Bullet's Unlikely Path Killed Cooley

In 1991, a 14-year-old boy named Leland Harold "Trey" Cooley was killed by a stray bullet that took an extremely unlikely path while watching a shooting competition at a Dallas gun club. A pistol accidentally fired a second round upward during recoil, allowing the bullet to escape through flaws in the range's safety barriers. The bullet passed through multiple walls, changed direction after striking a ceiling tile, and then hit Cooley. Investigators used ballistic markings, laser measurements, and computer reconstruction to trace its route, and the case later became the subject of a Forensic Files episode titled "The Magic Bullet."

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