Angle of Impact High-Speed Video Shooting Project

Early in 2016 Don Ledbetter (Seattle Police Department) invited me to present at the PNWD-IAI conference in Tulalip, Washington, USA in June 2016. He specifically requested a talk on using HemoSpat for shooting incident reconstruction.

The talk I put together focused on Dr. Victor Balthazard’s work on determining angles of impact from ellipses. I thought it was important to conduct some original research to present, so I decided to record high-speed video of bullets striking different substrates at different angles so I could show how ellipses are formed by bullets.

Dr. Victor Balthazard
Dr. Victor Balthazard

I enlisted the help of Ugo Garneau of the Ottawa Police Service, and he took point on a lot of the logistics such as organizing the shooting range and building the contraption to hold the substrates. I arranged with Trevor McLeod of the Ontario Provincial Police to borrow their FASTCAM SA-X high-speed video camera which was set up and managed by Gord Lefebvre (Ontario Provincial Police, Retired).

Shooting Range Setup
Shooting Range Setup

Dan Kunsken and Andrée Leduc—both of the Ottawa Police Service—rounded out the team. We shot plywood, cedar, and drywall at 15°, 25°, 35°, 45°, 55°, and 65°. (With one exception – we did not get cedar at 15° due to time constraints.)

FORident Shooting Project Results
FORident Shooting Project Results

One of the goals of the project was to provide the high-speed videos for people to use for education and training. These videos are being made available in a YouTube playlist (Angle of Impact High-Speed Video Shooting Project) as I get them processed and uploaded.

Here’s an example video:

It took a number of people to bring this project together. Thanks especially to the following for their “on-the-ground” help & support:

And thank you to the following for helping out with admin, resources, personnel, and advice:

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me.

Andy Maloney
25 July 2016