StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I've also always thought the following to be the case (from Mike's Star Wars Small-arms page):

This latter capability indicates high-velocity fragmentation from the explosive power of the impact, and it was demonstrated twice in ANH: once during the Death Star detention centre break-in, when an officer was killed by a hit to the wall behind him

However, I was watching the ANH SE on VHS earlier today and thought I noticed something. I rewound a bit and looked at this particular piece of the scene frame by frame. What actually happens is that Luke yells "Look out" alerting Han of the officer running towards them from the cell block and fires off his blaster. By using frame by frame, you can see that the officer is hit in the abdomen by a first bolt followed by a flash that lasts two frames followed by the second bolt that hits the wall behind the officer two frames later.

At first I thought that this could be an overlooked addition to the SE, so I looked at my Original ANH Pan & Scan tape frame by frame, but it showed up even more clearer.

So my conclusion is that the officer was mortally wounded by the first shot. It's time like this when you regret not be able to do a video-capture, but take a look at it. Of course, I use PAL so I don't know if this could be more difficult to spot using NTSC, but I don't think so.

Check out the scene, and see if I could be mistaken.

EDIT: It's all happening very quickly in the space of half a second (12 frames at PAL 25fps=0.48 seconds) so it's almost necessary to use frame by frame.

Ok, I'm guess I must be correct then, but it would be good if anyone else could verify the sequence of events.

Doesn't matter, since there's more evidence for the same. Leia getting shot at during the ROTJ bunker scene comes to mind.

Yes, and we have the other shot of the Storm Trooper getting hit by fragments from a nearby blast.