Police: Bullet that hit woman in car caused welt, not entry wound

Cape Girardeau police remain puzzled by the origin of a bullet that struck a woman Nov. 25 in the parking lot of Chinatown Buffet.

The woman, from Oran, Mo., was sitting with her 12-year-old daughter in a Mazda Miata convertible when the .22-caliber bullet came through the top of her car, struck her in the stomach and came to rest on the floor of the vehicle.

The wound was a "grazing wound" that caused a welt but did not create an entry or exit wound, said Sgt. Barry Hovis, a spokesman for the department. That injury is consistent with an almost-spent round fired from a distance, he said.

The woman and her daughter both reported hearing a loud popping sound before the bullet struck. A .22-caliber bullet can have varying loads of gunpowder and therefore varying speeds, but a bullet on a downward trajectory moves at a much slower speed and has less power to injure than a bullet fired directly into a target from a short distance, Hovis said.

The fact that the bullet was not embedded in the floor is evidence that it had lost much of its energy or that it was a ricochet, he said.

"Detectives are looking into it, investigating it," Hovis said. "If they get to the point of trying to determine ballistics or determine whether they can prove or disprove" the woman's "statement, the bullet would have to be sent off for analysis. Bullets can do a lot of funny things."

rkeller@semissourian.com

388-3642

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