The Dangers of Shooting On Concrete

[Keith B]

17 year old teen killed by a 'skip round' when the bullet ricocheted after being fired by police at an attacking pit bull. An officer attacked by the pit with a bite to the left knee also suffered an injury from a stray bullet to the right knee.

http://www.fox4news.com/news/263468271-story

[imkopaka]

That story has a whole lot of heartbreak in it. That family and those officers will be forever changed. From the article it doesn't sound like the officers did anything wrong, but it drives home the fact that we have to pay attention to what is behind our target. Hope I am never in that situation.

[rotor]

So how did the officer who got bitten also get shot in the knee? Another "skip round"? Perhaps there is more to this story than skip rounds. Who knows?

[The Annoyed Man]

Just by way of extra information, Palmdale is in California, at the edge of the high Mojave Desert. It is still in Los Angeles County, so it would have been LASD deputies responding. Palmdale is the location of several high profile employers, including Lockheed Martin's "Skunk Works", and it also is home to a number of Edwards AFB personnel. However, it is also a housing overflow market for the greater Los Angeles area. Lots of people who couldn't afford homes anywhere else, were able to afford homes in Palmdale because they were priced so low relative to the California market in general. Consequently, it has some issues attendant to lower income brackets. Also, large parts of the incorporated areas of the city are still more or less undeveloped desert, and there are tons of meth labs out there.

[Liberty]

Let me see if I got this right.
An aggessive dog confrontation.
1 Officer bit and shot.
2 people shot one killed.
Dog was unharmed.

There is a point where one has to look beyond "Bad Luck".

[WTR]

Must be more to the story.

[JustSomeOldGuy]

The posts here got me curious, so I read the news article and then 'walked' the area in Google Maps Street View. So I'm commenting on a hypothetical situation based on information that is both limited and probably significantly incorrect (when does media reporting ever get things accurate), but I'm going to run my big irish mouth anyway. If, as I infer, this went down at 38546 10th St East, then the combination of circumstances was a recipe for disaster. Observing Cooper Rule #4 here would be next to impossible under these conditions.
- 3:47am plus only lighting is a street lamp at driveway entrance equals close to zero visibility of your backstop (interior courtyard)
- concrete central court entirely surrounded by single story residences, with two-story residence behind
- I'm guessing that 1) deputy originally bitten was waiting for medical out on the street by parked units and 2) when backup went into the courtyard after the dog, the dog got between them and the street, so when they re-engaged the dog, they were firing in the direction of the injured officer, their own patrol units, and a public street.

I don't know what resources that department had available at that time, and I have zero law enforcement experience. So postulating essentially from complete ignorance, I have to wonder;
- was a supervisor present? who made the decision to cowboy into a dark box canyon after a dog with guns out in what should have been a no-fire zone under the circumstances? over what was initially just a noise complaint?
- where was animal control with nets and or tranq guns? why weren't they sent in FIRST?
- if you're going to blunder around in a residential box canyon after a pit bull, would a shotgun be a better choice as less likely to carry thru residence walls?
- as someone who bicycles, (sometimes THRU the barrio) I'm familiar with antisocial canines. the plan is, if I have to shoot in a location where I can't control Cooper Rule 4 with respect to surroundings, I'm going to take the dog from contact distance where the only two people in danger are me and the dog, and I can guarantee the dog is my Rule 4 backstop. a 60 pound pit bull is not a small target. If it's coming at you, relative lateral motion of the target is at a minimum.
- got a dead bystander and a cop shot in the knee. So I know at least two shots were fired. I wonder how many more were? And where those rounds went?

Bottom line is, I suspect this particular situation could have been handled a lot better.........

[srothstein]

This story is not possible as written. The two points I have problems with are the "skip" rounds hitting the young man in the chest and the officer in the knee. I may be wrong, but I have always been taught that skipping a round off cement means the round only moves about a foot away from the cement wall or floor. It is called a skip round because it strikes at a shallow angle, much like skipping a flat stone off water requires. If the walls were hard enough to skip the round from at a height to hit the victim in the chest, then the officers could not have been shooting at the dog (unless the victim was in a very unusual position such as laying down outside).

It is possible that the rounds fired were regular high angle ricochet rounds, but then the victim must have been much closer than the news report gives the impression of.

And if the two officers were both firing at the dog, I have to assume they were close to even with each other, based on normal police procedures. How did one officer hit the other or one hit himself? I can see the ricochet off the hard floor hitting the officer in the knee if the dog made a charging attack and was close to biting as the second officer fired. But that does not match the written news report either.

I am basing this off the news story, which may or may not be accurate. There are not known for total accuracy that way.