Our twenty-sixth file presents us with "INCIDENT 0131122003" and a drawing of a gun being fired in the air.

Ruby: "0131122003. This one is the one involving a gun being fired into the air."

The file image shows a man in formal attire lying on the ground, a bloody gunshot wound on his chest.

Shannon: "Firing a gun into the air is actually a felony. Let's learn why, shall we?"

Zoom in.

As the video begins we get a look at the man from the file, who is just leaving a party. Standing in the doorway in front of the slightly ajar door, he has a gold top hat on his head, and under his right arm is a blonde woman.

Date of Incident: 31 December 2003 - 1 January, 2004

Location of Incident: Echo Park, Los Angeles, California

Shannon: (Narrating) "There's good luck… and there's bad luck. And then there's Ronald."

Ronald and the woman say their goodbyes to the party organisers and close the door behind them. They stroll away from the door and down the path leading to the house.

Shannon: (Narrating) "Imagine exiting a New Years' Eve party with a hot date on your arm and a night full of possibilities in front of you."

Ronald: "So where's the next party at?

Unnamed woman: "I think right down the street."

As the woman says that we hear a bang sound from off in the distance.

Ronald: "OW!"

Ronald clasps his hand to his chest.

Unnamed woman: "What happened?"

Shannon: (Narrating) "Suddenly you feel a thud, followed by a sharp stinging pain in your chest."

Ronald looks up at the woman, before suddenly he falls backwards onto the ground. The woman begins shouting Ronald's name in a panic.

Shannon: (Narrating) "You fall down, and two minutes later you're dead. That's what happened to our friend, Ronald. It wasn't until after the autopsy that the real reason for his death was discovered."

The camera suddenly cuts to another scene. Now we see a man flipping sausages on a barbeque. We see three black men sharing New Years' banter with each other, cans of beer in hand.

Shannon: (Narrating) "In a neighbourhood about a mile away from Ronald's party, Quame is getting his drink on with the boys."

More banter from the men.

Shannon: (Narrating) "And as the clock counts down midnight, Quame and his crew decide to let loose."

The men start counting down to midnight together.

Quame and his friends: "HAPPY NEW YEAR!"

To celebrate, Quame himself pulls out a silver pistol, points it into the air, and pulls the trigger. The gun fires with a burst of white smoke, a spent shell flying out of the barrel.

Shannon: (Narrating) "This calls for one of my CGIs, wouldn't you say?"

The CGI depicts the bullet exiting the barrel and being propelled into the air, three counters measuring the distance, time and speed of the bullet. A chart on the right notes its altitude.

Shannon: (Narrating) "Ruby, your bit."

We now see Ruby just outside the house, holding a replica toy pistol in her hand.

Ruby: "Of course. So when the bullet, like, flies out of the barrel the muzzle velocity is somewhere around 610 metres per second, and it'll probably fly, like, nine hundred metres up into the air."

Back in the CGI we see the bullet reach the maximum altitude that Ruby mentioned. Soon enough its speed stalls at around 160 kilometres per hour and gravity turns it downwards as it begins plummeting back to Earth.

Ruby: "And as it comes back down it's going to reach terminal velocity."

Cut back to where Ronald and the blonde woman are, unaware of the danger from above. We replay the scene where Ronald gets hurt.

Ruby: "That bullet will have the speed to do some serious damage."

Another one of Shannon's CGIs shows the bullet entering Ronald's body through his shoulder, ploughing through his chest and ripping a hole in the right atrium of his heart.

We replay the rest of the scene where Ronald collapses and the woman attempts to awaken him, to no avail.

Shannon: (Narrating) "As I said, it's a felony to fire a gun in the air. Stray bullets kill dozens of Americans every year. The lesson: when the clock strikes twelve on New Years' Eve… duck."

We hear the echo of "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" from Quame and his friends.

WAY TO DIE #171

NITE CAPPED

Return to the Sharuby couple in their office.

Ruby: "That's, like, another reason I am in favour of gun control - preventing needless deaths like that."

Shannon: "Couldn;t have said it any better myself. Your turn to narrate next."

Ruby nods, closing the file and marking it before wheeling over to get the next one.