What ammo injured Woods?

Cal Skinner has a good article on McHenry County Blog with information about the ammunition supposedly in use at the range on March 15, when Deputy Eric Woods was injured. You can read it and see the images with the article at www.mchenrycountyblog.com/

I added a comment there as soon as I read the article. Cal had filed a FOIA request for information about the ammunition in use that day. The FOIA response showed purchase 9mm, .40 and .223 ammo.

It was Dep. Hart who fired the unlucky round that caught Woods in four places, reportedly causing a "gusher" wound to his left leg. In Hart's March 16, 2010 "Departmental Correspondence" (supplementary incident report) he indicates that he fired "one round of 5.56 cal." ammo.

So just what ammo was Hart using?

While he didn't provide a distance-to-target measurement, he did write that he was about two feet to Woods' right. Hart was the fifth deputy into the room, and no one before him had shot on the vicious-dog target. That target was just inside the door to the shoot room, and only about four feet inside the room. Since Hart was in the room when he fired, he would have been only about two feet from the vicious-dog target, which was mounted on a steel frame.

What this represents is sloppy, careless range management and a disregard of safe range activity, even for a SWAT exercise.

On April 7, the Sheriff's Department responded to a FOIA Request from me and replied that there were no reports from Deputy Woods, Sgt. Embry (ranking sergeant in the shoot room) or Lt.Miller (ranking command officer at the range at the time of Woods' injury).

Maybe it's time to file a new request and find out whether these three have now had time to write and submit their reports.

Was Dep. Hart using a frangible load? I'm sure by now Dep. Woods knows. The range accident wasn't an accident at all. If any one of those targets could talk, it would have said, "An injury is about to occur, and here is exactly how it is going to happen."