A puzzling case

The New York Times has an article by Al Baker and Nate Schweber about the arrow incident:

Detectives in suits were milling around a park in Riverdale in the Bronx on Monday, peering about 200 yards to the east and making arc-like motions with their arms. Other officers drove around the neighborhood, known for being a sanctuary from urban crime and noise, with a loudspeaker atop their car, blaring a message that anyone with information should call the police tip line and offering up to $2,000 in reward money.
The New York Police Department, a 21st-century operation reliant on science, computers, and all of technology’s tools to examine crime scenes, had its hands full with an episode seemingly out of the 14th century: as she dropped off a friend at a nursing home on Sunday, a woman was hit in the abdomen with an arrow. The woman, Denise Delgado Brown, 51, was recovering on Monday in St. Barnabas Hospital, where she had undergone emergency surgery.
Nadine Baker, a spokeswoman for the health care system that includes the nursing home, the Schervier Nursing Care Center, was as befuddled as anyone over what had occurred. She said she had never seen anyone with a bow or arrows in the area. Nor had she seen any potential targets, like bull’s-eyes or deer. “Who would have a bow and arrow and be shooting around here?” she asked.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said investigators had several leads in the case. He said that detectives did not believe Ms. Brown was a target. He urged the person responsible to come forward. “The investigative premise is that it was an accident,” Mr. Kelly said.
At 2 p.m. on Sunday, Ms. Brown, of Yonkers, had driven to the nursing home, on Independence Avenue, to drop off a friend who lives there. She was opening the passenger’s door of her red Kia Sorento when she was struck by the arrow, the police said. The arrow hit her in a downward path and penetrated a couple of inches into her body.
“I felt this sharp pain,” Ms. Brown said on Monday. “I looked down and there was an arrow protruding from my belly. I was going to pull it out but when I pulled on it a little bit, I felt it was embedded deep inside of me. I was afraid I would bleed uncontrollably — I thought I better leave it until I was at the hospital.”
On Monday, the police said the arrow had been identified as a Blackhawk 4000 ACA, a 30 ½-inch-long, all-carbon arrow. Its shaft was black and two of its three feathers were still affixed to it, one of them yellow and the other white. The police said the arrow’s tip seemed to be for target-shooting. Investigators said they believed the arrow was shot from the west and possibly from the rooftop of a nearby building.
But arrows are not marked with serial numbers and are not easily traceable, said Al Lizzio, a competitive archer whose wife, Martha, owns Queens Archery Supplies in Flushing. He said there were few places in the city to buy arrows. But he added that arrows are often sold “out of garages and in basements” and that they could be ordered over the Internet.
The police are checking websites and with sporting goods stores that are authorized distributors of the Blackhawk 4000. Paul Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said there were no stores in the city that sold that kind of arrow. “The closest one is in Westchester County,” Mr. Browne said.
It is not illegal to own a bow and arrow in New York City, and bows and arrows are not listed in the penal code’s definitions of dangerous weapons, officials said. However, a person who uses a bow and arrow in a dangerous way could be charged with reckless endangerment, Mr. Browne said.
Jesslyn Moser, a spokeswoman for the city Parks Department, said its rules barred anyone except peace or police officers from bringing any “missile-propelling instruments”, such as a bow and arrow, into a city park. She said the department had issued permits for organized archery competitions in the past.
Mr. Lizzio said an arrow could easily travel about three hundred yards from a hunting bow if it were shot into the air at a 45-degree angle. If shot parallel to the ground, it would go a much shorter distance, he said.
Detectives at the scene on Monday were trying to answer some fundamental forensic questions: What was the trajectory of the arrow? The distance it traveled? They stapled posters to fences and trees in the area and left them on car windshields, looking for witnesses or tips.
Officers drove around with a loudspeaker, announcing that “a woman was struck with an arrow and seriously injured,” and imploring anyone with information to call 800-577-8477.
The city’s history of crime did not, unfortunately, offer much guidance. In 1968, in the Bronx, a teenage boy was killed when another boy shot him in the chest with a steel-tipped arrow during a fight over a bicycle. An arrest was made after a third boy who was there went to his priest to confess what he saw and the priest advised him to go to the police.

Rico says he wonders if the 'Al Baker' of the by-line is Alan Baker, son of Russell Baker, formerly a columnist for the same paper. If anyone knows, either way, please email him.