Yesterday someone forwarded me a story of a woman hugged a cop from behind and somehow set off his gun, killing her. I’m with Uncle that something is awfully fishy about this incident. I’d be curious to know what gun and holster it was, but I can’t imagine any police issue gear is going to spontaneously discharge like that.
UPDATE: From the comments:
Latest info says it was a soft holster that did not cover the trigger. Police Issue M&P 40 in what probably was made for a smaller CCW gun. Trigger was exposed, the woman was “dirty dancing” behind the guy and it went off when she tugged at his waist and grabbed said trigger by accident. She was low to the ground, and the bullet entered lung and now she’s dead.
So basically, a fatal decision on equipment on the part of the officer. Triggers need to be covered!
M&P 40 by all accounts, and a soft IWB holster. No idea if it was a correctly sized holster or not.
Not bloody likely. You would need to pinch the leather in a very specific spot, which is going to be difficult because it’s surrounded by the trigger guard.
Soft IWB’s are a bad idea – I know, I have one I never use – it’s almost impossible to put the gun back in the holster as the top collapse. After playing with it, I’ve decided that I might maybe be able to get the trigger to move if I used something like a pin punch and a fair amount of effort, I’m not convinced I could get the gun to fire.
I’m not buying.
I’m not buying it either. Even if you could get the gun to go off in the holster, how did it hit her? According to the official story, she hugged him from behind. How did this gun fire up towards her heart and lungs?
One story claimed that she did not know the officer. Huh? Who goes around hugging strangers from behind?
This whole thing stinks in my opinion.
Latest info says it was a soft holster that did not cover the trigger. Police Issue M&P 40 in what probably was made for a smaller CCW gun. Trigger was exposed, the woman was “dirty dancing” behind the guy and it went off when she tugged at his waist and grabbed said trigger by accident. She was low to the ground, and the bullet entered lung and now she’s dead.
It’s a confluence of events many won’t believe, but frankly most of the gun community has a near-religious observance of gear and practice to certify that such “theoretical” event never occur. They can and they did.
I won’t mess with the gear-heads anymore when they talk crazy internet theories about how bad it can get with even minute gun-gear choices. One thing I’ve learned from testing (of things other than guns) is that the crazy ideas are the ones that always seem to happen. It seemed to happen here.
That still doesn’t make any sense. He’d have to be standing over her.
It seems crazy, but I see vacationers in Florida ‘dancing’ by rubbing up and down while groping from behind. They drop to the knees and come back up. The description suggests this is what happened. That would put her head at waist level – definitely possible. She reaches to yank herself up, grabs an exposses trigger, and…boom. Internet legend.
The ‘hug’ description was BS. But the rest makes sense if you’ve seen the crap some people call dancing these days.
The other possibility is that the cop was showing off his piece, and is now attempting to cover his proverbial keister.
“the cop was showing off his piece”
His handgun, you mean?
A friend and I were theorizing yesterday on how this could have happened and our conclusion was a shoulder holster with an older revolver that didn’t have a hammer bar or something. She comes from behind, squeezes him, inadvertently pulls the exposed hammer back, and the hammer falls when she lets go…and it goes off and she gets shot in the chest. We were just guessing though-didn’t have any facts to back us up.
If it was indeed a M&P 40 then there was no exposed hammer.
It still sounds questionable to me, but then people do get into all sorts of strange situations. You do have to wonder what the hell these people were doing.