Des Moines police have discovered a delivery man who reported being shot Wednesday morning in Des Moines did not get shot. He was wounded by flying debris when he clipped a mailbox and tore the mirrors off one side of his delivery van.
Des Moines police sergeant Todd Dykstra says the 9-1-1 call came in shortly after eight o’clock Wednesday morning, and investigators soon discovered it wasn’t a shooting. “His…external mirror hit a mailbox,” Dykstra says. “The impact was very loud and as a result of the impact shattered both of the rearview mirrors causing pieces of the glass to be propelled inside of the delivery truck itself, cutting Mr. Freeman in the cheek…and also breaking the driver’s side window.”
Dykstra says it’s wasn’t unreasonable for the driver to think he’d been shot. The sergeant says it happened “so fast” and made such a loud noise that the driver believed he’d been shot, especially with the shattering of the driver’s side window happening simultaneously.
Finding out it was an accident rather than a shooting was a relief to police. “You hate to have anyone be shot at let alone be hit and when you find out…later on it wasn’t an actual shooting, it was just an accident, that brings on a little relief knowing there isn’t an individual out there intentionally trying to harm people,” Dykstra says.