Ezell Ford autopsy report released

[Derec]

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.

After just a ricochet, yes. After going through some flesh and two ribs and then ricocheting, not so much. As to "hundreds of feet", a ricocheting bullet loses its shape and aerodynamic stability and would thus lose kinetic energy and speed much faster than an intact one.

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?

Don't know.

As to the Edsel Ford case, is there any real doubt as to whether he attacked the police officer before getting shot? The article says they had a hard time finding witnesses, but there could be physical evidence.

 

[Deepak]

After just a ricochet, yes. After going through some flesh and two ribs and then ricocheting, not so much. As to "hundreds of feet", a ricocheting bullet loses its shape and aerodynamic stability and would thus lose kinetic energy and speed much faster than an intact one.

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?

Don't know.

As to the Edsel Ford case, is there any real doubt as to whether he attacked the police officer before getting shot? The article says they had a hard time finding witnesses, but there could be physical evidence.

Shooting Illustrated conducted a test where a bullet went through an 8 inch block of gelatin still retained about 350 - 450 fps. Depending on the angle that could be a fairly large area in which to look for a fairly small object.

http://www.shootingillustrated.com/index.php/32672/overpenetration/

 

[coloradoatheist]

What would happen if the two were rolling on the ground and if the assailant and the officer or just the assailant was at slight angle to the ground? A bullet fired from the back and going through the body would then be in the air and go anywhere.

 

[Bronzeage]

As to the Edsel Ford case, is there any real doubt as to whether he attacked the police officer before getting shot? The article says they had a hard time finding witnesses, but there could be physical evidence.

Edsel Ford died of natural causes.

 

[Davka]

As to the Edsel Ford case, is there any real doubt as to whether he attacked the police officer before getting shot? The article says they had a hard time finding witnesses, but there could be physical evidence.

Edsel Ford died of natural causes.

Ford Edsel died of ugliness.

 

[Derec]

Shooting Illustrated conducted a test

Do they also have a swimsuit edition?

where a bullet went through an 8 inch block of gelatin still retained about 350 - 450 fps. Depending on the angle that could be a fairly large area in which to look for a fairly small object.

Which is maybe a third of the muzzle velocity and thus 1/9 of the original kinetic energy. The ballistic gel is supposed to simulate soft tissue (most specifically muscle) and the over-penetration test makes sense as it deals with the worst case scenario of a through-and-through shot that doesn't get additionally slowed down by bone. But in this case we have two ribs that were hit as well as the ground, so the bullet would have lost even more energy and speed at each turn.

 

[Derec]

Edsel Ford died of natural causes.

My bad. But "Ezell" is similar to "Edsel". I wonder if it's just a coincidence.

 

[Keith&Co.]

What would happen if the two were rolling on the ground and if the assailant and the officer or just the assailant was at slight angle to the ground?

That's what i was wondering.
ksen's complaints seem to assume that the line between shoulders of both people were parallel to each other and parallel to the ground.

Last time i knocked someone to the ground, i hit them with my shoulder. The line between my shoulders was at a significant angle from theirs for most of the time after that. A shot to my left side, aiming up to and out of my right, would have been a loft into the distance.

 

[Davka]

What would happen if the two were rolling on the ground and if the assailant and the officer or just the assailant was at slight angle to the ground?

That's what i was wondering.
ksen's complaints seem to assume that the line between shoulders of both people were parallel to each other and parallel to the ground.

Last time i knocked someone to the ground, i hit them with my shoulder. The line between my shoulders was at a significant angle from theirs for most of the time after that. A shot to my left side, aiming up to and out of my right, would have been a loft into the distance.

Yeah, I don't think it's fair to expect clear-headed reasoning when wrestling with an assailant.

What is more telling about this incident is the fact that a significant minority of Americans have developed such a negative view of the police that they no longer believe any explanation for such shootings, other than "cops are assholes." This is not the result of propaganda, it's the result of years of personal experience.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

Yeah, I wasn't meaning to say that a ricochet would never be dangerous. They were tackling a specific case of it bouncing off three objects and returning and they were only using a handgun.

- - - Updated - - -

What would happen if the two were rolling on the ground and if the assailant and the officer or just the assailant was at slight angle to the ground? A bullet fired from the back and going through the body would then be in the air and go anywhere.

Yeah, I was thinking along these lines--being on top doesn't mean perfectly aligned like they were having sex.

 

[Davka]

Yeah, I was thinking along these lines--being on top doesn't mean perfectly aligned like they were having sex.

Wow, do you ever have a boring sex life!

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What would happen if the two were rolling on the ground and if the assailant and the officer or just the assailant was at slight angle to the ground? A bullet fired from the back and going through the body would then be in the air and go anywhere.

Yeah, I was thinking along these lines--being on top doesn't mean perfectly aligned like they were having sex.

But there are restrictions for where the guy can be in order to be shot from behind by the guy he is on top of.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Yeah, I was thinking along these lines--being on top doesn't mean perfectly aligned like they were having sex.

But there are restrictions for where the guy can be in order to be shot from behind by the guy he is on top of.

But if the assailant is at a 45 degree angle from the cop on the ground than reach for his gun on the side of the cop along would also be in the back of the assailant and the bullet would be fired into the air somewhere. The autopsy report would have been more conlusive against the cops version if all three shots had been fired at a distance instead of the one being fired directly into the guy at point blank.

 

[bilby]

Yeah, I was thinking along these lines--being on top doesn't mean perfectly aligned like they were having sex.

Wow, do you ever have a boring sex life!

I did NOT want that mental image. Pass the mind-bleach.

 

[Bronzeage]

Yeah, I was thinking along these lines--being on top doesn't mean perfectly aligned like they were having sex.

Wow, do you ever have a boring sex life!

Yeah, in reverse pinwheel, the bullet would have missed both of them.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah, I was thinking along these lines--being on top doesn't mean perfectly aligned like they were having sex.

Wow, do you ever have a boring sex life!

I was thinking about rotation around a vertical axis. It's pretty hard to have sex at a rotation angle not near zero (or 180 in the case of the woman.) Of course you can have sex without being aligned on the other two axes. However, in one case I would describe that as laying across and in the other I wouldn't describe it as laying at all.