What happens when someone fires bullets skyward

As Philadelphia police try to determine who shot two officers during July 4th fireworks on the Parkway on Monday night, detectives say the very absence of information is a clue.

Neither of the officers grazed by the bullets nor anyone near them heard the sound of gunshots, police said. And the crowd of more than 10,000 had to pass through 17 metal detectors to attend the event.

To investigators, this suggests that the shots — determined by ballistics testing to be .40-caliber bullets from the same gun — were fired by someone a mile or so away, perhaps in a burst of what has somewhat awkwardly come to be called celebratory gunfire.

» READ MORE: Bullets that hit officers at Philly July 4th event were fired from one gun, possibly from over a mile away

One spent bullet ended up in the cap of Philadelphia Police Officer Sergio Diggs. The other was found on the sidewalk near Montgomery County Sheriff’s Deputy John Foster, falling there after grazing his right shoulder.

What is perhaps less of a puzzle is why the bullets caused so little damage.

While a .40-caliber slug fired into the sky can exit a muzzle at a speed of more than 500 mph, experts say, it can fall to the ground at much slower speeds. After reaching its apex, a bullet’s velocity can decline by as much as 90% as it falls.

Donald Carlucci, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., and an authority on ballistics, said the gravitational pull of Earth is counteracted by the drag of the atmosphere, imposing a terminal velocity that a bullet cannot exceed.

The precise speed limit is a function of a bullet’s shape, its arc, and how much it might tumble. But in some cases, that final velocity can be low enough to be less than the speed at which an object can penetrate skin — about 160 mph.

Still, Carlucci noted, it’s not wise to shoot a gun into the heavens.

“What goes up comes down,” he said. “That law is not changing over time.”

Indeed, people have been seriously wounded — and even killed — across the nation by shots fired in exultation. In 2020, a 74-year-old grandmother in Durham, N.C., was fatally shot by a bullet falling from the sky on July 4. In Houston earlier that year, a 61-year-old nurse was shot in the neck and killed from a gunshot during a New Year’s celebration.

In a rare study, researchers at the now-closed King/Drew-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles examined 118 patients shot by stray bullets from 1985 to 1992 and found that most had been struck in the head and almost a third died.

In Philadelphia, Joseph Jaskolka was shot in the head at age 11 as he watched a Mummers band rehearse on New Year’s Eve in 1998. The shot left him paralyzed on the right side and required 58 brain surgeries.

Jaskolka speaks out at public events about his injury and the risks of public gunfire. His message: “Put away the gun and think about your fellow citizens. This is dangerous.”

His case remains unsolved. To make an arrest, he said, police “would have to match the bullet with the gun that shot me and they can’t take the bullet out. It’s resting on the brain stem on the back of my head.”

As he has in the past, District Attorney Larry Krasner issued a statement Wednesday condemning the random firing of shots in the city.

“Celebratory gunfire on any occasion or gunfire not aimed at another individual that nonetheless harms others is a very serious crime; applicable charges may range from reckless endangerment to aggravated assault to murder,” he said.

Still, it is a crime that rarely leads to arrest or prosecution in the city.

According to the Philadelphia Police Department, there were 17 shooting incidents between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. last New Year’s Eve — a tally of shots into the air, shots into houses and cars, and shots at people that missed. No one was arrested, according to the department’s statistical unit. The count of 17 was more than triple the average daily figure for such gunfire, the unit said.

After the New Year’s celebration the previous year, prosecutors charged two people with reckless endangerment for firing guns into the air, Krasner’s office said. No one was hurt from those shots. One of those cases is pending; in the other, the defendant was convicted.

Ruth Birchett, 69, a neighborhood activist in North Philadelphia who has put together news conferences to decry holiday shooting, said she has had trouble getting law enforcement to take the issue seriously.

“I like to go to church on New Year’s Eve,” she said Wednesday. “You worry about getting shot on the way. It’s a very, very dangerous trend.”

With fireworks camouflaging the sound of gunshots, Birchett said, even law-abiding people may reach for their firearms.

“Guess what,” she said. “It’s not just the thugs who shoot. It’s the homeowner who fires that gun one time a year.

“We need a yearlong campaign,” she said. “Go back to banging on pots, running out and blowing your horn.”