ERIE, PA. Officer shot outside nightclub

Police were careful not to call it a sniper shooting.
ERIE, Pa. (AP) -- An Erie police officer was in satisfactory condition after being shot by someone who was at least 50 yards away when the officer responded to a disturbance outside a nightclub, police said.
Officer William Marucci, 30, had a bullet removed from his arm at Hamot Medical Center, where he remained hospitalized early today. Marucci, however, will need "extensive surgery" to repair a shattered bone in his arm, Police Chief Charles Bowers said.
Police hesitated to characterize the matter as a sniper shooting, but Bowers said, "It's a rifle, and it's from a greater distance and nobody saw the shooter."
Police recovered a shell casing consistent with the bullet that hit Marucci, and a lens cover from a rifle scope, about 50 yards away, Bowers said. Police wouldn't describe the rifle, except to call it "small-caliber."
What happened
The incident began when two officers were flagged down by patrons of the Metroplex nightclub because of a fight about 1:40 a.m. Sunday. Marucci and another officer responded as backups.
"Everything was calmed down, they thought, when someone fired a shot," Bowers said.
The bullet went through a man's coat, grazing his wrist, before hitting Marucci, Bowers said.
Club manager Ted Smith said the shooting happened as the club was preparing to close. Smith said witnesses told him various accounts of the shooting, including one in which Marucci was supposedly hit by a ricocheting bullet from his own gun.
Bowers said that was impossible as all the officers had their weapons holstered when the shot was fired. "We checked every officer's weapon," Bowers said.
Marucci is a five-year veteran officer who serves on the police department's Neighborhood Action and SWAT teams.
Marucci and his wife, Jackie, have a 1-year-old daughter, said his mother, Carol Marucci. She said her son called her from the hospital himself, rather than have police drive to their home and deliver the news.
"He's very lucky," she said.