Police investigate mystery bullet

Bullet injured 80-year-old in Nazareth Illit with police believing that most likely cause was shot fired in air from nearby.

bullet hole in a car windshield in east Jerusalem_370 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
bullet hole in a car windshield in east Jerusalem_370
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
Police were investigating Monday the origin of a mysterious bullet that injured an 80-year-old woman as she stood on her front lawn in Upper Nazareth over the weekend.
The incident began on Friday, when the woman suddenly felt a piercing pain near her knee while standing outside her home in the northern city.
She was taken by her son to a local police station, and from there, she was evacuated to the Emek Medical Center in Afula, where doctors removed a bullet from her leg. The woman was not seriously injured, the hospital said.
Police at first suspected that the woman’s neighbor may have been involved in the shooting.
The neighbor had complained in the past about rocks thrown at his car and accused residents of the woman’s home of being responsible.
A police unit arrived at the neighbor’s home hours after the injury, and detained him, as well as 12 guests who were in the home. But after questioning the individuals, police quickly concluded that they had no connection to the gunshot wound and released them all.
“Our leading direction now is that a shot was fired in the air, either in neighboring Nazareth or in Upper Nazareth,” Northern Police District spokesman Yaki Ohana told The Jerusalem Post.
A ballistic examination of the bullet and an analysis of her injury seem to strengthen this theory, as they revealed that the round fell from above and was not fired from a horizontal angle.
“This is a strange incident,” Ohana added.
Police in the North have in recent years launched a campaign to stamp out the practice of firing celebratory shots in the air during weddings in the Arab community.

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While it has not been established that the shot was fired during a wedding, that is one possibility currently being examined by police.