Alignment of scuff marks on the muzzle and slide of a police officer’s .45 ACP pistol showed it was locked open (left), not jammed (right), when it was thrown at a suspect.

When I was a crime lab firearms examiner, I worked a shooting in the mid-1970s where the "Police Rumor Mill" complicated an already complex investigation and caused a fine officer months of mental anguish.

Two Dallas officers approached a suspicious vehicle at a gas station, not knowing it had been stolen minutes before. When they asked the driver to get out, he started shooting. When it was over, one officer was dead and the other was wounded. The suspect, also wounded, escaped briefly before being overhauled several miles down the highway. He opted to fight it out with a .22-caliber rimfire rifle against five Dallas officers and an FBI agent. Twelve gunshot wounds ended his criminal career.

The wounded officer approached the driver's side; ejected cases showed that the officer who died was on the right rear. The officer on the left took a .25 Auto bullet in the lower right abdomen and returned fire with a .45-caliber Colt Combat Commander. He was using very old ball ammo and had a short-stroke; he cleared the jam and continued shooting--hitting the suspect once in the arm--until he thought the pistol was empty. At this point his injury caused his right leg to crumple, and he fell on his back, facing the assailant. The suspect aimed at the officer's head. In a last-ditch effort to survive, the officer threw his Commander at the bad guy.

This action absolutely saved the officer's life. The suspect turned to pick up the Commander, and the officer found the strength to escape and find his partner. He ran to the gas station's garage and turned to see his partner crouched by another car. Bullet matching later showed the second officer fired a magazine of ball ammo into the suspect's car, grazing the suspect across the back before retreating to cover to reload.

The wounded officer saw his partner slam a fresh magazine home (both had matching Commanders). At the instant his hand met the bottom of the grip, the second officer jerked back and fell with a fatal through-and-through gunshot wound to the head.

Here is where the cruel rumors started. Armchair ballisticians in some local agencies pontificated that a .25 Auto could not produce a through-and-through wound to an adult male skull. Therefore, they concluded, the wounded officer had thrown a jammed, not empty, pistol at the bad guy, who cleared the jam and used one officer's pistol to kill another.

The next day I was sorting a pile of evidence related to the shooting when I heard the sound of clinking bottles and rollers in the hall. The wounded officer had walked from his bed at Parkland Hospital (to which our building was attached) pushing his IV stand with him. Word had already reached him that he'd thrown a jammed, loaded gun at the suspect. I will never forget the mental stress showing on his face. "I have to know!" he pleaded.

We removed his pistol from the evidence bag, and I tried to find something that might hold an answer. I found a fresh scrape on the left side of the muzzle and another on the left front of the slide. The officer confirmed the scrapes were not there before the shootout. Both marks were running the same direction, roughly front to rear, but something else stood out.

If I locked the slide fully rearward as it would be when the gun ran dry, the planes of the two scrapes coincided perfectly. If I jammed the slide partially forward, as it would be in a misfeed, the scrapes could not coincide. I told the officer, "Unless some earth-shaking fact to the contrary rears its head, I'd testify that this pistol hit the pavement fully empty and locked back." This seemed to give the officer some peace but not closure.