U.S. Ship Fires On Poland

Pascagoula Ms A guided missle destroyer inadvertently shoots a Polish warehouse in the Port of Gdynia. No one is hurt.

by Reuters

Published: Thu, October 29, 2009 - 2:29 pm CST Last Updated: Thu, October 29, 2009 - 2:49 pm CST

GYDNIA, Poland - Shots were fired form the destroyer USS Ramage as it was leaving the Polish port of Gdynia on Wednesday (October 28), Polish media reported.

A witness working in a port warehouse told news channel TVN24 he heard rounds hitting a wall and video shot on Thursday (October 29) shows marks on the building's exterior.

"We were in the warehouse of our furniture company, on the balcony. At one point we heard a shot, a pretty loud bang. We didn't know what was going on and as we later found out, the shots hit around 98 Feet (30 meters) from us. As it turned out later, they posed a real threat to us," Adam said.

"It was really a coincidence that it didn't hit us, but the wall. Our cars are here, we work and spend whole days here, so there was a high risk, I can't hide that it affected us in some way," he added.

After interrogating crew members and witnesses, the Polish military prosecutors office told news agency PAP on Thursday that the shots were fired accidentally.

The destroyer has been allowed to set sail and an investigation of the incident is left in the hands of the U.S. Navy.

"Our information is ... we don't exactly know why. It was not intentional, obviously. Our initial information is a sailor was performing maintenance on a weapon and there was an accidental discharge of three bullets towards the pier," said U.S. embassy Naval Attache Cmdr. Thomas Williamson.

The destroyer USS Ramage entered Gdynia port on Sunday Oct.25 after participating in military exercises on the Baltic sea.

Editor's note: USS Ramage was built in the early 1990's at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, MS

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