Older man drops dead at a party. Cardiac arrest? Not by, um, a long shot.
I lived in Texas for 15 years, one of many places where folks mark holidays like the 4th of July and New Year's Eve with gunfire, squeezing off live rounds into the night sky like fireworks.
But guess what? Everyone within a mile radius, or more in some cases, is at risk for a sudden and mysterious and sometimes fatal bullet wound.
The cause of one such death in Miami, that of a 69-year-old man who collapsed during an outdoor New Year's Eve party, was initially listed as hypertensive cardiovascular disease, according to Amy V. Rapkiewicz, MD, of New York University, and colleagues, in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.
However, an autopsy revealed a bullet in the left ventricle of the man's heart. Further inspection traced the bullet to an entrance wound in the left side of the man's neck. A small wound completely missed during triage, because who would think to look for a GSW when a senior citizen with a history of hypertension drops dead at a party?
Ballistic analysis indicated that the fully jacketed 7.62×39-mm slug was fired into the air as much as 57 seconds prior to striking the man. And the gunman could easily have been far enough away that the victim didn't hear the shot fired.
Yikes! I think I'll only be attending New Year's Eve parties held in basement venues going forward.
Gross Anatomy is a series of case reports on the interesting and the weird. To recommend or share a clinical case report, please email s.wicklinewallan@medpagetoday.com.
Source Reference: Rapkiewicz AV, et al "Fatal wounds sustained from "falling bullets": maintaining a high index of suspicion in a forensic setting" J Forensic Sci 2014; DOI: 10.1111/1556-4029.12258.