Ezell Ford autopsy report released

[ksen]

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ezell-ford-autopsy-20141229-story.html#page=1

The autopsy of Ezell Ford, a mentally ill black man killed by police in South Los Angeles in August, shows he was shot three times -- once in the right side, once in the right back and once in the right arm..

The release of the autopsy Monday marks the first time authorities have provided details about Ford's wounds since his Aug. 11 death.

The gunshot wound on his back showed the surrounding skin had a "muzzle imprint," according to the autopsy, suggesting the shot was made at very close range. The autopsy said the back and side gunshot wounds were fatal.

The officer's story is that Ford walked away from the officer and his partner as they approached him. Ford allegedly hid near some bushes and attacked the officer, pinning the officer to the ground and attempting to get the officer's gun. The officer yelled for help to his partner. During the struggle the officer managed to reach his backup weapon, reached around Ford and shot him in the back.

Why reach around and shoot him in the back? Wouldn't you be worried about shooting yourself if the guy you were going to shoot in the back was on top of you on the ground?

The story doesn't add up.

But I'm sure resident board libertarians derec and loren will show me how the officer's story makes perfect sense.

 

[Bronzeage]

I heard the report which said the officer used his "back up weapon" to shoot Ford in the back. If you are laying on your back, with someone on top of you with chest to chest contact, it would not be possible to get the pistol in a position to fire into them from the front. The muzzle imprint and a bullet fired from a secondary weapon corroborates the policeman's story.

 

[ksen]

Again, you're under the person you are about to shoot in the back and you also don't get shot as the bullet passes through the person you just shot? Or you don't even think that you might also be about to shoot yourself?

 

[ksen]

Page 5 of the autopsy documents linked to in the LA Times story says there was an exit wound and no bullet was recovered.

How did the officer avoid getting hit? And how was a bullet not recovered if it was fired down toward the ground?

 

[Bronzeage]

Again, you're under the person you are about to shoot in the back and you also don't get shot as the bullet passes through the person you just shot? Or you don't even think that you might also be about to shoot yourself?

All good questions which should be answered. The internal trajectory of the bullet and the exit wound should be in the report and this would indicate why the officer did not shoot himself. When reaching around someone, there is a limit to how steep an angle one can hold a pistol. If the bullet's path had been a straight back to front shot, it would make the officer's story less believable.

Why the bullet was not recovered is a question for the investigating team to answer.

 

[ksen]

The trajectory of the bullet through the back:

D. The direction of the wound is back to front and slightly left to right.

E. The wound path enters through the skin, right rib #9 posterior with fracture, right lung, right rib #6 anterior fracture.

Sounds like it should have hit the officer if the officer was directly under him or failing that to at least hit the ground near the officer and be easily recoverable.

 

[Bronzeage]

The trajectory of the bullet through the back:

D. The direction of the wound is back to front and slightly left to right.

E. The wound path enters through the skin, right rib #9 posterior with fracture, right lung, right rib #6 anterior fracture.

Sounds like it should have hit the officer if the officer was directly under him or failing that to at least hit the ground near the officer and be easily recoverable.

Which assumes a straight path through the body, after striking a rib, and assuming your geometry of relative body position is correct.

Can you present a scenario which conforms to your interpretation of the report?

 

[ksen]

What other scenario do you need other than the one provided by the officer? That he was underneath the victim.

 

[Bronzeage]

What other scenario do you need other than the one provided by the officer? That he was underneath the victim.

Pardon my confusion. You said:

Sounds like it should have hit the officer if the officer was directly under him or failing that to at least hit the ground near the officer and be easily recoverable.

It didn't hit the officer and it wasn't recovered. Can you offer a scenario which accounts for this?

 

[ksen]

Yeah, the officers are lying.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

If on the ground, shooting a guy from any angle but up seems terribly risky!

 

[Bronzeage]

Yeah, the officers are lying.

Why didn't you say so in the beginning. We could have saved a couple posts.

If on the ground, shooting a guy from any angle but up seems terribly risky!

This is true, if the gun was purposely aimed and intentionally fired. It's possible the policeman was stricken with terror and fired blindly. He later frames the story to make it sound like a heroic struggle for life.

Do we call this a lie? If the memory of eyewitnesses is not reliable, why should the memory of a participant be given more credit?

 

[ksen]

Why didn't you say so in the beginning. We could have saved a couple posts.

Well, I did say the story didn't add up.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Why didn't you say so in the beginning. We could have saved a couple posts.

If on the ground, shooting a guy from any angle but up seems terribly risky!

This is true, if the gun was purposely aimed and intentionally fired. It's possible the policeman was stricken with terror and fired blindly. He later frames the story to make it sound like a heroic struggle for life.

Do we call this a lie? If the memory of eyewitnesses is not reliable, why should the memory of a participant be given more credit?

But the first two shots came from the other officer according to the article. Only one shot from the defending officer, which was after the other two shots.

I'm having a hard time lining up that narrative, where the man can be shot twice (presumably torso up) so as to not harm the officer on the ground, but then be in a state where a wrap around shot is even possible. He's been shot, so maybe he is folded over now?

That he is shot from the side would seem to follow the narrative. The shot from behind just doesn't make any sense. The only way I see that working is he is shot in the back first, hides, attacks, then shot two more times, but that seems a little too brutal, and the forensic evidence could have shown a blood trail.

 

[Deepak]

The trajectory of the bullet through the back:

D. The direction of the wound is back to front and slightly left to right.

E. The wound path enters through the skin, right rib #9 posterior with fracture, right lung, right rib #6 anterior fracture.

Sounds like it should have hit the officer if the officer was directly under him or failing that to at least hit the ground near the officer and be easily recoverable.

Looking at the photos in the report the gunshot wound was far enough over that it may not have hit the cop. I'm assuming the cop has an average chest size, so if the shooting happened as he described then the bullet would have exited right of Ford's nipple and moving away from the cop's body.

 

[ksen]

And into the ground right next to the officer and yet they couldn't find the bullet.

 

[Bronzeage]

Why didn't you say so in the beginning. We could have saved a couple posts.




This is true, if the gun was purposely aimed and intentionally fired. It's possible the policeman was stricken with terror and fired blindly. He later frames the story to make it sound like a heroic struggle for life.

Do we call this a lie? If the memory of eyewitnesses is not reliable, why should the memory of a participant be given more credit?

But the first two shots came from the other officer according to the article. Only one shot from the defending officer, which was after the other two shots.

I'm having a hard time lining up that narrative, where the man can be shot twice (presumably torso up) so as to not harm the officer on the ground, but then be in a state where a wrap around shot is even possible. He's been shot, so maybe he is folded over now?

That he is shot from the side would seem to follow the narrative. The shot from behind just doesn't make any sense. The only way I see that working is he is shot in the back first, hides, attacks, then shot two more times, but that seems a little too brutal, and the forensic evidence could have shown a blood trail.

I wasn't there, but is someone is laying on top of my buddy, wrestling for a gun, I know I can kick him into next week. He'll wish he had been shot.

As with all the previous cases of concern, the final story will be told by someone who lines up all the pieces and makes sense of it. Even if the two officers were righteous and did everything correct, their memories cannot be taken as facts. This has been shown too many times.

 

[Deepak]

And into the ground right next to the officer and yet they couldn't find the bullet.

A bullet can still have significant speed even after a ricochet. It could be anywhere in the area within hundreds of feet of the shooting.

Japanese audio but it illustrates the effect:
[YOUTUBE]K6NqQfFYb0I[/YOUTUBE]

With that said - I'm not really sure why the bullet being recovered or not is such a big point. What would it tell us about the circumstances of the shooting that the autopsy doesn't?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And into the ground right next to the officer and yet they couldn't find the bullet.

A bullet can still have significant speed even after a ricochet. It could be anywhere in the area within hundreds of feet of the shooting.

Yeah--there was a Mythbusters episode where they tried to ricochet a bullet back to hit the shooter (obviously the gun was being remote controlled.) IIRC it was losing a few hundred mph per ricochet--which means that after one ricochet it was still going pretty darn fast. They did manage to send it back to the gun but it had lost so much energy by then that it wouldn't have done much to them.

With that said - I'm not really sure why the bullet being recovered or not is such a big point. What would it tell us about the circumstances of the shooting that the autopsy doesn't?

It's like the truthers with 9/11--latch onto anything that's not perfectly known as evidence of a cover-up.

 

[Deepak]

They did manage to send it back to the gun but it had lost so much energy by then that it wouldn't have done much to them.

Just to put it out there - that's only the case in some limited circumstances. Any bullet ricocheting at an obtuse angle can still be deadly. Always be sure of what's downrange, and don't count on a sloping berm to stop your bullets.

There's a pretty wild video of a lucky SOB who shoots a steel target with a 50 BMG rifle and the bullet ricochets back, bounces off the ground, and smashes his earphones off of his head.