Original subtitles

NARRATOR: At the Dallas Pistol & Revolver Club in 1991,

Trey Cooley, a young spectator, was watching

a shooting competition, seated behind an air gun range.

He was struck and killed by a stray bullet.

[screams]

This is how ballistics, lasers, and forensic animation

solved the riddle of the magic bullet.

[theme music]

14-year-old Trey Cooley.

Look at him, and you'll see the All-American boy.

Trey attended Boles Junior High School

in Arlington, Texas, near Dallas.

He played cello in the school orchestra,

played baseball, and was a Boy Scout.

BUTCH COOLEY: At that age, every kid

has the whole world open to him.

He could have done anything he wanted to do.

NARRATOR: Most of all, he enjoyed

spending time with his family.

Trey and his father, Butch, were best friends.

BUTCH COOLEY: We did everything together.

NARRATOR: September 29, 1991.

Butch Cooley woke early that Saturday morning--

-Get up.

NARRATOR: --then went to wake Trey.

The two shared a passion for shooting.

-Go or don't you want to go?

NARRATOR: Butch was judging a competition.

He gave Trey a choice-- to sleep in or tag along.

Trey chose to go with his father.

-Trey started shooting when he was seven.

He enjoyed it.

He shot his first deer when he was eight.

He wanted to be a pistol competitor.

And he was pretty good at it.

NARRATOR: At the Dallas Pistol & Revolver Club,

Trey volunteered to help out by running results

from judges to the official scorer.

In between assignments, he sat in the air gun building

to get out of the hot Texas sun.

He sat just inside the door near two women who were working

as scorers, but behind people shooting air pistols--

nothing more than pellet and BB guns.

Then, a blood-curdling scream.

[screams]

Trey Cooley slumped to the floor,

blood flowing from his temple.

His baseball cap had a tiny but telltale hole.

Butch Cooley was outside the building,

just a few yards from his son when he heard the screaming.

Although Butch Cooley spent 21 years as a state trooper

and was trained to handle emergencies,

no training could prepare him for what he saw next.

-When I got there, I saw that he'd been shot.

I checked his pulse.

I knew it wasn't good.

TONI COOLEY: Butch walked in, and I

asked him, what are you doing home?

And I said, oh, where is Trey?

And then he came in. And he told me.

He said, um, there's been an accident.

And, um, I was thinking, you know, well, he's cut his foot,

cut his hand, or broke his arm, you know.

And I said, well, it's OK.

He's-- he'll be OK.

NARRATOR: Trey was rushed by ambulance

to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.

TONI COOLEY: He was just lying there.

Um, he was breathing, or the machine was breathing for him.

His little hands were so warm.

And he just looked like he was asleep.

NARRATOR: Six hours later, Trey died.

-I just wanted to tell him that I was very, very proud of him.

I loved him dearly.

-My only son, my best friend, my fishing buddy,

my hunting partner. Just a void.

NARRATOR: Trey Cooley was seated in the club's

designated safety area.

It was an accident that shouldn't have happened.

Detective Tom Pease and crime investigator David Taylor

had a tough job-- to figure out where the bullet that killed

Trey Cooley came from and to determine

if the shooting was accidental or intentional.

Butch Cooley spent two decades as a state trooper.

Was it possible the shooting had something

to do with an enemy he possibly made during his tenure?

Or had the bullet come from outside,

from one of the outdoor shooting ranges, or possibly,

the nearby railroad tracks where kids

had a history of taking shots at the air gun building.

-Uh, the biggest problem with this range or this scene

was the size of it.

It wasn't contained inside a house, inside an apartment.

It was outside, and it covered several hundred feet.

NARRATOR: The bullet removed from Trey's skull

would provide some answers and raise new questions.

The bullet was small, about half an inch long, but lethal.

Larry Fletcher is the firearms expert

who conducted the ballistics examination.

-The bullet was not that damaged.

Uh, the bullet was, uh, ridden-- rather remarkable condition.

NARRATOR: This is a .45 caliber bullet

after striking a cement wall.

It is badly mangled, especially when compared to the bullet

that killed Trey Cooley.

That lack of damage could be telling, except for one thing.

This was not a typical .45 caliber bullet.

-This particular bullet is a hand-loaded or handmade

bullet-- it's not a commercial-made bullet--

in which they could add other materials to the lead

and make it much harder.

Uh, it can withstand a lot of damage, uh, upon impact.

NARRATOR: Who makes and uses these types of bullets?

Butch Cooley knew.

-Competitive shooters like to-- to load their own ammunition,

uh, probably the reason being, uh, the cost savings.

NARRATOR: Most of the competitive shooters

on the outside ranges that day were using handmade bullets.

So there was little doubt that the bullet came from somewhere

here rather than from kids on the railroad tracks.

Police collected the weapons and ammunition samples

from the shooters in the competition.

When Larry Fletcher examined the bullets used that day

on the outside ranges, he noticed something else.

-The powder charge which, uh, increased the velocity

of this particular type of bullet.

NARRATOR: Basically, the shooters

use bullets with more gunpowder.

More gunpowder means these bullets travel farther

and faster than a regular .45 caliber bullet.

Fletcher's next task was to match the bullet that killed

Trey to one of about a dozen guns.

Each of the guns from the shooting competition

were test fired and compared to the bullet

taken from Trey Cooley's skull.

Fletcher had trouble getting an exact match

because the extra gun powder created extremely high

temperatures during the firing of the gun,

actually melting some of the distinguishing marks.

But Fletcher noticed a red wax on the bullet that killed Trey.

All shooters use a lubricating wax, but only one of the guns

used a red wax.

Larry Fletcher found the gun that fired the fatal shot.

-At that point, I was pretty much convinced.

NARRATOR: A pistol competitor named Dan Smith was using

that gun on the day of the competition.

And he was firing on this outdoor range,

just behind the air gun building.

But Smith told police he couldn't

have fired the fatal shot.

LARRY FLETCHER: He felt that all his shots had made the target,

that there were no errant rounds.

NARRATOR: But something just didn't add up to Butch Cooley.

He spent his entire life around guns

and won awards for marksmanship and gun safety.

He knew shooting ranges are supposed to be safe.

Accidents aren't supposed to happen.

It just didn't make sense.

Police were satisfied that Trey Cooley's death was an accident.

The ballistics report said the fatal bullet

came from a gun fired from an outdoor range

during the competition.

But how?

The owner of the gun said he didn't miss a shot.

And the range was designed to contain any errant bullet.

First, there's a barrier between the air

gun building and the firing range.

It's called a berm.

It's a small mountain of dirt, about 12 feet high.

The berm sits right behind the targets

in the event a shooter misses either to the left or right.

Directly above the targets are a series of wooden planks,

fastened end-to-end and side-by-side.

These are called baffles and they're

designed to catch bullets fired a little high of the target

before they leave the range.

Then there are two additional sets

of baffles, one just a few yards in front

of the firing line and another, called an eyebrow,

directly over the firing line.

Ken Buster is a safety management consultant

with years of experience as a shooter

and with a special expertise in firing ranges.

-Between the eyebrow, the baffles, and the height

of the berm, the vast majority of any stray bullet

would be stopped.

-Safety should be the number 1 priority in everybody's mind

anytime that you-- that you participate

in marksmanship as a sport.

Something was wrong there.

NARRATOR: Butch Cooley began a personal crusade

to learn the truth.

He needed to know how a bullet could bypass the range's safety

features and kill his only son.

Butch hired Attorney Mike Schmidt to find out where or if

the safety system had failed.

Schmidt put together an investigative team.

Steve Irwin was the first member.

As an accident reconstructionist,

his job is to create an exact computerized three-dimensional

scale model of the air gun building and the firing ranges.

Using laser technology, precision measuring devices,

and sophisticated computer programs,

Irwin would also uncover the path of the bullet.

-You wind up starting at, unfortunately,

the-- the young boy getting shot,

and then working your way backwards.

NARRATOR: Police had already identified

some important clues.

The outside wall of the air gun building

was riddled with bullet holes from all angles.

Irwin needed to know exactly which one was the culprit.

Police also found bullet holes inside the building--

in a sheetrock strip to protect the lighting fixture

and in a wall that separated the indoor range

from a storage shed.

There was also a fresh gouge in an ordinary ceiling tile.

Irwin's laser survey equipment traced the bullet's path

from where Trey was sitting through all those points--

from Trey through the sheetrock strip, off the ceiling tile,

and through the back wall.

It seemed unlikely, but it matched the evidence.

-It-- it was roughly a straight line.

But I couldn't see from the interior 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 formed

this remarkably straight line.

NARRATOR: A straight line that led directly

to one of the bullet holes in the aluminum siding

then down to the shooting range behind air gun building.

It led to the range where Dan Smith was shooting, but oddly

enough, not to the firing line.

The laser pinpointed a path that landed

10 yards in front of the firing line.

When Ken Buster was brought into the investigation,

he immediately inspected the firing range

to see if there was any way a bullet could get past all

of the range's safety features.

Buster delivered a scathing report.

-At the time and now, I still think

that was the worst range that I have ever seen.

NARRATOR: He found dozens of potentially deadly safety

flaws.

KEN BUSTER: The berm separating the back range

from the front range was not the standard height,

which is supposed to be 20 feet.

NARRATOR: The berm behind the air gun building

was only 12 feet high.

The baffles were far below standard.

The wooden planks should have had

a steel or concrete backing.

And look closely at the planks themselves.

They had separated, leaving big gaps.

A bullet could easily pass through.

KEN BUSTER: In this case, the baffle might well has not

have been there and served no purpose at all.

NARRATOR: And Buster was appalled by the bullet

holes in the back of the building.

KEN BUSTER: Several of these holes had been plugged.

That means to me as a safety person, as a range person,

as a long-time shooter that they knew

that bullets were getting out of that range.

And they accepted that fact and continued to shoot.

NARRATOR: The laser analysis projected the bullet path

to the middle of the outdoor range,

well in front of the firing line.

How could this be?

It was due to a monumental blunder.

During the competition, shooters were required

to fire from several distances-- first, from the firing

line at 25 yards; then they moved forward to 20 yards;

and finally, to 15 yards.

The laser study showed that the fatal bullet

was fired from the 15-yard line.

The architectural model shows the problem clearly.

By firing from the 15-yard line, shooters

had to move in front of the eyebrow

and the first set of protected baffles.

And Irwin's computer also showed another frightening reality.

From the 15-yard line, you could see

the back of the air gun building.

KEN BUSTER: If you can see it, you can shoot it.

And any projectile that might leave the range in that area

was going to hit that building.

NARRATOR: The laser showed the bullet flew

under the last baffle, over the berm, and into the building.

It involved a bizarre trajectory.

It meant that the shooter missed the target high and to the left

by more than 5 feet-- a terrible miss.

How could a trained marksman miss a target

by that much from only 15 yards away?

Part of that answer was found in the gun itself.

Close examination revealed it had been modified.

-It's like taking a standard car, making it a hot rod.

NARRATOR: Some competitive shooters filed down

parts of the gun to make it easier

to pull the trigger quickly.

DAVID TAYLOR: They've, uh, got it set to where they go off

so easily, where they fire two rounds instead of one.

It feeds so fast.

NARRATOR: The result is called doubling, which

sometimes occurs as the gun recoils.

A recoil is the backward force created by the explosion

pushing the gun up in the air.

Each type of gun recoils differently.

-A .45 creates a recoil up and to the left.

NARRATOR: Kirk Parks had the task

of producing the computerized proof,

a fact-based animation of what happened.

His firm specializes in forensic animation.

Parks videotaped hundreds of .45 caliber pistol shots using

the same type pistol and ammunition.

He used this footage to create an exact computerized

reproduction of the recoil for the animation.

-And we shot the video from the top of the weapon.

And we shot it from the side.

And we shot it from the front.

NARRATOR: Next, Parks created wire-frame models

of a competitive shooter in action,

and then animated Irwin's laser studies of the firing

range and the bullet path to complete the picture.

KIRK PARKS: It produced the exact results

necessary to generate the bullet path that

was surveyed-- up and to the left.

DAVID TAYLOR: I can't say for sure that the gun doubled.

But all of the evidence, uh, seems to indicate that it did.

And it fired during the uncontrollable recoil.

NARRATOR: This forensic animation

was able to show what happened to Trey Cooley

on the morning of September 29, 1991.

But the animation showed that the bullet

took a remarkable journey, one which almost defied belief.

When Trey Cooley entered the Dallas Pistol & Revolver

Club on September 29, 1991, the range

was a tragedy just waiting to strike.

Outside on the firing range behind the air gun building,

Dan Smith, one of the last competitors of the day,

steps up to the 15-yard line.

This moves him in front of two sets of safety baffles.

Using a modified gun, Smith takes aim

and squeezes the trigger.

In a fraction of a second, another shot

is fired during the recoil phase of the original shot.

It happened so quickly, the shooter

doesn't know it left the gun.

The bullet misses the target high and to the left.

Traveling upwards, it passes underneath the last set

of protected baffles and just 3 inches over the berm.

It's speeding at 1,200 feet per second.

The bullet blasts through the aluminum siding,

goes through a storage room, misses a broom and some pipes

by less than an inch, and then breaks through a second wall,

entering the air gun range.

Then the bullet does something unbelievable.

It strikes an ordinary ceiling tile.

And for some unknown reason, it doesn't

blast straight through into the roof.

Instead, it skids along the tile for 7 inches

before mysteriously changing direction, making

a 10-degree turn and begins a downward path.

It slows to about 900 feet per second,

penetrates a plaster wall, and enters Trey Cooley's head.

[music playing]

The Cooley family filed a negligence suit against the gun

club and individuals involved with the competition.

The judge who presided over the civil case

was impressed with the visual and computerized evidence.

-I've been on the bench 6 and 1/2 years,

and I would say that's in the top 2 or 3 or 4,

in terms of just the-- the professionalism

and the effectiveness of-- of the,

uh demonstrative evidence brought into court.

NARRATOR: The Cooley's attorney says the forensic animation

and model explained this tragedy in a way nothing else could.

-I could not have possibly gotten the result

that I got on behalf of the Cooley family without them.

NARRATOR: The animation also helped

Butch Cooley understand what had happened to his son.

But there is still little peace for Trey's dad.

-What's peace?

It is taking one day at a time.

NARRATOR: Change just one thing and Trey

Cooley might be alive today.

The range.

-It wouldn't have happened because I would not

have allowed that competition to occur on that particular range.

NARRATOR: The gun.

-They may not even be aware that it's

double-firing or slam-firing on them.

They may think it's properly functioning.

NARRATOR: The bullet.

-If it had been a softer bullet, they may not have ricocheted

as much, would not have had the velocity.

NARRATOR: Or if the shooter had been standing

at the proper firing line, the shot would have hit the baffle

or flown over the building.

But why did this fatal bullet change direction

as it hit the soft ceiling tile instead of blasting straight

through as it did with the hard walls?

-Bullets can do incredible things--

things they're not expected to do.

NARRATOR: These thoughts haunt Butch Cooley.

No explanation can ease the pain felt

by a father who woke his son early--

-Want to go or not?

NARRATOR: --one September morning.

-No, no, I want to go.

-I should have let him sleep.

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