Photo appears to capture path of bullet used in Trump assassination attempt
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Veteran New York Times photographer Doug Mills was using a camera capable of capturing images at up to 30 frames per second.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
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WASHINGTON – In documenting the Pennsylvania campaign rally on July 13 afternoon that turned into an attempt on a former president’s life,
That is the assessment of retired Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent Michael Harrigan, who spent 22 years in the bureau.
“It absolutely could be showing the displacement of air due to a projectile,” he said in an interview after reviewing the high-resolution images that Mr Mills filed from the rally. “The angle seems a bit low to have passed through his ear, but not impossible if the gunman fired multiple rounds.”
Simple ballistic maths showed that capturing a bullet as Mr Mills likely did in a photo was possible, Mr Harrigan said.
Mr Mills was using a Sony digital camera capable of capturing images at up to 30 frames per second. He took these photos with a shutter speed of 1/8,000th of a second – extremely fast by industry standards.
The other factor is the speed of the bullet from the firearm. On July 13, law enforcement authorities recovered an AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle at the scene from a deceased white man they believe was the gunman.
“If the gunman was firing an AR-15-style rifle, the .223-caliber or 5.56-millimeter bullets they use travel at roughly 3,200 feet per second when they leave the weapon’s muzzle,” Mr Harrigan said. “And with a 1/8,000th of a second shutter speed, this would allow the bullet to travel approximately four-tenths of a foot while the shutter is open.
“Most cameras used to capture images of bullets in flight are using extremely high-speed specialty cameras not normally utilised for regular photography, so catching a bullet on a side trajectory as seen in that photo would be a one in a million shot and nearly impossible to catch even if one knew the bullet was coming,” he said.
In Mr Harrigan’s last assignment, he led the FBI’s firearms training unit and currently works as a consultant in the firearms industry.
“Given the circumstances, if that’s not showing the bullet’s path through the air, I don’t know what else it would be,” he said. NYTIMES
