8 year old girl shot in Berkley

[Connery]

I have been up there a number of times, no way this was an accident. Pretty stupid....unreal.

The bigger question is where were you when this occurred?

I was....I was....shining the Deans shoes

OK now we can move on to find out what idiot shot his load without looking who it would hit.

 

[freedombecki]

A lot of coaches in schools are archers because some schools still have archery on their list of competencies in athletics, plus tribal people practice archery skills to maintain identity. Some hunters hunt using only bows and arrows rather than guns. I think millions of Americans have archery equipment somewhere in their homes, but this was apparently an event where there were more than one school represented on the field trip.

It's too bad one little girl was hit with an errant missile so to speak. I'm not sure if it was an accident or bad judgment. If another school child did this because he found some equipment in the baggage compartment of the bus left over from an athletic competition... who knows? Juvenile issues aren't always noised about.

If only...

Arrow and the Song, The

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.



Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

[whitehall]

Shit happens every day throughout the greatest Country in the world and thanks to the internet many minor incidents become national and often political issues.

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

An archer happened to be on the scene...how convenient.

"Geoff Vassallo, 51, of Mariposa, who was accompanying students on another field trip, said he had been standing near the whale and saw the girl moments after she was shot.

"She was pretty calm. She was crying a little bit. She said, 'Oh, it hurts,' " Vassallo said. "One of the adults was comforting her, waiting for the emergency personnel to get here."

Vassallo, who is himself an archer, estimated that the arrow was 28 inches long. Archers use arrows of varying lengths depending on their height, and the one that hit the girl was made for an "average adult," he said.

Arrow hits girl at Lawrence Hall of Science - SFGate

 

[MikeK]

An archer happened to be on the scene...how convenient.

"Geoff Vassallo, 51, of Mariposa, who was accompanying students on another field trip, said he had been standing near the whale and saw the girl moments after she was shot.

"She was pretty calm. She was crying a little bit. She said, 'Oh, it hurts,' " Vassallo said. "One of the adults was comforting her, waiting for the emergency personnel to get here."

Vassallo, who is himself an archer, estimated that the arrow was 28 inches long. Archers use arrows of varying lengths depending on their height, and the one that hit the girl was made for an "average adult," he said.

Arrow hits girl at Lawrence Hall of Science - SFGate

As with most investigations of this kind conflicting information abounds.

Above we have a fellow who says the girl was hit by a 28" arrow, which conflicts with the following:

(Excerpt)

Update, 4:30 p.m. Authorities said the arrow recovered in Tuesday morning’s shooting incident appears to be a type that would have been used with a crossbow. “It’s shorter than the typical arrow would be that’s used with a bow,” said Lt. Marc DeCoulode of UCPD. Girl shot with apparent crossbow arrow at museum | Berkeleyside

(Close)

The Lieutenant is right about the crossbow bolt (proper name) being shorter than an arrow. The average arrow is between 28 and 30 inches, whereas a crossbow bolt is typically 10 to 12 inches long, much thicker and much heavier.

Why is this important? The maximum range of a crossbow bolt is considerably shorter than that of an arrow shot from a conventional bow. This means if a crossbow was used, and the bolt retained sufficient energy to penetrate, the shooter must necessarily have been somewhere within 50 - 75 yards, maximum. But the average hunting or target bow of 50 to 70 pound draw-weight could easily send an arrow two hundred yards or more with a high angle shot and still retain penetrating energy.