Errant Bullet Travels 1.5 Miles, Kills Amish Girl

WLWT ^ | 12:01 pm EST December 20, 2011 | WLWT

[TSgt]

FREDERICKSBURG, Ohio -- An Ohio sheriff says a man cleaning his muzzle-loading rifle accidentally shot and killed a 15-year-old Amish girl driving a horse-drawn buggy more than a mile away.

Holmes County Sheriff Timothy Zimmerly said Tuesday that the accident occurred Thursday night when a man fired his loaded rifle to clean it. He says the victim, Rachel Yoder of Fredericksburg, was nearly 1.5 miles away when she was shot in the head.

No charges have been filed.

Yoder was shot while traveling to her home in adjacent Wayne County, between Columbus and Akron. She was riding alone after attending a Christmas party for employees, most under 18 years old, who work at an Amish produce farm.

[Henderson]

Yes, I have seen young Amish women driving buggies before. I go to Lancaster often for Kauffman’s apple cider.

[Okieshooter]

Modern muzzle loaders can easily shoot a 275 gr 45 cal bullet at 2200 fps which according to my balllistic program will go 2500 yds when fired at an angle of 12.5 degrees and will still be traveling near 400 fps on impact.

Bottom line is no matter what the firearm always fire into a backstop. I unload my muzzle loader by firing into my target on my range at home.

Also there are muzzle loader bullets such as Powerbelts that do engage the rifleing an could be identified as from a specific gun.

[Okieshooter]

See post 122

[redgolum]

Violation of the ten commandments of gun saftey.

Know what your backstop is. Never shoot an unaimed shot.

[NonValueAdded]

Who in the Hell “cleans” a gun by firing it?

Maybe not for a modern muzzle loader but that surely was the way to clear (not clean) a flintlock back in 1775. Paul Revere used that fact to help spook the British while they were interrogating him. During the questioning, shots could be heard and when asked about their meaning, Revere convinced his captor, Major Mitchel of the 5th Regiment, that the countryside was being alarmed [every Middlesex village and farm]. It was actually the arriving militia clearing their firearms before entering Buckman Tavern on Lexington Green.

That bit of history does not absolve this modern-day shooter of the crime of negligent homicide, however

[green iguana]

A .22 long rifle can go a mile and a half, easily.

[redgolum]

If it was a sabot round, it won't be that easy. The grooves from the rifling will be on the spent sabot, not the bullet.

[Sherman Logan]

And as someone who has shot firearms all my life, I am telling you that CSI is BULLSH*T if they portray "bullet-matching" techniques as applicable to muzzle-loading arms.

I believe it is possible.

Firing a minie ball through a muzzle-loader would presumably leave rifling marks in the ball that could be used in ballistic forensics. Not commonly done, but not impossible.

[Know et al]

There was a case about two or three years ago where two men were firing into a lake. The projectile skipped off the water and struck a young boy that was standing on the opposite side of the lake. The young boy was standing beside his grandfather holding his hand. He was killed instantly.

I never heard the outcome of the incident. I don’t recall where it happened either.

[catfish1957]

Mile and a half? That seems to be a stretch.

[JudgemAll]

... a muzzle loader at that...

[beebuster2000]

website on max range of firearms.

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/DomnaAntoniadis.shtml

looks like around 5 miles for a 30-06

[dblshot]

There has always been a way to unload a muzzle loader without firing. It's called a worm. It screws onto the end of your ramrod and you use it to pull the ball. Many moons ago I reported on a ship and was being oriented to watchstander duties. We were taking soundings of fuel tanks through a pipe from the main deck that reaches almost to the bottom of the tank. The Petty Officer breaking me in said you have to add six inches to the readings on some of these tanks because the brass striker broke off the sounding tapes before and is still down there. I said why don't you get it out and he laughed, said we'll have to wait to drydocking and gas freeing the tanks to get in there. I made one of these little worms with coat hanger wire dropped it down and snagged the broken tapes no proplem fishing out the six inch long bobbers along with the tape. They looked at me like I was some kind of freak when I broght them all 3 bobbers in about 30 minutes of work.

[trebb]

I own a couple of black powder rifles, and there is NO way that they have the capability of shooting a mile and a half (unless you're in an airplane and shooting straight down).

A .22 LR will travel close to a mile. Your high power rifles may not be suitable to hit what you aim at that far away, but they will toss the slug out there.

[JudgemAll]

A parabollic bullet trajectory slows to near terminal velocity, not the direct fire one which obviously still has kinetics despite having less potential energy and power developed.

[catfish1957]

Another question for you ballistics physicists..... Say the projectile did reach 1 1/2 miles, wouldn't enough energy had disapated from the shot to the point where she probably would have only gotten the force of free fall of a small slug from a few hundred feet high?

This still doesn't really add up.

[trebb]

Black powder? 1.5 mi? Sounds unlikely

Under normal circumstances it is a bit unlikely. But we don't know if he was using black powder of the recommended load, or over-cooking it, possibly even using smokeless powder with too heavy a load. A .22 LR will travel about a mile at the right angle of elevation.

[buffaloguy]

“Second, is it possible for a muzzle loader to shoot more than a mile? It seems unlikely, but I don’t know for sure.”

It does indeed. With ball, about 1450 yards at 1370 Feet per second, possibly more as I had to estimate the Ballistic coefficient,I used .10). With 440 grain bullet, 2800 yards at 950 feet per second.

Having shot muzzle loading rifles for years the numbers seem to me to be correct.

1873 - .45-70 70 grains black powder, 405 grain bullet....3500 yards, accurately.

Black powder rifles are more capable than most people think.

[jonno]

...they would hit the ground at the same time.

Assuming of course, a flat earth?

ducks!
8^)

[Okieshooter]

See my post 122. Terminal velocity of 400 fps would be about half of muzzle velocity of say a .45 acp which IMO could penetrate and kill.