Shooting Death of Shireen Abu Aklah

Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist, was shot to death while she was covering the activities of the Israel Defense Forces during a raid of the Jenin refugee camp on May 11th, 2022. The sound of gunfire was captured by a video camera 5 to 10 meters from the journalists being filmed. Several bursts of gunfire were recorded, and at the time, a group of IDF soldiers were located 200 meters down the street. The question being asked was how far away was the shooter from the group of journalists.

Analysis of the recorded waveform revealed that the first burst of gunfire consisted of six gunshots, each with a ballistic shockwave (SW) followed 0.31 seconds later by a muzzle blast (MB).

Reports indicated that Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldiers in the area were typically equipped with Ruger Mini-14 or Tavor IWI semi-automatic rifles.

Using typical muzzle velocities and bullet types, ballistic trajectories were calculated for these two firearms, shown below with the red and black lines.

The area’s average temperature at the time-of-day of the shooting was used to calculate the muzzle blast propagation distance as a function of time, as shown by the blue line.

The bullets had a miss distance (due to the location of the recording device) that can reasonably be assumed to be between 1 meter and 5 meters. The distance to the shooter takes this miss distance into account, as shown in the table below.

Knowing the distance from the location of a recording to the location of a shooter can be a crucial piece of evidence in cases where gunfire is involved. Beck Audio Forensics uses scientifically rigorous analysis of audio recordings to make the facts as clear as possible. We can bring this level of rigor and expertise to your case, and we are prepared to provide expert testimony should the need arise.