across a two way street. She was sprinting after the carriage (steep driveway) went across both lanes of traffic - but for the grace of God...but everything was OK. Child is grown up.

Yup, stupid to shoot in the air - but probably figured he was in the middle of nowhere and what are the chances?? Incredibly sad story. As for the "stupid" guy - what a horrible thing to have to live with.
Edited by kluurs, Dec 21 2011, 10:41 AM.
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
Yes, he has to live with something awful. As do the girl's parents and family. But I still contend that firing a weapon when you don't know what you are shooting at and have no idea where the round will end up is just flat out stupid - utterly irresponsible.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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Kincaid
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HOLY CARP!!!
The story refers to the shooter as a "gun-cleaner". I therefor figured his shot was an accident. With a muzzle loader I'm not sure there is anyway to unload it without firing it. If this was an Amish fellow, then I guess you probably need to keep your muzzle loader loaded because it isn't much good unless you are faced by a redcoat walking across a long field. So, still stupid I suppose and I guess he should have fired the gun into the ground to make sure it was safe to clean. Even that could be scary if you don't know if it is loaded. The pan would flash and nothing might come out of the barrel if there is a misfire. Then you think, "Oh, it wasn't loaded" and you go about cleaning it while a tiny spark smolders and then flashes in the pinhole and BOOM! you have a bullet coming out of your gun that hopefully is aimed in some safe direction.
Edited by Kincaid, Dec 21 2011, 11:43 AM.
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
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Kincaid
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HOLY CARP!!!
I am surprised that the ball from a muzzle loader (heavy but pretty slow moving I'd think) was enough to kill. I am even more surprised that it went 1.5 miles to it's target. I had no idea a muzzle loader could shoot that far. Maybe it was a modern target shooting/hunting muzzle loader as maybe they have better ballistics these days.
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
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Improviso
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HOLY CARP!!!
Kincaid
Dec 21 2011, 11:45 AM
I am surprised that the ball from a muzzle loader (heavy but pretty slow moving I'd think) was enough to kill. I am even more surprised that it went 1.5 miles to it's target.
I saw that too. I mean, the longest recorded sniper kill is in the 1.5 mile range. (2707 yards)
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Kincaid
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HOLY CARP!!!
And "target" was a bad choice of words.

Interesting discussion on this on shooting forum.

http://www.yellowbullet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=436515
Edited by Kincaid, Dec 21 2011, 11:59 AM.
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
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Kincaid
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HOLY CARP!!!
Can anyone do the math?

http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/vectors/u3l2e.cfm

I did find a modern muzzle loader (a Savage) that uses smokeless powder and fires a .50 caliber Hornady SST/ML bullet that is a conical sabot (looks pretty wicked) and claims 2300 feet per second and 3000 lbs of impact force. The ballistics would be a lot worse if it was some old Civil War piece shooting a round ball.
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
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Copper
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Shortstop

Deadeye Dick.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadeye_Dick
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Deadeye Dick is a novel only Kurt Vonnegut could have written - Rudy took a rifle up to the top of the cupola at his family's most unusual residence, fired it randomly, and unknowingly shot a pregnant woman miles away right between the eyes while she was vacuuming - thus did Rudy receive the nickname Deadeye Dick.

The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy
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Jolly
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Geaux Tigers!
Y'all need to spend less time in the physics lab and a bit more time killing things.

Much of the kinetic energy bally-hoo depends on the siren call of speed. Now, don't get me wrong, I like a fast-mover as much as the next guy, but I'd rather get hit by a marshmallow zipping along at 500 ft/sec, than an M1 Abrams moving at 1 ft/sec.

A typical .50 cal muzzleloader bullet is going to be 325g and up. Fairly flat meplat, not much ogive. In short, a heavy, flat bullet which tends to impart a lot of hurt over a decent area.

So, we've got a heavy bullet. A flatter bullet which delivers more knock-down than the spire- point favoring mass x velocity chart would suggest.

Think more in terms of Taylor's chart, and it makes more sense.

Lastly, google up Dixon's shot at Adobe Walls.
The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros
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