Inscribed Cartridges From a Separate Shooting
What This Image Shows
Five brass-cased rifle cartridges held together in a metal stripper clip, lying on wet, rough concrete covered in fine water droplets. On the fourth casing from the left the words ANTI-ICE are handwritten vertically in dark marker. Faint additional markings appear on a second casing.
The photograph is from news coverage of a separate incident and has nothing to do with the events at Utah Valley University. It is filed here as a comparison exhibit for one specific phenomenon: ammunition inscribed by hand with a message before use.
That phenomenon appears in the Kirk case too. According to the ATF summary, the cartridge casings recovered in that investigation carried engravings consistent with having been made by a rotary tool such as a Dremel, and the visible inscriptions include culturally legible phrases rather than anything operational. Whether inscribed ammunition indicates a personal motive, a deliberate signal, or something staged is exactly what researchers have argued about in both cases, and neither reading has been established. The engraved casings from this investigation are photographed at the ATF casing sheets, and the forensic record is at ATF Fragment Inconclusive.
Related Areas
- Cluster: Ice Shooting
- All photo evidence: Photos