LIMA, Ohio – An Ohio sheriff was shooting video of New Year’s Eve celebratory gunfire when a round hit his cruiser, struck him in his chest and bounced off his body armor.
It’s unclear where the bullet came from that struck Allen County Sheriff Matt Treglia and narrowly missed the face of one of his commanders, Major Todd Mohler, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, the Lima News reported Thursday. Fortunately, both Treglia and Mohler avoided injury.
Treglia released the 30-second video in which multiple gunshots are heard followed by the sound of a bullet striking the cruiser.
“What the ‘bleep’ was that?” Treglia is heard saying, according to the paper.
“That was a ‘bleep’-ing round, or something,” Mohler responds.
“It just hit me, dude,” the sheriff says.
“Are you OK?” Mohler asks.
They had parked in downtown Lima to record the pops caused by a large number of gunshots celebrating 2020, the paper reported.
On Friday, Treglia said pretty quickly they knew it was a round.
“It took me a minute to realize we weren’t being targeted,” he said.
Newton’s law of universal gravitation is usually stated that every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers. In other words, what goes up must come down.
Around the nation, authorities have said at least two people died apparently from celebratory gunfire on New Year’s Eve.
A 61-year-old woman ringing in the new year was killed by a stray bullet outside her Houston home. The woman’s family and neighbors were shooting off fireworks when she called out that she had been shot, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
In Cleveland, authorities charged a 38-year-old man with reckless homicide after they say he fatally struck his girlfriend while he was “popping off shots” just after midnight.
Treglia’s office said in a news release Thursday that shooting any type of gun into the air was extremely dangerous and illegal.
“Please handle any and all firearms safely and responsibly,” the news release said.