Is this image taken from the video here a bullet hole? It certainly looks like one to me.
For the full story, see the CNN Article.
Wow, I think you might be on to something. In the video, the spot appears and stays there, and there’s a faint “crack” just before it appears. Did you find that yourself?
For those who don’t know, Pauline Marois of the Parti Quebecois was giving her victory speech after winning the Quebec provincial election tonight. Before she finished, she was whisked away by security because a guy with a rifle had come in the back door of the arena and shot and killed one person. It looks like the bullet found its way to the stage.
I agree - the spot spontaneously appears right after a crack sound.
This is an excellent observation, and am waiting for the media to find it. I hope you get credit for noticing it so soon. Put it on Reddit…It will make a big splash.
Interesting.
I have to say that this news really saddens me. I care very little if Quebec elects a separatist government, but violence in the political process was something I hoped I would never see here.
I’ve seen this speculation on a few website now and I keep looking for news coverage, but haven’t found any. Anybody see anything?
I think you are right but I can’t be sure. The area is mostly behind her head and I was trying to go frame by frame but its frustrating with what I have to work with.
Ok now I’m going to say it is not a bullet hole. I went back and watch both the CBC video and the CNN video. It does not appear at all on the CNN video and appears then disappears then reappears on the CBC video. I don’t know if its a glitch or someone is playing games.
The CNN video is a copy of the CBC video and isn’t nearly the same quality. The spot does not disappear, she moves her head to where she’s covering it, then it’s only slightly visible behind the edge of her head as she moves slightly.
I’m pretty convinced it’s a bullet hole and was probably shot from behind the stage, coming out towards the auditorium.
I didn’t see any video of her speech in the video that was linked to. Elsewhere I found video of her speaking before, during, and after she was whisked of stage but I didn’t see any spot appear or hear any crack. Could somebody perhaps point me in the direction of good video that shows this? Merci.
Don’t bother with the video on CNN, it’s poor quality video and there’s no actual audio to match with the appearance of the hole. The CBC link in the OP has multiple videos, so maybe you didn’t see it. Here’s a direct link to the relevant CBC video by itself. Listen for the feint “pop” sound at 0:06 and look at the picture link in the OP for where you should be looking.
ETA: 0:06 is more like 0:055
I see what you mean. But one weird things is at around the :17 mark she moves her head in front of it. When her head moves out of the way its not there then reappears. Her head is already out of line. Its more pronounced when I expand the screen to full size.
But at the moment that it’s not there, things are a little blurry. I suppose the compression blurred it. It soon is visible again. The key is that it wasn’t there when things were clear at 0:05, and was there at 0:06, and stayed there. I don’t really have any remaining doubt.
I’m sure you are correct. Compression, thats the word I was looking for.
Thanks for pointing me to a link where I could see the situation better. Some thoughts:
***I first thought that such a small, black speck could have just been a compression artifact, but the speck stays in the same place and never fully goes away. I now think that compression artifacting is a better explanation for why the speck seems to disappear for a moment and then reappear when she moves her head past it.
***I believe that the speck is actually present on the backdrop and that it didn’t appear to be present until around :06 into the video.
***I wonder what that backdrop is made of. I would think a bullet hitting it would cause some sort of movement or vibration in the backdrop when it hit.
***I wish I could have had a better (closer) look at the video when the guy was speaking and when the PM-elect came out and spoke a few more words. I sort of thought I saw the speck at same point in that portion of the clip but couldn’t be sure, partly because the man’s head was in the way.
***The sound at the time the speck appeared seemed to be an isolated hand-clap to me but there is no way to know for sure. If it was the sound of a gun firing I wonder why there weren’t more gunshots heard, because I gather the perp shot more than one round because at least two men were shot.
I can’t watch it at the moment rifles fired indoors don’t make faint pops, you can hear and even feel them throughout the building. It says he fired six meters from the stage. In every indoor firing range I’ve been to you still hear a loud thump six meters outside the range section of the building, even with all the sound deadening material on the walls. I think it would have been loud enough that people would have reacted.
If you’ve never done any target shooting at a range, you’d probably be surprised how little even a paper target suspended by two clips along the top will move when shot. The bullet just tears through going through the hole it created while exerting very little effect on the rest of the paper. With a heavy curtain and/or an even more substantial backdrop, I wouldn’t expect any movement perceptible at that distance and that level of video quality.
You might also be surprised by the sound of gunshots that are indirect and blocked by obstacles, at a distance, with a lot of other background noise, then recorded on a microphone, then replayed on a speaker. Under those conditions, what you get is much more of a high pop, and much less of a low boom.
As for why no more gunshots, I’m pretty sure most of the shooting (and all of the casualties) took place outdoors.
The sound might be the sound of the bullet hitting the backdrop, through Marois’s unidirectional mic.
Oops never mind; they mention a starter pistol, so clearly there was a loud pop in the room.
I was thinking of a possibly silenced weapon, which might not have been picked up by the speaker’s mic.
In the reports I’ve read, there was only one shot fired that hit two people, and maybe the backdrop of the stage.
I think the starter pistol version was just a cover story to keep the crowd from panicking, which would be a real concern with that many people in the hall. The shooter actually had two weapons, one of which we know from pictures was a rifle. According to an eyewitness account on Reddit, the other was a hand gun of some kind.
One story mentions police pulling one of the victims inside the building and closing the door, so from that it sounds like the shooting was outside the building. The media hasn’t been too clear on the details so far.
One other point: The shooting apparently took place behind the stage, yet that’s where security took Marois. They came out again a few moments later to take her out through the crowd, it looked like, so I think they must have been confused about where the incident had happened.