Stray bullet hits boy inside hospital
A stray bullet hit and wounded a thirteen-year-old boy waiting for his mother inside a hospital in Mandurriao district a few hours before New Year's Eve.
Fortunately, the bullet spent all its force piercing the galvanized roof of the Western Visayas Medical Center and going through the wooden ceiling so much so that it only caused a hematoma on the left arm of Eljohn Panizales. The deformed slug then fell to the floor before the boy knew what hit him.
According to reports, the boy was sitting inside the main building, waiting for his mother, Annabella Panizales who works as a nurse at the hospital.
"We cannot yet say of what caliber the bullet was, or from where it was fired," SPO1 Elmer Tabares said Sunday evening. "But our investigator is still looking into that."
It is very difficult to tell where the bullet was fired because we cannot trace its trajectory; whether it was fired directly upwards or on a slanting trajectory, Tabares explained.
But since it went through the ceiling, we can say for sure that it was fired into the air, he added.
According to Tabares, they have not received any report of illegal discharge within their area of responsibility prior to the incident.
City police director, Senior Superintendent Wesley Barrayuga said in a radio interview that he will have the deformed slug analyzed with the crime laboratory.
Firearms imprint grooves on the bullets as it passes through the barrel, and one way of determining the origin of stray bullets is to correlate these with those samples of slugs fired from registered firearms.