Officer Clings to Life After Accident

A 10-year veteran of the small Montclair Police Department was in critical condition Thursday after being accidentally shot in the head at a law enforcement firing range, authorities said.

Det. Amy L. Nelson, a former LAPD officer and mother of three, underwent several hours of successful surgery to remove bullet fragments from her brain Thursday, Capt. Kevin Piper said. “She is still clinging to life. This is just a stronger grasp,” said Piper, who added that officials were guardedly optimistic that she would pull through.

“This is a tragic accident,” Montclair Police Chief Guy Eisenbrey said. “This department is a very close-knit family.”

While her family and many of the department’s 51 officers sleeplessly stood vigil at the hospital, a card with the simple phrase “Get Well Thoughts” adorned the door of the police station.

The incident occurred shortly before 8 p.m. Wednesday as Nelson participated in a routine monthly training session at the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department shooting range in Devore, amid the scrubby foothills below the Cajon Pass.

Nelson, 43, was firing her .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun alongside three other officers when she was struck by a bullet. At the time, Piper said, Nelson was shooting at a target 10 to 25 yards away and, like the three other officers, was under the supervision of two range masters. The officers, wearing protective glasses and ear protectors, shoot at night to better simulate the most frequent time that officers actually use their firearms on the streets.

“The range master saw her turn and fall,” Piper said. The bullet “struck the upper front of her head and traveled through her brain and struck the back of her skull, fracturing it.”

As Nelson lay bleeding on the range, a reserve officer at the scene, who is a full-time paramedic, administered aid until a helicopter airlifted Nelson to Loma Linda University Medical Center.

Once there, she was able to respond to verbal commands, but shortly afterward doctors induced a coma to prevent brain swelling, officials said.

On Thursday morning, surgeons, fearing complications, operated on Nelson to remove large bullet fragments. At the hospital were her husband, Richard, a West Covina police sergeant, and three children, ages 23, 20 and 8.

A San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department shooting investigation team launched an inquiry at the facility, where a huge silhouette of a combat-ready officer, firing a pistol while jumping, adorns a building wall.

Investigators searched for clues Thursday to determine whether Nelson was shot directly or was the victim of a ricochet.

Montclair police believe Nelson was wounded by a ricocheting round fired by her or one of the other officers at the shooting range.

“The potential exists for ricochets. There is a concrete walkway nearby if a shot was misdirected,” said Piper, who had fired his weapon only hours before at the same spot. “I don’t believe anyone made a mistake. It was just one of those accidents that happens with firearms.”

The range, one of nine at the Frank Bland Criminal Justice Regional Training Center, is 25 yards long and has human-size targets mounted on metal frames in front of a 45-degree dirt embankment.

Nelson moved to Montclair, 32 miles east of Los Angeles, in 1989 after two years with the Los Angeles Police Department. Shortly afterward, she became the city’s first Drug Abuse Resistance Education officer, going into schools in the community of 28,000.

“There are hundreds of kids who walk a mile to see Amy,” Eisenbrey said of Montclair’s 1995 Officer of the Year. “She is very popular.”

San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jim Bryant said neither he nor any other official could recall any accidents at the shooting range, a portion of which was temporarily closed during the investigation.

Sheriff’s investigators interviewed the officers at the range and took the weapons for forensic testing, Bryant said.

But back at the Montclair department, Piper said, they may never know whose bullet it was, given that it split into fragments. He added, “That may be what’s best.”