St. Louis police are investigating how a fan at Tuesday’s St. Louis Cardinals game at Busch Stadium was hit by a stray bullet. Experts say it’s not as far-fetched a scenario as you might expect.
Police said it was the first time such an incident had happened at the stadium, which opened in 2006. The 34-year-old woman was not seriously injured.
The woman was in her seat near the Cardinals dugout when her arm started to hurt and she noticed bruises and cuts, a police statement said. A stadium employee who gave her first aid contacted an officer who was working security at the game.
Officers found a bullet near the woman’s seat, which police believe came from outside the stadium.
It’s entirely possible that a bullet fired almost straight up in the air could make it over Busch Stadium’s walls, according to David Horne, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
“If we are talking about a 9 mm bullet, in order for it to cause a bruise or a scrape, it would have been at the very end of its travels, it would have lost a lot of its energy, so it would have been flying for quite a long time would be my guess,” Horne said.
The investigation is ongoing.
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