Читать книгу Newhall Shooting - A Tactical Analysis. An inside look at the most tragic and influential police gunfight of the modern era. онлайн
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A witness claimed that Davis struggled with the CHP shotgun and inadvertently fired it while trying to work the gun. After the accidental discharge, the shotgun was placed in the car, according to the witness. Importantly, this testimony matches the CHP’s version of the event, as well.
The physical evidence tends to discredit this narrative, however. An accounting of the ammunition from this shotgun indicates that one spent CHP shotgun shell and three live CHP shotgun rounds were found with the weapon at the Hoag house, where Twining had taken hostages later in the day during his escape attempt. The spent shell was found in the hallway of the Hoag house next to Twining’s dead body, along with two other spent shells supplied from Twining’s own stock. (Fortunately, the brand and hull color of the CHP’s shotgun ammunition differed from the ammunition that the felons brought to the fight, making it easy to identify the source—the CHP issued Western Super-X ammunition with red hulls, while Davis and Twining had brought Remington-Peters ammunition with blue hulls to the fight.) Because Twining had engaged Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies with multiple shots from the shotgun in that location during two raids on the house, it is believed that the CHP shotshell was fired in the hallway of the Hoag house and not at the Standard Station location. Furthermore, it is inconceivable that the weapons-savvy Twining would have waited to eject the spent CHP shotshell and make the gun ready with a live round until starting the gun battle with Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies in the hallway of the Hoag household. He most certainly would have ensured the gun had a loaded chamber at some time during his three-mile flight from the scene, particularly before he used the gun to take the Hoag family hostage. This makes the accidental discharge theory even less plausible and tends to confirm the accounts of witnesses who did not see the accidental shotgun discharge occur.