Bullet Hole or Object on Road?

[Judamonster]

Car or truck? I do not see a bullet being able to make that on a car without striking the car as well. Too much of the vehicle blocks the necessary path. A truck is a barely/maybe, but still very unlikely.

 

[EPeter213]

it looks like shrapnel from a teleprompter to me

 

[Route 45]

If it was a bullet, it prolly wasn't the muh two world wars bullet.

 

[printcraft]

No bacon?

I’ve never seen bacon do that!

 

[profjeremy]

If it was a bullet, it prolly wasn't the muh two world wars bullet.

That was actually interesting, because even when the 9mm blew through the rim, it was a jagged hole, not perfectly round like the hole in our rim.

Maybe it was a .40 cal landscaping stake...

 

[JTKelly]

Wouldn't she have noticed someone standing in the road shooting at her tire?

 

[profjeremy]

Wouldn't she have noticed someone standing in the road shooting at her tire?

Depends on which song was playing at the time, haha.

 

[indyblue]

Rims are not especially hard metal.

Depends, performance cars like my 'Vette come with forged AL wheels, most other passenger car rims are machined AL and not nearly as tough as forged rims. Forged material tends to break jaggedly while non-forged tends to bend and tear out of the way.

 

[B40B]

If it were a bullet, wouldn't you think it would start deforming/expanding after making contact with the tire, (pre rim)? The perfection of the hole in the rim makes me think rebar or something similar?

Def looks like a bullet hole though!

 

[wwdkd]

I'm inclined to think that it was something in the road.

 

[profjeremy]

If it were a bullet, wouldn't you think it would start deforming/expanding after making contact with the tire, (pre rim)? The perfection of the hole in the rim makes me think rebar or something similar?

Def looks like a bullet hole though!

Fair point, and if it was a JHP, absolutely. Less certain with FMJ, but you still could be right.

And we know it's FMJ all day down in that neighborhood! Lol

 

[DadSmith]

I figured this would be fun for the INGO community to determine…

My fiancée was driving on 65 near downtown today when she had a tire blow out. Fortunately, she got off the highway safely and called me to come change her tire. Got the tire changed, looked the flat over before I put it in truck, saw there was a pretty good sized hole in the tread. Squatted down to lift the wheel up and noticed that there was a hole in the underside of the rim! As you can see from the pic, it’s a pretty perfectly round hole. Having seen a few bullet holes in my lifetime, I thought it looked remarkably like one! Plus, something that could put a hole in the tire and punch such a clean hole through the wheel… that eliminates quite a few possibilities!

Wanting to be a good citizen, I called the State Police to let them know what I suspected. Side note: I was very impressed that they actually answered their non-emergency line on the first or second ring and I had a patrol car in my driveway within about 30-40 minutes.

The troopers were great, but determined that it wasn’t a bullet, rather it was an object on the road that had punctured both the tire and rim. To their credit, they took pics, made measurements and even got the opinion of their sergeant. Among other things, they thought the angles made it pretty unlikely that it could have been a bullet. Sent a video to my brother (who’s been a cop for 20+ years) and he thinks it’s a bullet hole. I measured the hole’s outside diameter and it’s about 1/2” and pretty perfectly round. Perhaps reasonable minds can disagree… so what does INGO think and why?

View attachment 373045
View attachment 373046

Call the police and see what they say.

@BehindBlueI's
He's the resident detective.

 

[russc2542]

I agree that being in the middle and roughly perpendicular to the wheel makes it being a bullet unlikely. The hole in the rim looks like a HV FMJ bullet exit wound on mild steel but the hole in the tire is more telling. Any round or spitzer bullet will push the rubber aside leaving a much smaller opening that the sides push back together. That hole looks like the rubber was removed, it's an empty hole like it was punched out with a blunt rod like the cut end of rebar. (think of FMJ holes in paper vs wadcutters)

 

[Denny347]

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if it was a bullet or debris. No one was injured thankfully and in the unlikely event that it WAS a bullet, there wouldn't be anything for law enforcement to investigate. A hole is a hole.....lol

 

[Route 45]

A hole is a hole.....lol

 

[profjeremy]

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if it was a bullet or debris. No one was injured thankfully and in the unlikely event that it WAS a bullet, there wouldn't be anything for law enforcement to investigate. A hole is a hole.....lol

Yep, this was for INGO entertainment/discussion purposes only. The reason I called the State Police was merely to let them know, in case it could be cross-referenced to any other reported incidents at the same time and location.

If we only discussed things that mattered here, there would be a helluva lot less discussion!

 

[Firehawk]

Is the hole in the tire directly in line with the hole in the wheel or at an angle?

If something in the road punched through the wheel that clean and didn’t stay in the wheel, I would think that it had to be anchored in the road like rebar. If that’s the case I would expect to see a whole line of cars pulled over with popped tires. But there are too many unknown variables to know for sure. Like someone else said, if you have the tire removed you might find the object or pieces of the object or at least more clues. Alternatively, if it was a bullet it clearly exited the wheel. I would think it would have hit something else on the car after it exited, like the other side of wheel, fender, hub, disc brake etc. further inspection might reveal more clues. Do you plan to have the tire pulled or inspect the car further?

 

[profjeremy]

Is the hole in the tire directly in line with the hole in the wheel or at an angle?

If something in the road punched through the wheel that clean and didn’t stay in the wheel, I would think that it had to be anchored in the road like rebar. If that’s the case I would expect to see a whole line of cars pulled over with popped tires. But there are too many unknown variables to know for sure. Like someone else said, if you have the tire removed you might find the object or pieces of the object or at least more clues. Alternatively, if it was a bullet it clearly exited the wheel. I would think it would have hit something else on the car after it exited, like the other side of wheel, fender, hub, disc brake etc. further inspection might reveal more clues. Do you plan to have the tire pulled or inspect the car further?

The hole in the tire tread is more toward the center of the tire, while the hole in the rim is 1-2” further toward the car, so it angled a bit from the outside-in. I agree that my first thought was something not anchored likely would have just laid down if it was at an angle, rather than having enough force to punch a hole through the rim.

Taking it to a mechanic for an inspection on Monday… was planning on today, but some work emergencies forced us to reschedule.

 

[Eric66]

Most likely a piece of rebar. If it were a bullet, the most likely scenario (short of someone laying in the road shooting) would be a ricochet off the pavement. In that unlikely event, the bullet would have deformed so no way it would leave a clean round hole in the rim.

And seeing the crappy quality of the new construction on 65 almost daily from a motorcycle, rebar sticking out would not be unlikely at all.

 

[Wstar425]

It certainly looks like a bullet hole. But the "angle of attack" the bullet would have to take makes that very unlikely. IMO it's most likely something sitting up on the road (e.g. rebar) that was run over. But we'll never know for sure.

She could retrace her tracks EXACTLY tomorrow, then if she gets another flat tire in the exact same spot……well, we might not know for sure but we could probably rule out a bullet.