24-05-2025
The smoking gun - Former HPPD officer claims in lawsuit that pistol fired on its own
HIGH POINT
Did a controversial handgun carried by a High Point Police officer discharge accidentally two years ago, without the officer ever putting his hand on the trigger?
The gun's manufacturer says that's impossible, but the recently retired officer — who was shot in the leg with his own service weapon during the incident — claims otherwise.
Former officer Vincent Panico, an 18-year veteran of the High Point Police Department who retired April 1, is one of dozens of plaintiffs listed in a mass legal action filed against firearms manufacturer Sig Sauer two months ago. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in New Hampshire, where Sig Sauer is headquartered.
The lawsuit alleges that Sig Sauer's popular P320 handgun — which the suit describes as 'the most dangerous pistol sold in the United States market' — has no external safety mechanism and 'is susceptible to unintended discharges, meaning instances when a gun fires without user intent, at an alarmingly high rate.'
The suit lists dozens of alleged 'unintended discharge' incidents across the country — going as far back as 2015 — in which users claim they did not pull the trigger. In many cases, the gun's user was injured. In other cases, someone else nearby was injured, including a Michigan schoolteacher who was shot in the neck. In Pennsylvania, a state trooper was killed — ironically, during a safety training session — when a fellow trooper's gun allegedly fired without a trigger pull. Some of the incidents were recorded on officers' body cameras or on security cameras.
Among those dozens of incidents is that of Panico, a 48-year-old Kernersville resident with extensive firearms experience. Prior to his 18 years with HPPD, he served five years with the Durham Police Department. He's also a former combat Marine who deployed to Iraq.
The shooting incident occurred on the afternoon of April 24, 2023 — during the heart of the spring High Point Market — in the Commerce Avenue parking lot at City Hall. Security-camera footage provided by Panico's attorney shows the officer exiting his police vehicle just before the holstered gun discharges.
'His hands were not on the gun,' said the attorney, Robert W. Zimmerman of Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky, a personal injury firm in Philadelphia. 'The holstered weapon shot a round into his leg. It entered his right thigh area, traveled down his leg and blew out around his knee.'
Panico, who was not made available for an interview, was taken to High Point Medical Center. He did not require surgery but lost a significant amount of blood, had nerve damage and was traumatized by the incident, according to Zimmerman.
'This was a painful experience for him, both physically and emotionally,' he said.
'He relied on his weapon to protect himself, to protect the community, and when you have a product that you rely upon to protect you that does the exact opposite and causes injury, it really impacted him physically and emotionally. It made his ability to perform his work tasks that much more difficult. You need to be able to have confidence and rely upon your duty weapon, and this really shook him.'
Like Panico, the majority of the plaintiffs are law enforcement officers well-trained in the use of firearms, but that makes no difference with a defective weapon, Zimmerman said.
'A gun shouldn't fire in its holster without a hand touching the trigger,' said Zimmerman, who said he's aware of some 350 unintended discharges of the pistol.
According to Zimmerman, the P320 is a striker-fired pistol rather than hammer-fired and has an extremely short trigger pull. Sig Sauer also failed to put an external safety on the gun, he added.
'Sig's competitors put one or sometimes even two external safeties on this type of gun to make sure a slight or short trigger movement that would cause the gun to fire doesn't occur,' he explained. 'Our claims are that the Sig Sauer is defectively designed and that it lacked a manual thumb safety and/or a trigger safety.'
Furthermore, the suit claims that even when incidents of unintended discharges began to be reported, Sig Sauer stubbornly refused to recall the controversial pistol, 'despite knowing of scores of grievous wounds inflicted upon users and bystanders.'
The company has staunchly defended the embattled P320, even posting a defiant denial on its website in March:
'The P320 CANNOT, under any circumstances, discharge without a trigger pull — that is a fact,' the statement reads in part.
'The allegations against the P320 are nothing more than individuals seeking to profit or avoid personal responsibility. ... In all cases, these individuals have an ulterior motive behind their baseless allegations that the P320 can fire without a trigger pull; they have no evidence, no data and no empirical testing to support any of their claims. They instead choose to misrepresent clear, negligent discharges as a 'design problem.' '
Zimmerman denied his clients are simply looking to make a profit.
'I feel bad that Sig Sauer is accusing my clients of having ulterior motives when their primary motivation is simply to make sure this doesn't happen to another 350 individuals,' he said. 'Sig Sauer is looking to blame the victims rather than looking at what other gun manufacturers do.'
Although some law enforcement departments across the country have stopped using the P320, others — including the N.C. State Highway Patrol and its more than 1,500 sworn officers — have not.
'As an agency,' said 1st Sgt. Christopher Knox, public information officer for the Highway Patrol, 'we are continuously in review of our training practices, internal policies and issued equipment to ensure that we are providing the very best in law enforcement services to our state.'
'With that being said, over the course of approximately eight years of using the first and second generations of this firearm, we have experienced zero spontaneous discharges and are not currently looking to move away from its deployment.'
Officers with the Thomasville Police Department and the Davidson County Sheriff's Department also utilize the P320, as well as another Sig Sauer pistol, the P365, according to department spokesmen.
The High Point Police Department, which began issuing the P320 to officers in 2015, stopped using the weapon in the fall of 2024, about a year and a half after Panico's incident, according to department spokesperson Victoria Ruvio. Officers now carry the Sig Sauer M17, a 9-millimeter pistol with an external thumb safety, she said.
'Every seven or eight years, the High Point Police Department reviews its equipment, including firearms,' Ruvio explained. 'The most recent review found it would be difficult to get replacement parts for the Sig P320. For that and other reasons, the department moved to the Sig M17 9mm with an external thumb safety.'
When asked if HPPD dropped the P320 over safety concerns, Ruvio simply reiterated that after a thorough review process, the decision was made to switch to the Sig M17.
It should be noted that no law enforcement departments, including HPPD, are named as defendants in the lawsuit against Sig Sauer.
'We see no culpability (for the departments),' Zimmerman said. 'We simply want law enforcement departments to have information so that each can make the best decision for its officers.'
