Camp Shelby Shooting

SHOOTING AT CAMP SHELBY - MP ON ROUTINE CHECK OF NORTH GATE HIT IN CHEST BY ONE ROUND - BULLETPROOF VEST STOPS SLUG MASSIVE HUNT LAUNCHED FOR UNIDENTIFIED INTRUDER - ID OF SHOT MP NOT RELEASED

It was nearly twelve midnight on Friday, Jan. 20, at Camp Shelby, Miss., when a military policeman was shot while on routine patrol. His bulletproof vest stopped the slug and saved his life.

The unidentified MP was rushed to Forrest County General Hospital as a precaution. He was later released.

Officials at the largest National Guard training facility east of the Mississippi River are tight-lipped about who might have tried to kill the military policeman.

The gunshot came out of the dark and the attacker fled the scene. Sources say the incident could range from someone trying to steal scrap metal, all the way up to a possible terrorist incident. One thing is for sure. Whoever got off the shot, which struck the police officer in the chest, fully intended to kill the MP.

Investigators say the shooting took place at the North Gate, which begins at the southern boundary of the city of Hattiesburg.

The area on the 134,820 acre installation is usually fairly quiet late at night, with only a National Guard building and vehicle park in the immediate vicinity.

Both the Forrest County Sheriff's Dept. and the Army's CID are investigating. No word yet on whether or not the FBI has joined the search.

It doesn’t matter if they patrol in pairs; on a dark or moonless night in the middle of nowhere locating the source of the gunfire can be very difficult. When I was a missile launch officer I had a two-man team guarding a minuteman site that had sensor problems. One called me up in the launch control center in the middle of the night, very frantic, and told me that someone was shooting at them but they could not see where the firing was coming from. It was all that I could do to keep him and his partner from randomly returning fire at a target they could not see. After I got them calmed down and got the response teams and local sheriffs out to the site they found a drunken North Dakota cowboy on a hillside in some brush who thought that it would be fun to scare the airmen guarding the site. He didn’t think it was so much fun when he had a dozen M-16s pointed at his head and a boot on his back. He was lucky that they couldn’t see him in dark night on that featurless hill because they might have gotten lucky and hit him but worse they might have shot at a truck or car coming down the county road. It might have been on purpose or it might have been benign, some idiot out hunting possum, racoons or some other wildlife. You can’t always see who is shooting at you and if you can’t see them then shooting into the blackness can highlight you and get you killed or some innocent person who might be in the area.

Ping; here’s an interesting one. Just read about this elsewhere, and of course it was already here.

Why do I immediately think “Muzzie probe”?

Naah. Probably just another case of workplace violence.

When I was in Europe with a special weapons ordnance company one of our dog handler MP’s was shot at one night. He immediately turned his dog loose (use of deadly force). The person(s) shooting at him had propped up the perimeter chain link and crawled onto the depot. When they ran back and rolled under the fence they knocked the supports propping it up down so the dog could not follow them. The MI and CID folks found the tree the bullet had hit and figured it missed the dog handler by just inches. No vests or even helmets, just BDUs and a soft cap. It was 9mm, but would still have really spoiled his day.

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