1994 – Rheine, Germany. A Chinese hand grenade type 86 P (weight approx. 290 g, approx. 1600 steel spheres 2.5–3.0 mm in diameter) wrapped in a red blanket was detonated in the course of a marital quarrel in the bedroom. At the time of detonation, the wife was lying on the bed in a prone position and the husband, who had acquired the grenade in Operation Desert Storm during The Gulf War, was kneeling or lying on her back. The hand grenade was located below the wife’s right clavicle so that the torso of the man was protected by the body of his wife. Both hands of the wife and the right hand of the husband were in close proximity to the hand grenade, apparently because both were fighting for it.
Fig.1
The detonation produced multiple holes and a crater in the mattress measuring 20 × 20 cm but the slatted wooden bed frame did not show complete perforations. Abundant blood stains and red fibers from the blanket were present on the ceiling and the walls. This stain pattern was radially arranged around a center marked by the crater of the mattress. A double-glazed window at a distance of 2 m showed multiple hits with perforations of the first but not of the second layer.
Fig.2
The woman died at the scene. The autopsy revealed the following injuries: a large and irregular but mostly shallow laceration of the right anterior upper chest wall surrounded by detonator and explosive residues. The soft tissues of the left chest showed several small tangential wounds. The second and third ribs were extensively fractured and the right pleural cavity was opened. Both lungs, the pulmonary artery, the right atrium, the aortic arch, and the large cervical vessels showed multiple small defects of circular to slit-like shape and a bilateral haemopneumothorax was present. The soft tissues of the right face were lacerated and the mandible and the nasal bone were fractured but the neurocranium was not perforated and the brain was not injured. The right hand was amputated at the wrist and the left hand was lacerated with multiple steel spheres inside the tissue. Multiple spheres were also found in the soft tissues of both the upper arms and the right hip region. Death was due to hemorrhagic shock.
Fig.3
The man survived with a laceration of the right hand including metacarpal fractures and amputation of several fingers, which necessitated surgical amputation at the wrist. Multiple steel spheres were present in the soft tissues of the head without fractures, in the left forearm with fracture of the ulna, and the left thigh. I was unable to find more info about this case.
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