Charles Sweatt, police chief of the small town of Parker in the Florida Panhandle, was in attendance at Tropicana Field on June 16 for the Rays game against the Marlins, when he felt something sting his leg. At first Sweatt thought he must have been nicked by a foul ball, although upon further inspection there was no ball to be found in his vicinity. What was found, by another fan seated nearby, was a stray bullet that had fallen through the Tropicana Field roof and struck the 54-year-old cop in the leg.
From the Tampa Bay Times…
But when Sweatt, the police chief in the tiny Panhandle town of Parker, looked down, there was no ball. Instead, another fan sitting nearby found a bullet.
It appears, authorities said, that the bullet dropped from the sky about 9 p.m. and pelted Sweatt’s right thigh. It left a bruise, but nothing more.
“No one really knows where that bullet came from,†said St. Petersburg police spokesman Bill Proffitt. “It was a falling bullet. That’s what it looks like.â€
Sweatt was given the once over by the Trop’s paramedics but did not require anything in the way of medical intervention. Authorities are unsure of where the bullet might have come from, other than it must have been shot up in the air by some careless individual, before eventually coming down to Earth through the stadium’s domed roof and bouncing off Charles Sweatt’s leg.
