The two South Carolina SWAT officers shot during a training exercise last week were wounded by bullets pulled from a desk drawer that weren’t properly tested to ensure they were blanks, authorities said Wednesday.
The incident occurred on the afternoon of July 29 during a simulation in a vacant building when one officer was hit in the shoulder and another cop took a shot to his leg.
The deputies who were tasked with getting the ammunition from the heavily regulated sheriff’s armory instead grabbed rounds they thought to be blanks from a plastic bag stored inside a desk, according to the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office.
The officers tested the rounds by firing them at a surface meant to absorb bullets as they should, but seemingly did so from a distance that stopped them from realizing the live rounds were breaching their target.
An officer acting as a gunman in the training exercise then inadvertently shot his colleagues with live ammo, police said. Neither officer’s injuries appeared to be life threatening, though both cops required surgery and remain unavailable for service.
Greenville County Sheriff Hobart Lewis told reporters Wednesday that mistakes were made leading up to the shooting and “most of that lies heavy on me.”
With News Wire Services
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