Gunshot wound of the chest with five intrathoracic foreign bodies

When a firearm projectile strikes an intermediate target before entering a body, foreign material from that target may be carried into the body with the projectile. This material should be sought and recovered at autopsy, for it may prove to be valuable evidence in subsequent legal proceedings. The unusual case reported here is that of a 12-year-old boy who was sitting on a couch in front of his living room window and there sustained a .45 caliber gunshot wound of the left anterior chest from a gunshot fired at another person in the street outside. First passing through the back of the couch, the bullet carried with it into the body four pieces of cloth and a metal spring, thereby causing an unusual cutaneous entrance wound, and laceration of the right cardiac ventricle and fatal cardiac tamponade within an intact pericardial sac. The assailant was convicted of first-degree murder, a verdict which he appealed.