Autopsy X-Ray Shows Lack of Penetration

[Low Budget Shooter]

Dear THR,

Yesterday I came across an autopsy x-ray from a criminal who was shot several times with .40 S&W and .223 Rem before being incapacitated. Here is the link (warning---graphic content):

http://concealedcarryholsters.org/wp-content/files/FBI-Analysis-on-PA-Police-Shootout.pdf

My observation: In x-rays 1 and 2, there are multiple bullets shown, both .40 S&W and .223 that obviously expanded as designed in the first few inches of flesh, then came to rest against bones without breaking them, apparently because the parachute effect of the expansion reduced their velocity to the point where the bones (which God designed to be strong) stopped them. You can see that officers in this incident achieved at least two much-desired CNS hits and one hit that was directed at the heart, but the slowed-down expanding bullets were stopped by the bones from doing much damage to the spinal cord or the heart. There is also a bullet that seems to have hit the pelvis without damaging it.

I understand all about the advantages of expanding bullets, and the FBI minimum penetration, etc. But here is an actual x-ray from an actual incident where use of top-notch JHP ammo in a rifle and in one of the more potent handgun calibers apparently caused well-aimed shots to fail, where it seems that simple FMJ or SWC may well have shocked or severed that spinal cord and/or pierced the heart.

Of course the famous 9mm JHP that didn't reach the heart early in the Miami FBI shoot-out sits there in the background.

What does everyone think about this?

Thanks!

LBS

 

[SharpsDressedMan]

Compromise. It appears from your account that the bullets did not penetrate THROUGH the suspect, but went into him and stopped. That CAN be a good thing for police shootings: all the energy was delivered to the target, and no bystanders were injured by a through-and-through shot. And, the suspect WAS stopped (at least long enough to get an X-ray). We do not know how fast he went down from the hits sustained.

 

[Low Budget Shooter]

SDM,

Down the page the info is given that the fight lasted 3.5 minutes, the BG stopped shooting when his right arm was broken by a shot, and he still had to be fought to get him in the handcuffs.

LBS

 

[earplug]

Criminals equal Dangerous game

That's my opinion. If big lead projectiles or solids are used for dangerous game. I'm using them in my revolver. The ability to penetrate and break bones and reach inside a body and mess things up.
Hand guns don't have any more shock then there recoil.

 

[NG VI]

My question is why even bother handcuffing him? Why not just remove the weapon and keep an eye on him while waiting for the ambulance?


Didn't this turn out to have all kinds of problems with it? didn't it turn out that the medical examiner mismeasured a bunch of the wounds?

 

[notasfancy]

Poor placement, that's all.
Probably some crack or some other drugs in the system that makes folks inert from trauma a little longer.

 

[Zerodefect]

Poor placement, poor shooting.

"assailent was shot 17 times with 11 rounds exiting."
"1 inch penetration"

They harp on only 1" pen, yet 11 rounds exit? So they just grazed this guy? Was he in a car or something?

Misleading report is misleading. The only redeeming feature of that report is the last lesson learned: shot placement, shot placement, possum, shot placement, shot placement.

 

[winchester1886]

In the 90's I attended a course called Street survival in that there was a subject on a steel table the subject had been hit 33 times by 9mm police bullets before he went down. Most of the hits were in the torso.

 

[JR47]

I ran a call in the late 80s, the subject was a male, late 20s, about 180-190 lbs. He had been shot center-of-mass eight times with 124 gr. +P ammo in 9x19. We had to physically restrain him to enable transport via helicopter to a Level 1 Trauma Unit. He survived.

The rounds here were a mix of through and through, and expanded and stayed internally. Some people don't seem to be affected by gunshots as much as others.

One case, or even two, aren't a large enough sample for any statistical trends. Those who would draw any such trending are incorrect.

 

[ZeSpectre]

As I've commented before... there are really only three things that will stop a human being every time regardless of attitude, drugs, pain tolerance, and so forth.

Real Stopping Power

Other things might work, these things will work (if you can manage them)

 

[Slamfire]

Tattoo’s which say “that which does not kill you make you stronger”, and “Live by the Gun, die by the gun”, show that this perpetrator really had an attitude.

Someone who is enacting his ninja movie fantasy combat dreams is going to be hard to stop.

You either have to break them down structurally, or bleed them out.

This one did the first before dying from the second.

Regardless of opinions on "stopping power", anything, and I mean anything that bleeds enough will die. Just takes time.

Big holes in and big holes out improve the drainage.

 

[Manco]

In this report the FBI analysts seem extremely skeptical of the claims being made, and whether they are right or wrong I don't blame them because it's difficult to believe that the pistol bullets expanded so quickly and then stopped after so little penetration. The investigators attributed the apparently poor terminal ballistic performance to the bullets having to penetrate either the windshield or rear window of a car, but I seriously doubt that such explosive expansion would be possible (assuming that it is possible at all) if the bullets had been significantly slowed due to barriers. In addition, laminated auto glass typically tears bullets up pretty good, but these bullets seem to be in pretty decent shape to me. The one lodged in the perp's neck is interesting because it apparently did not expand yet it still penetrated extremely little.

I've seen and heard about a lot of weird things happening in actual shootings, and this shouldn't be surprising because the human body is not homogeneous like a block of ballistic gelatin. But even so, this is by far the weirdest case, and I don't have an explanation for what we're apparently seeing. All I know is that this is not anywhere near the normal behavior of 180 grain .40 S&W Gold Dots in other actual shootings. Clearly there must be some underlying cause for what was reported and what might have actually happened, but I don't buy the rumor that this load is generally and almost completely ineffective.

My observation: In x-rays 1 and 2, there are multiple bullets shown, both .40 S&W and .223 that obviously expanded as designed in the first few inches of flesh, then came to rest against bones without breaking them, apparently because the parachute effect of the expansion reduced their velocity to the point where the bones (which God designed to be strong) stopped them.

Yet the strongest bone that was hit broke all the way through. These bullets also undergo a "parachute effect" in gelatin (in fact, it's usually more pronounced in gelatin than flesh), but still manage to penetrate adequately, as they typically have in other shootings.

Never mind puny humans, do you remember the tiger that escaped from its enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo a few years ago? One of the two .40 S&W JHPs that penetrated its chest cavity broke through a rib and kept on going. All it took was two bullets to kill the big cat (both caused organ trauma). Granted, shot placement was the key in that case, as it always is, but nonetheless both far more than 1" of penetration and penetration through bone were required and achieved against a tiger. Are humans so much tougher?

I understand all about the advantages of expanding bullets, and the FBI minimum penetration, etc. But here is an actual x-ray from an actual incident where use of top-notch JHP ammo in a rifle and in one of the more potent handgun calibers apparently caused well-aimed shots to fail, where it seems that simple FMJ or SWC may well have shocked or severed that spinal cord and/or pierced the heart.

That's why I use the same load the FBI does (180 grain Ranger Bonded/PDX1)--it penetrates deeply for a JHP, slightly exceeding their 18" recommendation when shot through simulated clothing into calibrated ballistic gelatin (12" is, as you pointed out, just a minimum). Whether I'd want even deeper penetration than that, based collectively on the cases I've seen, is still an open question, but I'll stick with the current FBI load for now. I just do not know what to make of the case we're discussing in this thread, though--if that were typical JHP performance in this caliber, then I'd switch to FMJ or hard-cast rounds for sure.

What does everyone think about this?

That something awfully strange is going on here, and we don't know what it is.

Didn't this turn out to have all kinds of problems with it? didn't it turn out that the medical examiner mismeasured a bunch of the wounds?

That's what the FBI analysts seem to be suggesting because they probably can't figure it out, either. That's a pretty serious accusation, but then again these are pretty seriously strange autopsy results that call into question whether a very common type of ammo used by law enforcement is effective AT ALL, as 1" of penetration is practically nothing against humans almost regardless of shot placement. Frankly, I think that even asking such a question is ludicrous if it can kill a tiger.

If this somehow turns out to be a barrier penetration issue after all despite the doubts I expressed above, then that needs to be addressed for those who care about such things (such as law enforcement), but I wouldn't take the report at face value and draw any general conclusions from it.

 

[NG VI]

Poor placement, that's all.
Probably some crack or some other drugs in the system that makes folks inert from trauma a little longer.

The guy tested somewhat positive for marijuana, so in other words, he was clean.


Manco another interesting feature of the bullet lodged in his neck is that it is not only not expanded at all, it is vertical. Doesn't look like a shot that hit him straight-on in the throat at all.

 

[NG VI]

The whole thing is sketchy at best. As the FBI analysts say in the report, there is no way for a 180 grain JHP to perform the way those ones were described as performing. It just isn't a possibility.

Were the officers hand-cycling their pistols, because to get a 180 grain .40 to penetrate only one inch you would have to download it so low it barely made it out of the barrel. No way to achieve that low a level of penetration and function a pistol.

 

[Cosmoline]

I've seen a lot of anecdotal evidence that most "self defense" handgun ammo does not penetrate nearly far enough. Especially now that people are getting bigger. I always carry heavy bullets for the handgun, and I trust sectional density over velocity any day of the week.

 

[Low Budget Shooter]

Thanks for all the replies.

I appreciate the remarks that there's something about this we don't know, such as these rounds going through a barrier first or something like that.

I don't think the "shot placement" comments found the mark, though, because the whole point is that well placed shots didn't have enough oomph left when they reached vital structures to damage them.

As far as the ideas of the BG being very determined, and able to keep functioning despite severe injuries, I would agree, except that the x-rays seem to show that his injuries were not all that severe, because the bullets that found the vital structures in the torso did not damage them.

If a round can penetrate 12-18" in gelatin, or human flesh, how many inches into that penetration does it still have the power to break a bone?

 

[788Ham]

I don't know SlamFire1, about "the big holes in, big holes out improve the drainage." Wouldn't one think that being shot in the throat with a .40 would break his neck and that be the end of it? Appears to me, the bullet possibly hit his adams apple and stopped right there, now I know I wouldn't have a .40 ! The .223's shot at him, maybe the PD needs more training and less spray and pray technique, look like they did their job, big blood vessels in the hip areas. Possibly the shot to ankle was to break him down, naturally, I know that too, but shot placement should have been to his gourd, not his feet!

 

[john5036]

Possibly the shot to ankle was to break him down, naturally, I know that too, but shot placement should have been to his gourd, not his feet!

Well, he did shoot the ankle aiming through underneath a vehicle... (sorry, couldn't resist - I understand your thinking)

There was also a reference to another shooting, where .40 didn't make it through the headrest of a seat. What I didn't comprehend from the presentation is what was the shot distance of the engagement?

 

[nigelcorn]

My observation: In x-rays 1 and 2, there are multiple bullets shown, both .40 S&W and .223 that obviously expanded as designed in the first few inches of flesh, then came to rest against bones without breaking them

I'm not so sure about that. Unless there are other x-ray views somewhere else, you have no idea if those bullets are resting against the bones or not. You are assuming by looking at a straight on (AP) x-ray that the bullet went in the same view you are looking at, and then stopped at the bone. It is just as likely that the bullet went in the side and wasn't anywhere near the spine when it stopped. To read any sort of x-ray, you have to have two perpendicular views so that you can make an educated guess as to where the bullet is in relation to things. With the views posted, you only know where the bullet was in relation to right-left, there is no way to tell depth. Unless I am missing additional information that was posted somewhere else.

I mean, looking at the autopsy photos, for all we know a bullet entered his thigh and traveled 20" up into his torso and came to rest 3" anterior to his spine. Good penetration, looks like decent expansion. My point is we have no idea about the penetration just based on that one view x-ray.

 

[nigelcorn]

And on closer look on the first x-ray, it looks like the bottom outer corner of his C6 vertebrae might have been shattered/broken to some extent. Obviously it is impossible to get a decent read with the quality of the photo posted, but something is going on with that vertebrae.

I think the only take home message from this is that people can survive a lot more than you would give them credit for, not anything about the ammo or caliber used.

 

[Huckelberry75]

I tried to open the link, and it went to a blank page, then locked up my computer. Might watch out for a virus.

 

[JohnKSa]

From the <<GRAPHIC!>> photos in the presentation, it's pretty clear that some of the rounds hit the subject after expanding. That means that they hit something else first and that means that even if we accept the penetration claims at face value they don't mean anything unless we know what the intermediate barrier was that caused the rounds to expand.

The presentation takes quite awhile to download. It doesn't appear to have any malware in it but you'll have to be very patient.

 

[towboat_er]

Its a big file and uses adobe reader to open. No viruses present.

 

[Prosser]

I've long felt that the purpose of HP ammo was to sell it to LEO, government, and get government contract profits on a questionable product.

While I understand the fear of over-penetration, Keith and Skeeter came up with the .41 mag of LEO for a reason.

Most HP ammo is too light for the caliber, and, it does indeed leave most of it's energy in the first 1-5" of penetration. The remaining penetration is questionable.

Maybe those old cowboys that had the Holy Grail at 260 grains and 1000 fps aren't so stupid after all...

Not to mention I have a vest that will stop most of this stuff anyway.

Wonder how well that guy would have stood up to .500 caliber, 1100 fps,
440 grain LFNs?

 

[mes228]

Penetration

There is no substitute for "sufficient" penetration with a handgun. I've read this topic through and will add one thing. I'm no expert but am a life long hunter. In my youth I lived on a farm and carried a .22 magnum pistol 24/7. Not too keen a game law observer in my teens, if it got up and paused a second - I shot it. Rabbits, fox, grouse, deer, groundhog, etc.etc. literally everything that lives in Virginia except black bear. The largest whitetail I've killed (out of the 40 or so) was with a .22 mag Ruger single six. The .22 mag is often considered as an under-performer in every respect and every measurable category. The one thing it does have is "sufficient" penetration. I guess my point is that anything is deadly if the round is in the right spot and theirs sufficient penetration.