I am not one, so I only have limited knowledge and understanding, and I would hope that IPS producers would have consulted with medical experts before deciding on how Mary would get shot so I must be wrong, but......

Here is what little I know, so will some experts (real ones, please) chime in with your point of view and expertise?

Generally speaking, it takes a pretty big gun to drop an adult with one shot. A 9mm is a great handgun, but one round usually will not take a life or seriously injure someone. That is why training classes make it a point to have a self defense shooter fire more than one round, with the smaller ammo.

A nice .44 or 357 would drop anyone at that range, so it could have been one for all I know. bangers don't usually carry 44 mags, far as I am aware <g>

The bullet went into her abdomen, and came out the back, so it didn't hit her spine, and based on where the hole is in the slow mo film, it really should have. :-)

Anyway, to make a long story short and start an inquisition, one shot to the belly, instantly down and unconscious, and in a matter of only a few minutes bled out so badly that her brain was deprived of blood, and she needs hours and hours and pints and pints of blood before they can operate. It just seems like either the luckiest shot since the grassy knoll, or someone didn't do their homework.

I want to defend myself :-) and make it clear, I am just a viewer. Never been shot, and am not a surgeon. It just doesn't add up, based on what I know, which again I admit, is not all that much.

Plus, it was point blank when she, a US Marshall who has to have a degree of expertise to keep her gun, shot at who she thought was the shooter, at almost the exact same time, and it barely hurt him, and he ran away? She uses 9mm too.

Anyway........ Just for conversation <g>

John

It doesn't add up, but the government never would have put a person in a neighborhood like that, either.

We'll wait for the experts on the Board to expound on the technical stuff, but in the mean time:

1. Since we didn't see the shooter, we don't know what caliber of weapon he/she used.

2. And, just because we thought Mary thought Mario was the shooter, doesn't mean that she did. (It has already been established that he wasn't.) As close as Mario was to her, if it had been her intention, she probably could have done lot more harm to him than she did to the actual shooter.

3. Plus, as for how much damage Mary did to the actual shooter, it was no doubt someone father away from her. She was already hit when she fired, surely her aim/accuracy would have been compromised.

I agree - it does look like it would have hit her spine as well. I did wonder though if maybe they would say that the unconsciousness was contributed to by her hitting her head on the ground when she fell. I don't know about these things. I'm interested to hear others that might.



Yeah, this whole episode was filled with "hinkyness." Here's to hoping the next season's opening episode offers some explanations as to the many unbelievable occurrences on this one.

This assumes it was a straight on shot. If the shooter was at an angle, it would have come out closer to her kidney. Lots of big blood vessels in that area.

For a quick primer on what different bullet wounds do, watch some of the real-life ER shows on Discovery Health. Not for the squeamish, but a good look at the subject. It was through these that I learned that the wound Marshall took in season 1 was plausible, as was his field fix. It's amazing what the human body can, and can't withstand.


When she shot, it was reaction. She might have been aiming at someone, but may have only winged him as she was on the way down. Or the person she shot wasn't the shooter, but part of the gang standing the wrong place. We don't know. Didn't Stan say it looked like the shooter was behind a tree? I'll have to go back and watch it again.

For the record, her back up weapon, which is what she shot that night is a Glock 27 (ref. Hoosier Daddy episode), which is a .40 cal. Her sidearm is a Glock 23, also .40 cal. I'm sure whoever she hit is hurting, even if she did just clip 'em.

Looking at the scene where Mary gets shot, the bullet would've passed awfully close to the descending aorta. If it nicked that vessel at all, she would've bled out quite quickly. But that is usually a fatal wound as the blood loss is so rapid and fixing it surgically is extremely difficult.
Someone else also mentioned the renal arteries in the upper, center back. By traveling through and through, those vessels also may have been compromised. The gut is a baaaaad place to get shot with *any* weapon. The bacterial contents of the intestinal track is usually released into the abdomen, thus greatly increasing chance of infection to any wound. Blood loss is usually also significant even without a large vessel compromise due to the dense vasculature of the abdominal region.
As for becoming unconscious, the bullet also appeared to penetrate near the diaphragm. There's a lot of nerve connections in that region that can trigger the vagus nerve which will trigger what's cause a "vagal response". This usually results in passing out (anyone who has experienced a sudden, quite painful injury may have experienced this feeling).

My limited knowledge of gunshot wounds from my experience as an ICU RN.

Oh...and my main beef (as a medical person) was that if she was in full cardiac arrest upon arrival, there should've been an EMT riding her gurney doing chest compressions!!

I did give some credit for the fairly accurate ICU room. Good ventilator tube placement and iv pump placement. There would've been many more IV lines though.

Hey...it's glamorous TV! I LOVE this show