Ahem, I think she may be deceased.
Ahem, the deceased lady's family is the one who hired the lawyer. Purpose: To seek compensation for her death.
How that works, I have no idea. Compensation for what? Burial expenses, I can understand. But unless she was supporting her parents monetarily, or had children (she didn't), compensation for burial expenses and legal fees required to obtain the compensation is about all they'd be entitled to receive.
As for
this article:
"Police have said preliminary findings show the shooting appears to be an accident..."
As people have mentioned here before, there's no such thing as an "accidental discharge" of a firearm. Firearms don't fire by themselves.
"A departmental investigation is being conducted by Detroit police’s internal affairs. Police did not release any additional details on the investigation today. They have not said the brand and make of the holster but said that it could have allowed the trigger of Parrish’s gun to be "manipulated" while it was stored."
If that's the case, then whoever selected such a crappy holster is negligent. At the very least, Officer Isaac Parrish is at least partly negligent for having accepted and worn such a holster. If he chose the holster himself, then he's fully negligent, even if Miller (the victim) was the one who inadvertently pulled the trigger.
The M&P 40 has an optional manual thumb safety, but "Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee Jr. said ... the department-issued gun didn’t have an external safety, but it had one in the trigger." I find that comment suspect, as the manual states "Each shot will be fired in the striker fire action mode. While holding the grip firmly, pull the trigger fully to the rear. As the trigger is drawn fully to the rear, the striker assembly is released, striking the cartridge primer." I could find no mention in
the manual of any internal safety built into the trigger.
I suspect there may have been something, perhaps clothing, pulling on the trigger, and all it needed was a nudge. Either that or she was tugging on the pistol rather hard. Either way, it was definitely a freak accident.
There is one other possible explanation, but it's exceedingly unlikely. Cosmic rays can have energies of up to 10[sup]20[/sup] electron volts. That's more than 160 Million ergs. To put that into perspective, that's 16 watt-seconds, which is about 1/10[sup]th[/sup] the amount of energy initially delivered by your average defibrillator. It's enough to ignite the powder, but probably not enough to tunnel through the slide, steel barrel, and brass casing. This is far-fetched, right? And almost certainly without precedent. We've been using smokeless powder for decades without any such self-firings, so I wouldn't put money down on this theory.
