Gunshot

I expected to see more gunshot wounds when I became a police surgeon for the NYPD three years ago. I had seen my first one as an intern decades earlier -- a suspect injured during a robbery had been brought into the emergency room -- and I still recalled the jagged, deep crater left by the bullet. The image had left its mark on me, not only by its appearance but also because it had been inflicted by another human being. I was braced for the sight of other such disturbing wounds, but I was surprised to find that many injuries resulted from trips, stumbles and mishaps that occurred off duty.

Vicente Padilla, who revived his career in the Dodgers' run to the National League Championship Series, was treated for a minor self-inflicted gunshot wound in his right leg at a hospital in his native Nicaragua on Tuesday, his agent Adam Katz said. Katz described the incident as a "hunting accident," saying that Padilla was grazed in his right thigh by a bullet. Katz said that Padilla spent 30 to 40 minutes at a hospital and was discharged. "He's fine," Katz said. News reports out of Nicaragua stated that Padilla was hurt at a shooting range.

Officers scoured the Ventura County coast Friday looking for a gunshot victim and arrested a 58-year-old Oxnard man for allegedly shooting the man, dumping his body along Pacific Coast Highway and attempting to elude police in an early-morning chase. The bizarre case began shortly after 2 a.m. Friday, when CHP officers attempted to stop a pickup truck after the driver ran a stop sign near Camarillo Springs Road and Adohr Lane. A woman jumped out of the cab of the truck and ran to officers screaming for help, said Eric Buschow, a Ventura County sheriff's detective.

In the open desert outside Baiji, Iraq, a naked man with a thick black beard crouched in the dust of a railroad culvert at twilight. Hours before, he had been mumbling and praying in Arabic. Now he spoke few words. Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna stood over him in the grainy darkness, his Glock pistol racked and pointed down at him. "If you don't talk, I will kill you," Behenna said. The night was warm and ragged from the dust storm that had turned the afternoon an eerie ocher.

Even in a country that has endured so much suffering, few images could more tragically convey the senseless violence gripping Somalia today than the expressionless stare of a 5-year-old boy named Omar. As he slept next to his mother one recent morning, a stray bullet from a nearby gun battle struck him in the back of the head. He made no movement or sound, so his family members didn't even notice at first. Later they saw blood oozing from a small hole in his head and thought it was a snakebite.

A human rights worker known for her fearless criticism of the Kremlin and its Chechen proxies was abducted in broad daylight and shot to death Wednesday. Natalia Estemirova, who worked doggedly to document ongoing human rights abuses in war-wrecked Chechnya long after international attention had drifted away, was on her way to work when men snatched her off the street in front of her Grozny home.

Los Angeles Police Sgt. Alex Vargas sprinted across the grass to the front of an apartment. He leaned ever so gently against the door. "It's open," he said, and his breath quickened. He locked eyes with another officer who was standing across the stoop, gun held tight against his thigh. "I'm going in," Vargas said.

The death of former NFL quarterback Steve McNair this weekend was a homicide, Nashville police said Sunday, adding it could be days before they will be able to classify the death of the woman found in the same condominium with a pistol underneath her body. McNair was shot four times -- twice in the chest and twice in the head, according to police. Sahel Kazemi, 20, had a single gunshot wound to the side of her head. Police said they have been told that McNair, who was married, was dating Kazemi.

Soon after Jacob Ramsey's death, his father and two brothers went to a tattoo parlor near their home in Hesperia. There, each man had the same words inked on his upper right shoulder: Jacob Israel Ramsey, 7-12-88, 10-Apr-09, Kabul, Afghanistan. "I look in the mirror and I see it, my brother. . . ," his younger brother, 16-year-old Joseph, said of the tattoo. "The only reason why I have it is because he's not with us anymore." Air Force Airman 1st Class Jacob Ramsey, 20, died April 10 of noncombat-related injuries in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to the Department of Defense.