Imagine you are attending a baseball game and feel a sting on your thigh as an object plummets into your leg. This happened to Charles Sweatt, the police chief of the small Florida town of Parker while watching the Tampa Bay Rays play the Miami Marlins at Tropicana Field.
Like most reasonable people, Sweatt assumed the assault on his thigh must have been a foul ball. He was wrong. The object that ultimately left just a bruise was, in fact, a bullet.
St. Petersburg police spokesman Bill Proffitt said authorities remain baffled. “No one really knows where that bullet came from. It was a falling bullet. That’s what it looks like.”
Police did speculate that the bullet could have been from a shooting at Williams Park at roughly the same time. That incident involved multiple gunshots, resulting in minor injuries to one man.
The Tampa Bay Times reports that this theory has some holes, particularly the lack of a hole in the roof of Tropicana Field.