Mom Killed At Paintball Birthday Party

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Mom Killed At Paintball Birthday Party


An accident with a paintball gun left a mother dead on her son's 10th birthday, after the paintball battle had drawn to a close.

Colette Contois was killed instantly when the carbon dioxide canister that powered the gun of one of her son's friends unexpectedly separated from the weapon and hit her in the back of the head.

"Our whole lives changed as we know it," said her husband, Mark, who buried his wife nine days after the birthday party. Most paintball players don't know of the potential deadly danger of the canisters.
That sucks. :(

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/Living/Paintball_death_040228-1.html
 
Well it was freak accident. She could have just as easily died from slipping and hitting her head on sidewalk.
 
I have played a LOT of paintball...9 years worth of it....I have seen this ONCE...and not with a CO2 bottle, but with a 3000psi compressed air bottle....

and let me tell you, they TAKE OFF..:eek:
 
That's a damn shame, there's really no way one can prepare for a freak accident like that.

These things are no more inherently dangerous than an a gas torch bottle.

I've personally seen a full size 3,000psi ~100lb nitrogen tank fall, have valve knocked completely off, then take off. Clean through a 2-foot-thick cinderblock wall, and keep accelerating. I don't belive it was EVER found!

In comparison, these CO2 bottles are only ~800psi at the most, and weigh a pound or two.
 
I would guess that a CO2 bottle coming off of a paint ball gun is probably negligence rathen than a freak accident. I don't think it would come off if properly attached.
 
Statistically, paintball is a safer sport than golf, tennis, etc.... so do not construe this story and think that paintball or it's equipment are inherently dangerous....PEOPLE are dangerous....dangerously stupid...it is them you have to worry about.
 
I heard there was a defective part that allowed this to happen.

People die in freakish accidents that nobody ever sees coming.

We could post a thousand of them - it sucks, but what sucks more is when it generates legislation...
 
The canisters themselves have self-sealing valves that prevent this sort of thing. Something just went horribly wrong. Negligence alone can't do it (you can't be retarted enough to cause this to happen, something physically failed.)
 
Quick, someone start drafting up the legslation wording so that we can get these dangerous things off the street right away!!!

Just wait, you'll see soon enough.

GT
 
This happened a couple of weeks ago. The footage indicated that someone had installed an anti-siphon tube in the CO2 tank and failed to use red loctite when reinstalling the valve.

I've already read on some of the paintball forums that some PB shops have ceased to offer anti-siphon tube installation.
 
an anti syphon tube by itself WILL NOT cause this to happen...However, an inexperienced person reassembling the bottle after the tube install MAY cause this...

I have intalled a dozen of them....nothing inherently wrong with the tube itself.
 
I used to play a LOT of paintball, and will agree that no matter how retarded you are, this is an impossibility with properly functioning equipment.

I bet the tank separated from the valve. This would indicate that someone didn't put the tank back together correctly, not that one of the kids or parents screwed up.
 
SOG- From what i can tell it was a full sized tank, which would make it worse for all involved- a 5-15 pound chunk of metal ramming into somebody's head would not be pretty.

Seems like it was probably rental equitment, which is known in the paintball community to be in HORRIBLE shape. Probably the anti-syphon thing like somebody mentioned, or maybe the wear and tear of being rental effed it up badly.
 
It seemed to me it was the brass pin valve that shot out of the tank, not the tank itself, that struck the woman. Not that it matters. It was a freak accident. Still haven't read an explanation of how the installation of an anti-siphon tube caused it. Maybe they cross-threaded the valve when reassembling? And/or blocked the vent-hole that most valves have down on the threads.
 
In the footage, the brass valve and associated anti-siphon was still attached to the paintgun (some Spyder varient). Of course, that indicates that the kid was trying to unscrew the tank and valve from the gun and failed to notice that the valve was stuck in the ASA while the tank was unscrewing from the valve.

I've seen an alarming number (>2) of rental tanks begin to unscrew from the valve.

IIRC, the tank was in the 16-20oz range.

I've done several of these anti-siphon tubes myself. Although they're comically easy to do right, not using red loctite between the valve and tank can allow something like this to happen.
 
destructo, all of the valves i have ever seen or used, have a vent hole halfway up the threads. This would allow the tank to decompress way before the valve could be unscrewed all the way.
 
destructo, all of the valves i have ever seen or used, have a vent hole halfway up the threads. This would allow the tank to decompress way before the valve could be unscrewed all the way.
Click to expand...
All of the ones I have are that way, too, but that vent hole often gets plugged with loctite.

Purely speculation, but the kid may have mistaken the venting of CO2 through that emergency relief hole as being the typical shot you get when unscrewing a tank from the ASA and acccelerated his unscrewing rather than investigating.
 
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