SEPT 2021 Blues Vol 37 No. 9

Detective sues Sig Sauer after she
says her holstered P320 handgun
nearly killed her.
Det. Brittney Hilton had no
idea she had just been shot. All
she said she felt at first was an
incredible amount of pain, and
a “very sick feeling.”
“I was cold at some points,
shaking. The fear kind of takes
over, the adrenaline takes over,”
Hilton told ABC News. “I just
said, ‘Am I going to die?’”
“I said, ‘Please just tell my
kids that I love them and don’t
let them find out on social
media that I’ve been shot,’” she
continued. “I didn’t know if I was
going to make it to the hospital.”
Hilton, a mom of three who has
been with the Bridge City, Texas,
Police Department for 11 years,
said the bullet came within one
millimeter -- the edge of a penny
-- from killing her.
But what Hilton said she also
didn’t realize at first was that the
bullet had come from her own
service gun, a semi-automatic
pistol called the P320. It was
still holstered inside her purse,
according to the police report.
Hilton is now suing gunmaker
Sig Sauer over the December
2020 incident.
“Never, in my wildest dreams,
would I have believed that my
gun would just have shot me,”
she said. “Gun owners don’t want
to think that their gun can just
go off without the trigger being
pulled.”
Sig Sauer’s P320 is widely used
by police departments across the
country, and is a big seller in the
civilian market, with about half
a million sold nationwide.
But now, P320 is the subject
of multiple lawsuits in connection
with incidents like Hilton’s,
where owners claim the weapon
fired without the trigger being
pulled.
Hilton said she was inside the
Bridge City Police station when
her gun went off. She still has
the purse with the bullet hole in
the bottom.
“I picked up my bag, my keys
were on top,” she said. “As I
walked around my desk, my
purse swings out and it shoots
out the bottom of my bag.”
It happened so fast, Hilton said,
that she didn’t process what was
going on at first, but she smelled
the gunpowder.
“And then I took one step, and I
felt this pain. It felt like a hot rod
of metal had just been placed
not only in my private, but
through my leg,” she said. “And
it [the bullet] exits out [of] my
lower buttocks.”
Hilton said she still has pain
from her injury.
“There’s never a point that I’m
really not in pain unless I’m laying
down,” she said.
Attorney Jeffrey Bagnell represents
Hilton and several other
police officers who have filed
individual lawsuits against Sig
Sauer over the P320.
“I think it’s a very, very serious
safety problem for law enforcement
and for the public at large,”
Bagnell said. “I’m not aware of
any other semi-automatic pistol
today that has this problem.”
Hilton’s $15 million lawsuit
said, “There have been 54 reported
uncommanded discharges
of the P320,” meaning the gun
Det. Brittany Hilton shows the bullet hole in the bottom right corner of
her purse that she says was caused by her holstered P320
Det. Brittany Hilton says her P320 handgun was in its holster
when it went off inside of her purse
went off by itself, over the last
five years in 22 states and Washington,
D.C.
Sig Sauer did not respond to
ABC News’ request for comment.
The gunmaker has previously
denied liability for these
incidents and, in some cases,
blamed the plaintiffs for negligence.
The gunmaker said in an
August 2017 press release that
“the P320 meets and exceeds all
U.S. standards for safety.”
After Hilton’s incident, the
Bridge City Police Department
had Sig Sauer examine the gun.
In Sig Sauer’s response to the
Bridge City Police Department
after Hilton’s incident, the company
contends that “a foreign
object entered the trigger guard
(causing) the pistol to discharge.”
Hilton disputes that, saying the
gun was holstered in her purse
and that it would be near impossible
for something to wedge
inside the holster and be enough
to pull the trigger.
“I’m very pro-gun,” Hilton said.
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