PHILADELPHIA — The bullets that struck two officers on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway during Monday’s Independence Day celebration were .40-caliber rounds fired from the same gun, police said Wednesday.
Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said at an afternoon news conference that ballistics tests conducted after the shooting show that the bullets — which struck officers standing in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art — were shot out of the same firearm.
Still, Vanore said a host of other questions remain unanswered. Police still don’t know who fired the shots, where the shots were fired from, or whether they were unloaded into the air in so-called celebratory gunfire.
Police believe the shots could’ve been fired over a mile away, Vanore said, given the near-pristine condition of both bullets after they landed, and because neither shot became lodged in the body of either officer who was struck.
The two men — Philadelphia officer Sergio Diggs, and Montgomery County Sheriff’s Deputy John Foster — were about 20 feet apart when they were hit, and Vanore said it was unlikely that a shooter could have targeted them firing shots from a long distance away.
Beyond that, Vanore said, it is unclear where the shots may have originated or why. No officers around the Parkway reported hearing gunshots or seeing muzzle flashes, leading police to believe they must have been fired from elsewhere.
Detectives have not recovered other ballistics evidence matching the bullets that struck the officers, Vanore said. And he said investigators were continuing to review and seek video evidence from that night that might help lead to clues about where the gunfire came from.
