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at the Dallas pistol and revolver Club in 1991 Trey kulie a young spectator was watching a shooting competition seated
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behind an air gun range he was struck and killed by a stray [Music] bullet this is how ballistics lasers and
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forensic animation solved the riddle of the Magic Bullet [Music] [Music] 14-year-old Trey kulie look at him and
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you see the All-American boy Trey attended B's Junior High School in Arlington Texas near Dallas he played
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cello in the school Orchestra played baseball and was a Boy Scout at that age every kid has a whole
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world open to he could have done anything he wanted to do most of all he enjoyed spending time with his family
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Trey and and his father Butch were best friends we did everything together September 29th
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1991 Butch kulie woke early that Saturday morning then went to wake Trey the two shared a passion for shooting
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Butch was judging a competition he gave Trey a choice to sleep in or tag along Trey chose to go with his
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father Trey started shooting when he was seven he enjoyed it shot his first deer when
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he was eight he wanted to be a pistol competitor and he was pretty good at it at the Dallas pistol and revolver
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Club Trey volunteered to help out by running results from judges to the official scorer
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in between assignments he sat in the air gun building to get out of the hot Texas
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sun he sat just inside the door near two women who were working as scorers but behind people shooting air pistols
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nothing more than pellet and BB guns then a blood curdling scream Trey coie slumped to the floor
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blood flowing from his Temple his baseball cap had a tiny but Telltale hole Butch kie was outside the building
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just a few yards from his son when he heard the screaming although Butch Ki spent 21 years as a state trooper and
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was trained to handle emergencies no training could prepare him for what he saw next when I got there I saw that he'd
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been shot I checked his pulse I knew it wasn't good Butch walked in and I asked
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him what are you doing home and I said well where is Trey and then he came came in and he told me he
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said um there's been an accident and um I was thinking you know well he's cut his foot or cut his hand
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or broke his arm you know and I said well that's okay he's he'll be okay Trey
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was rushed by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas he was just lying there um he was breathing or the
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machine was breathing for him his little hands were still warm and he just looked like he was
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asleep 6 hours later Trey died I just wanted to tell him that I was very very proud of him and I loved
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him dearly my only son my best friend my fishing buddy my hunting partner just a void
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Trey kulie was seated in the club's designated safety area it was an accident that shouldn't have
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happened Detective Tom peas and crime investigator David Taylor had a tough job to figure out where the bullet that
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killed try kulie came from and to determine if the shooting was accidental or intentional Butch kie spent two
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decades as a state trooper was it possible the shooting had something to do with an enemy he possibly made during
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his tenure or had the bullet come from outside from one of the outdoor shooting ranges or possibly the nearby railroad
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tracks where kids had a history of taking shots at the air gun building uh the biggest problem with this range or
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this seam was the size of it it wasn't contained inside a house inside an apartment it was outside and it covered
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several hundred fet the bullet removed from Trey's skull would provide some answers and raise new questions the
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bullet was small about half an inch long but lethal Larry Fletcher is the Firearms expert who conducted the
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ballistics examination the bullet was not that damaged uh the bullet was uh in rather remarkable condition this is a 45
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caliber bullet after striking a cement wall it is badly mangled especially when compared to the bullet that killed Trey
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kulie that la lack of damage could be telling except for one thing this was not a typical 45 caliber bullet this
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particular bullet is a hand loaded or handmade bullet it's not a commercial made bullet in which they can add other
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materials to the lead and make it much harder uh it can withstand a lot of damage upon impact who makes and uses
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these types of bullets but kie knew compared Shooters like to to load their own ammunition primary reason
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being uh the cost savings most of the competitive Shooters on the outside ranges that day were using handmade
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bullets so there was little doubt that the bullet came from somewhere here rather than from kids on the railroad
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tracks police collected the weapons and ammunition samples from the shooters in the competition when Larry Fletcher
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examined the bullets used that day on the outside ranges he noticed something else the powder charge uh which uh
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increased the velocity of this particular type of bullet basically the shooters used bullets with more
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gunpowder more gunpowder means these bullets travel farther and faster than a regular 45 caliber
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bullet Fletcher's next task was to match the bullet that killed Trey to one of
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about a dozen guns each of the guns from the shooting competition were test fired
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and compared to the bullet taken from Trey kully's skull Fletcher had trouble
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getting an exact match because the extra gunpowder created extremely high temperatures during the firing of the
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gun actually melting some of the distinguishing marks but Fletcher noticed a red wax on the bullet that
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killed Trey all Shooters use a lubricating wax but only one of the guns guns used a red
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wax Larry Fletcher found the gun that fired the Fatal shot at that point I was pretty much convinced a pistol
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competitor named Dan Smith was using that gun on the day of the competition and he was firing on this outdoor range
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just behind the air gun building but Smith told police he couldn't have fired
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the Fatal shot he felt that all his shots had made the Target that there were no erant round
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but something just didn't add up to Butch kulie he spent his entire life around guns and won awards for
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Marksmanship and gun safety he knew shooting ranges are supposed to be safe accidents aren't supposed to happen it
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just didn't make sense police were satisfied that Trey kou's death was an accident the
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ballistics report said the Fatal bullet came from a gun fired from an outdoor range during the competition but how the
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owner of the gun said he didn't miss a shot and the range was designed to contain any errant
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bullet first there's a barrier between the air gun building and the firing range it's called a burm it's a small
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mountain of dirt about 12 ft High the burm sits right behind the Targets in the event a shooter misses either to the
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left or right directly above the targets are a series of wooden planks fastened end to end and side by side these are
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called baffles and are designed to catch bullets fired a little high of the target before they leave the
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range then there are two additional sets of baffles one just a few yards in front
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of the firing line and another called an eyebrow directly over the firing line Ken Buster is a Safety Management
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Consultant with with years of experience as a shooter and with a special expertise in firing ranges between the
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eyebrow the baffles and the height of the burm the vast majority of any stray bullet would be stopped safety is should
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be the number one priority in everybody's mind anytime that you that you participate in Marksmanship as a
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sport something was wrong there Butch kie began a personal crusade to learn the truth he needed to know how a bullet
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could bypass the Rangers safety features and kill his only son Butch hired attorney Mike Schmidt to find out where
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or if the safety system had failed Schmidt put together an investigative team Steve Irwin was the first member as
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an Accident Reconstructionist his job was to create an exact computerized three-dimensional scale model of the air
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gun building and the firing ranges using Laser Technology Precision measuring devices and sophisticated
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computer programs Irwin would also uncovered the path of the bullet you wind up starting at unfortunately the
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the young boy getting shot and then working Your Way backwards police had already identified some important Clues
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the outside wall of the air gun building was riddled with bullet holes from all angles Irwin needed to know exactly
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which one was the culprit police also found bullet holes inside the building in a sheetrock strip to
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protect a lighting fixture and in a wall that separated the indoor range from a storage shed there was also a fresh
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gouge in an ordinary ceiling tile Irwin's laser survey equipment traced the bullet's path from where Trey was
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sitting through all those points from tray through the sheetrock strip off the ceiling tile and through the back wall
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wall it seemed unlikely but it matched the evidence was roughly a straight line but I couldn't see from the interior
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wall to the exterior wall and it it wasn't until we got it back to the office and got it mapped that that it
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formed this remarkably straight line a straight line that led directly to one of the bullet holes in the aluminum
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siding then down to the shooting range behind the air gun building it led to the range where Dan Smith was shooting
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but oddly enough not to the firing line the laser pinpointed a path that landed 10 yard in front of the firing line when
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Ken Buster was brought into the investigation he immediately inspected the firing range to see if there was any
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way a bullet could get past all of the range's safety features Buster delivered
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a scathing report at the time and now I still think that was the worst range that I have ever seen he found dozens of
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potentially deadly safety flaws the burm separating the back range from the Front
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Range was not the standard height which is supposed to be 20 ft the burm behind the air gun building was only 12 ft High
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the baffles Were Far Below standard the wooden planks should have had a steel or
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concrete backing and look closely at the planks themselves they had separated leaving
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big gaps a bullet could easily pass through in this case the baffles might well has not have been there and served
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no purpose at all and Buster was appalled by the bullet holes in the back of the building several of these holes
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had been plugged that means to me as a safety person as a range person as a longtime shooter that they knew that
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bullets were getting out of that range and they accepted that fact and continued to shoot the laser analysis
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projected the bullet path to the middle of the outdoor range well in front of the firing line how could this be it was
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due to a Monumental blunder during the competition shooters were required to fire from several
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distances first from the firing line at 25 yd then they moved forward to 20 yard
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and finally to 15 yards the laser study showed that the fat bullet was fired from the 15 yd line the architectural
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model shows the problem clearly by firing from the 15 yd line Shooters had to move in front of the eyebrow and the
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first set of protective baffles and Irwin's computer also showed another frightening reality from the 15yd line
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you could see the back of the air gun building if you can see it you can shoot it and any projectile
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that might leave the range in that area was going to hit that building the laser showed
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the bullet flew under the last baffle over the burm and into the building it involved a bizarre
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trajectory it meant that the shooter missed the Target high and to the left by more than 5 ft a terrible miss how
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could a trained Marksman miss a Target by that much from only 15 y Away part of that answer was found in the gun itself
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close examination revealed it had been modified it's like taking a standard car
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making a hot rod some competitive Shooters file down parts of the gun to make it easier to pull the trigger
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quickly they've uh got it set to where they go off so easily with they fire two
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rounds instead of one it feed so fast the result is called doubling which sometimes occurs as the gun Rec coils a
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recoil is the backward Force created by the explosion pushing the gun up in the air each type of gun recoils differently
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the 45 creates a recoil up and to the left Kirk Parks had the task of producing the computerized proof a
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fact-based animation of what happened his firm specializes in forensic animation Parks videotaped hundreds of
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45 caliber pist pistol shots using the same type pistol and ammunition he used this footage to create an exact
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computerized reproduction of The Recoil for the animation we shot the video from
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the top of the weapon and we shot it from the side and we shot it from the front next Parks created wireframe
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models of a competitive shooter in action and then animated Irwin's laser studies of the firing range and the
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bullet path to complete the picture It produced the exact results necessary to generate the bullet path that was
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surveyed up and to the left I can't say for sure that the gun doubled but all of
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the evidence seems to indicate that it did and it fired during the uncontrollable
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recoil this forensic animation was able to show what happened to Trey kulie on the morning of September 29th
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1991 but the animation showed that the bullet took a remarkable Journey one which almost defied
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belief when Trey [ __ ] entered the Dallas pistol and revolver Club on September 29th
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1991 the range was a tragedy just waiting to strike outside on the firing range behind the air gun building Dan
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Smith one of the last competitors of the day steps up to the 15 yd Line This moves him in front of two sets of safety
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baffles using a modified gun smith takes aim and squeezes the trigger in a fraction of a
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second another shot is fired during The Recoil phase of the original shot it happens so quickly the shooter doesn't
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know it left the gun the bullet misses the Target high and to the left traveling upwards it passes underneath
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the last set of protective baffles and just 3 in over the burm it's speeding at
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12200 ft per second the bullet blasts through the aluminum siding goes through a storage room misses a broom and some
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pipes by less than an inch and then breaks through a second wall entering the air gun range then the bullet does
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something unbelievable it strikes an ordinary ceiling tile and for some unknown reason
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it doesn't blast straight through into the roof instead it skids along the tile
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for 7 in before mysteriously changing direction making a 10° turn and begins a downward path it slows to about 900 ft
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per second penetrates a plaster wall and enters Trey CO's head [Music] [Music]
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the kolie family filed a negligent suit against the gun club and individuals involved with the competition the judge
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who presided over the civil case was impressed with the visual and computerized evidence I've been on the
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bench 6 half years and I would say that's in the the top uh two or three or four uh in terms of just the the
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professionalism and the effectiveness of of the uh demonstrative evidence brought
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into court the kou's attorney says the forensic animation and model explained
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this tragedy in a way nothing else could I could not have possibly gotten the result that I got on behalf of the coie
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family without the animation also helped Butch kulie understand what had happened to his son
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but there is still little piece for Trey's Dad what's peace he just take it a day at a time
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change just one thing and Trey [ __ ] might be alive today the range it wouldn't have happened because I would
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not have allowed that competition to occur on that particular range the gun they may not even be aware that it's
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double firing or slam firing on them they may think it's properly functioning
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the bullet if it had been a softer bullet they may not have ricocheted as much would not have had the velocity or
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if the shooter had been standing at the proper Firing Line the shot would have hit the baffle or flown over the
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building but wide did this fatal bullet change direction as it hit the soft ceiling tile instead of blasting
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straight through as it did with the hard walls buis can do incredible things things they're not expected to do these
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thoughts haunt but Ki no explanation can ease the pain felt by a father who woke
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his son early one September morning no I want to go should let him sleep [Music]
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a [Music] a [Music]