Ballistic scientists analysing minute bullet scratches

WHEN it hit him, the .223-calibre bullet was moving about 2,000mph, and as it entered his body, it splintered.

Shards of lead tore through his intestines and stomach, severed his pancreas and grazed one of his kidneys. The biggest fragment ricocheted upward and stopped in his chest.

As the unidentified man, shot on Saturday night outside a Ponderosa restaurant in Ashland, Virginia was rushed to a hospital in nearby Richmond, bullet fragments were scattered inside his torso like tiny pieces of confetti. That meant, as an emergency room nurse at the hospital put it, “his body was considered a crime scene”.