CSI
Register
Advertisement


CSIblack
A Bullet Runs Through It, Part 1
Bullet
Season 6
Number 7
Writer Carol Mendelsohn
Director Danny Cannon
Original Airdate November 10, 2005
Navigation
Previous Episode: Secrets and Flies
Next Episode: A Bullet Runs Through It, Part 2

A Bullet Runs Through It, Part 1 is the seventh episode in Season Six of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Synopsis[]

The team must process a whole neighborhood when a shootout between the LVPD and a local gang ends with fatalities on both sides and, as the result of a number of mishaps, the residents become increasingly hostile towards the police. Even more so when an innocent boy is shot in the streets and the police are blamed.

Plot[]

Victims: Daniel Bell, Ricardo Estevez, Salvador Rosario, Leandro Chavez (all deceased), Geraldo Zamesca (alive)

On the case: Entire team

Brass and Sofia are in the middle of a car chase with several other police cruisers. The car carrying the four suspects they're pursuing is weaving wildly through a poorer section of Las Vegas. As they speed through the neighborhood, the suspects fire at the cop cars with automatic weapons until their car overturns. The police cars stop, but the suspects jump out of the car and continue to fire at the officers. Sergeants Adams and Carroll and Officers Bell and Davis, the original pursuing officers, return fire along with Sofia and Brass until Bell is shot in the neck.

The suspects use the opportunity to flee; Carroll and Davis pursue, with Sofia and Brass behind them. Adams, meanwhile, stays behind to tend to Bell. Sofia shoots one of the suspects in the leg and, after securing him, runs to find Officer Davis out of ammunition and facing a suspect aiming a gun at him. Sofia shoots him. Davis, nervous, picks up the suspect's gun after he goes down to secure the weapon, but is instructed by Sofia to put it back down. Brass catches up to Officer Carroll and sees him facing off with another suspect who appears to be unarmed and is putting his hands in the air. Carroll is briefly distracted by a noise behind him and turns around to see what it is. When he turns back around to face the suspect, he's confronted with the fact that the suspect is now holding a gun. Carroll fires three shots into the suspect's chest, killing him. When the CSIs arrive on the scene, three of the suspects are dead with one on the run. Officer Bell is DOA.

A few blocks away, officers find a gravely wounded teenager who has been shot in the back. His bike is missing, and Det. Vega quickly concludes that this is not one of the shooters. The fourth suspect stole the bike to escape the scene. Grissom splits the team up to go over the very large crime scene. Members of the largely Hispanic neighborhood are already gathering to watch the proceedings. Grissom bags the gun the suspect Carroll and Brass pursued was carrying and observes a man and woman watching from a nearby window.

Back at the station, Undersheriff McKeen commends Brass for the job he did, but Brass is inconsolable due to Bell's death. He sits with Sofia before being called in by Internal Affairs Detective Nestor Ortega, who sits with Catherine to take Brass' statement; Catherine is present to collect his gun. Brass tells them that he and Sofia had closed a case and were stopping for a bite to eat when they heard the broadcast go out. As the chase was going on in the same neighborhood, they elected to jump in and assist in the pursuit. Brass can't recall seeing the specific shot that hit the driver, but knows that Carroll and Davis pursued the two suspects who fled the scene. The next thing he remembers is seeing Bell going down. Brass ran after Carroll, but his age slowed him down, and Carroll fired on the suspect when he got to the alley. He hands his gun to Catherine, and she finds that it has one live round in the chamber. Brass doesn't remember firing his gun, but his empty magazines and chamber tell another story. Ortega makes a wry comment about Brass entering a gunfight without any ammo, but Brass wisely stays quiet.

The residents of the neighborhood crowd around the crime scene just past the tape, angry and upset about the carnage in their neighborhood. One onlooker claims that an officer shot a suspect in the back. Nick questions several people, but no one saw anything. In the alley where Carroll shot the suspect, Grissom finds three cartridges—all from Officer Carroll's gun. The suspect's gun was empty, and Grissom asks Det. Vartann why he didn't drop it to avoid being fired upon. Vartann wonders if the suspect even knew he was out of bullets.

The CSIs continue to work the massive crime scene: Sara pulls bullets out of one woman's house, Bobby Dawson and Hodges go over one of the suspect's guns, and Nick processes their car for prints. The heat is turned up on the entire department when Danilo Zamesca, the father of Geraldo, the teen boy who was shot by the fourth suspect and is now in the hospital with his future uncertain, speaks out angrily to the press. Danilo blames the police for the shootout and for Geraldo getting caught in the crossfire, so to speak. The officers at the station are equally upset that Officer Bell's death isn't getting the same media attention.

Warrick runs into trouble at the crime scene when the mother of one of the victims crosses the police tape and runs up to him. She touches Warrick and claims police brutality, which leads to her other son running up and assaulting him before being pulled back by several police officers. Tensions are high.

Ortega, with Catherine next to him, questions Sofia. Sofia recalls that she and Brass were behind Officer Bell, and also remembers that he took a shot to the torso which was caught by his vest. After Adams told her he would handle Bell, Sofia took off in pursuit of the suspects. She tells Ortega she fired on one of the suspects when she came upon him pointing his gun at Officer Davis. Davis touched the suspect's gun after the shooting, but Sofia says he was acting on survival instinct. Ortega disagrees.

Based on prints from the car, the fourth suspect is identified as a Jose Fausto. However, word on the street is that the police shot two unarmed men and a teenaged boy; one witness saw an officer plant a gun on a suspect, while another witness claims that the suspect Officer Carroll shot had his hands in the air. Every suspect in the shooting has a long rap sheet and is part of a gang; they were even driving a stolen car. None of this means anything, though, as the family of one of the suspects decides to sue the department for wrongful death.

In autopsy, Doc Robbins pulls a bullet from the leg of one of the victims, Leandro Chavez. Based on the lack of blood in Leandro's system, the conclusion is that he bled out at the scene, which took awhile. As nobody took the time to call the paramedics, this is another strike against the police.

Catherine goes over the 911 calls and finds the one that came in when the whole chase began: the officers were pulling over a Buick when the suspects' car cut in and they switched pursuits. None of the officers know what became of the Buick. Grissom tracks Greg down along the path of the car chase and finds a hubcap from a Buick in good condition, something unusual in a rundown neighborhood. Noting that there's a freeway on ramp two blocks away, Grissom has Greg track down the traffic cameras in the area.

Warrick is going over the gun from Salvador Rosario, the suspect Sofia and Davis pursued, and he discovers a bullet was shot into the gun, rendering it useless. The thought is that the bullet came from Davis' gun, which proves that Salvador was pointing his gun at the officer. However, they still have to put the gun in Salvador's hand. Warrick processes Salvador's hand and a mark appears, possibly from the strap of a gun.

Catherine pulls the bullet out of Bell's vest, but Doc Robbins has some truly disturbing news for Grissom at the autopsy: the shot that killed Bell went through his neck from the left to the right and from the back, meaning it came from the directions the other officers were firing from. Bell was killed by friendly fire.

Warrick, Cavaliere, and Vartann trace Jose to a motel; inside, they find a 9mm gun and the bike that Geraldo was riding. They arrest Jose, but as they're leading him out, a shot rings out, hitting him right in the chest and killing him. The CSIs and cops look around, but no one can tell where the shot came from.

TO BE CONTINUED flashes across the screen...

Cast[]

Main Cast[]

Guest Cast[]

  • Louise Lombard as Sofia Curtis
  • Wallace Langham as David Hodges
  • Alex Carter as Detective Louis Vartann
  • Nestor Serrano as I.A. Detective Nestor Ortega
  • Steve Ryan as Sergeant Adams
  • Conor O'Farrell as Undersheriff Jeffrey McKeen
  • José Zúñiga as Detective Chris Cavaliere
  • Brennan Elliott as Sergeant Carroll
  • Colby French as Officer Davis
  • Daniel Bess as Officer Daniel Bell
  • Gerald McCullouch as Bobby Dawson
  • David Berman as David Phillips
  • Laurie Fortier as Nancy
  • Bre Blair as Tracy Bell
  • Lamont Thompson as SWAT Officer
  • Jesse Warren as Junkie
  • A Martinez as Danilo Zamesca
  • Greg Anthony as Ricardo "Roofie" Estevez
  • Daniel Arrias as Leandro "Leggy" Chavez
  • Brenda Canela as Gloria Torres
  • Diana Carreno as Hooker
  • Cynthia DeCure as Rosa Cerna
  • Scott DeFoe as SWAT Commander
  • Mitchell Fink as Paramedic Ryan Fink
  • Noe Gonzalez as Neighbor
  • Tonyo Meléndez as Man
  • Seth Michaels as Stuckey's Brother
  • Larry Mitchell as Officer Mitchell
  • Marco Morales as Salvador "Stuckey" Romero
  • Jose Rosario as Tomas Castillo
  • Ashlyn Sanchez as April Torres
  • Sophia Santi as Stuckey's Mother
  • Barry Sigismondi as Officer #2
  • Josh Sinisterra as Geraldo Zamesca
  • Ty Upshaw as Officer #1
  • Edwin Villa as Jose "Lucky" Fausto
  • Tom Warden as Himself

Music[]

  • Under Ether by Roland Orzabal

Episode Title[]

  • The title is likely a take on A River Runs Through It, a book that was turned into a 1992 movie that starred Craig Sheffer and Brad Pitt.

Notes[]

  • This is the first of three episodes Nick has a mustache. Warrick later called him 'mustache boy' because of it.

See Also[]

CSI:Las Vegas Season 6
Bodies in MotionRoom ServiceBite MeShooting StarsGum DropsSecrets and FliesA Bullet Runs Through It, Part 1A Bullet Runs Through It, Part 2Dog Eat DogStill LifeWerewolvesDaddy's Little GirlKiss-Kiss, Bye-ByeKillerPirates of the Third ReichUp in SmokeI Like to WatchThe Unusual SuspectSpellboundPoppin' TagsRashomamaTime of your DeathBang-BangWay to Go
Advertisement