9mm malfunctions at Lakeland gun range, shoots three people

By Chandra Broadwater, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Monday, October 5, 2009

TAMPA -- Michael Thourot had just pulled his hand away from the warm metal when it started spewing bullets.

Moments before, Sherri Thourot had watched her husband fire and reload the Jennings 9mm. Then he set it down for her to shoot next at the range.

That's when the handgun started firing on its own, she said, spinning around in circles, landing the Thourots and an Irish tourist in the hospital.

"Nothing like that has ever happened," said Sherri Thourot on Sunday evening from her room at Lakeland Regional Medical Center.

"We've been around guns all our lives."

It was about 10:30 a.m. Saturday when Sherri Thourot, 46, watched her husband, 47, set the gun down. The couple had decided to try out their new gun at the Saddle Creek Shooting Range in Lakeland.

They like the Polk County-owned range. It's strict and safe, the way the Thourots say they like to use their guns.

But as soon as Michael Thourot took his hand off the gun, it started firing like it was possessed, his wife said.

"I saw that he'd been hit, but I couldn't tell how bad," Sherri Thourot said. "Then I realized I had been hit. My hand was bent forward and I couldn't move my arm."

A bullet tore through the back of her right arm and exited from her biceps. Her husband had been shot in the left hand. Another man, a 29-year-old tourist visiting a friend, was hit in the shoulder and throat as he stood behind a shooting stall next to the Thourots.

All three were taken to the Lakeland hospital, where Michael Thourot and the tourist, Gary Flynn, underwent surgery.

Flynn was listed in stable condition at the hospital, while Michael Thourot was released Sunday. His wife said doctors put pins in his hand to help heal shattered bone.

She expected to leave the hospital today.

The Polk County Sheriff's Office said the gun may have been altered, leading to the malfunction. Detectives expect to know more when they take the gun apart and inspect it as they continue to investigate.

Sherri Thourot said her son, 29-year-old Jeremy, brought the 9mm back to the United States after one of his tours in Iraq with the Navy. He gave it to them this summer.

The couple cleaned the gun and made sure it was in good condition before taking it to the range, she said. They never expected to leave in an ambulance.

Before he left the hospital, her husband stopped in to see her.

"He's very shaken up over it," she said. "He's traumatized that anything like this happened to his wife."

But the freak accident won't keep her away from guns.

"I can't allow something like this to cause me to be afraid of something I've done all my life."

Jennings 9mm.

I think I found the problem.

Duck!

Have any of them read "The Automatic Pistol" by Fritz Lieber?

Can different sources for this story be found?

Then he set it down for her to shoot next at the range.

Say what?!

"We've been around guns all our lives."

And never learned anything about safety.

Sherri Thourot said her son, 29-year-old Jeremy, brought the 9mm back to the United States after one of his tours in Iraq with the Navy. He gave it to them this summer.

RIGHT. I'm sure a piece of pot metal, made in the USA, is going to get to the Great Sandbox and then be smuggled back. - - A "gun" that costs less than $200. Right.

The couple cleaned the gun and made sure it was in good condition before taking it to the range, she said.

Right. Yup. I'm sure.   




 

But, other than the tourist, you can 



Another Darwin award waiting to happen   

My first thought is that maybe he set it down hard or dropped it onto the bench and it went off, then went full auto like you might believe.

Never know what you'll find over there.

Talk to a loadmaster some time. Those guys can smuggle anything in a Herc. Also, if you know the right airports to go to (and we do) you know at some bases/ports of entry can be very lax in their searches. Especially if it's a big airlifter like a C-130 or a C-17 with a load of troops and their bags are all packed on a big pallet. They're not going to break down that whole pallet to search the bags.
I was on a Herc when we made an emergency landing in San Juan, Puerto Rico (tough, I know) and for some odd reason they made us go through Customs even though we were coming from the US Virgin Islands. We met the Customs Agent at our crew entrance door, she handed us our declaration forms, saw we all declared at least three bottles of rum each, and didn't even board the plane. We could've had an artillery piece on board, and she didn't even look.
It's a risk, yes, but far from impossible.

It's not impossible...but this isn't WW2, there are a ton of barriers in place to stop 'bring homes'

On another forum, someone wrote about this story, I guess he has a Jennings for some reason.

Mechanically, it is indeed possible for this to occur with any model of Jennings. The firing pin is under constant pressure from the firing pin spring, causing it to constantly protrude out of the firing pin hole; EXCEPT when the sear engages the ridge on the firing pin and locks it in place. Thus, if the firing pin ridge and/or the sear is sufficiently worn in the right manner, the sear may allow the firing pin to slip free or be knocked out of place and cause the pistol to discharge once. Then, if the sear and/or pin are worn in such a way as to prevent the sear from catching the firing pin again, the pistol will behave as though it were open bolt, resulting in an uncontrollable series of slam fires.

I find it unlikely, even when considering the shoddy QC of Jennings Firearms Inc, that this kind of wear would occur naturally, at least to such a degree as to create this kind of failure.

I believe it likely that the pistol was over-zealously modified by polishing the sear and firing pin ridge. If done properly, this improves trigger pull and consistency. If you go too far though, it causes unreliability in the sear's ability to consistently restrain the firing pin.

fig 1. Jennings firing pin, showing firing pin ridge slightly off center to the right.

fig 2. Red arrow points to the sear

I can take some pictures of Jennings internals if anyone wants more evidence

Original post here, you will need to go there for the pictures, as they only work on that particular website, and I find using imageshack annoying.

Did you even read my post? I know about the barriers, and I'm telling you how easy they are to bypass.

I know some guys who brought a AAA piece back from Afghanistan. It's sitting behind my squadron building. I know 2 of the guys who were on the crew. They found it on the side of some dirt runway, unattended, loaded it up, took it back to base, then when they came home a few months later, they put it on a Herk, and brought it right through customs with no problems or paperwork. It didn't even get demilled till a year or two ago.

I don't think a pistol would be that hard, especially if you're using military transport to get home, as opposed to commercial.

yes I know it isn't impossible...but not everyone always has the same opportunity.  Plus, in my experience most of our troops are generally law abiding.

And again I say while not impossible, coming across a Jennings in Iraq seems pretty unlikely.   A rare example of a Luger from WW1 to me would seem more likely.  AND if a trooper was going to bring something home 'on the sly' a jennings seems a VERY unlikely source.  Seems to me he'd bump into some other trooper along the way who would tell him it was junk.  Seems to me if some trooper is going to break the rules and circumvent the barriers on 'bringbacks' he'd be smuggling out something a lot better, or maybe his own personal weapon.

So you are stringing together whole slew of unlikely scenarios.

#1 dishonest enough to break military regs and smuggle something home (most troops dont do this even though many want to)
#2 Has a good way to overcome the logicstics barriers (not everyone has a loadmaster buddy to smuggle it for them)
#3 Assuming A & B are overcome, is stupid enough to smuggle home a pistol he can easily buy here for $100
#4 Not only is the pistol easy to replace here, it is going to be a rare weapon in Iraq.

It's like the guy you are playing poker with just won with 4 aces...twice in a row!  It is entirely mathmatically possible.  In fact, it is as probable as any two other specific hands.  But me, I'd suspect the guy was a cheat.