Two hurt when live bullets used in Arizona Old West show

By Brad Poole

TUCSON, Ariz. (Reuters) - An actor and a woman in the crowd were shot with live bullets during a street reenactment of an Old West gunfight at a show in Arizona that was supposed to be using blanks, authorities said.

The performance was being staged on Sunday before a live audience packing the sidewalks of historic Allen Street in the small town of Tombstone, just around the corner from the site of the notorious 1880s shootout at the OK Corral.

One actor, Tom Carter, fired several shots, injuring a colleague, Ken Curtis, and a woman standing a block away later named by police as Debbie Mitchell, said Jeffrey Miller, leader of the non-profit reenactment troupe, the Tombstone Vigilantes.

"Tom was distraught after the incident. He couldn't talk. He couldn't put any thoughts together," Miller said on Monday.

Curtis was airlifted to Tucson's Banner Medical Center, where a surgeon removed the bullet, and he was in good condition Monday morning, according to a hospital spokeswoman.

Mitchell's condition was unclear, and no one was immediately available for comment from the sheriff's department or the Tombstone Marshal's Office.

Miller said Curtis was shot in the abdomen, and he had heard that Mitchell was grazed on the shoulder and had refused treatment. Miller, however, said he did not see or talk to her.

The troupe leader said both of the actors involved have more than a decade of reenactment experience in Tombstone, which was founded in 1879 and boomed for about a decade as a silver mining center with the motto: the Town Too Tough to Die.

Carter's six-shooter had one bullet remaining and five empty casings after the incident, indicating five rounds were fired, said the sheriff's department, adding that bullets or fragments from them were found lodged in storefronts up to a block away.

The shooting was an unintended part of Helldorado Days, Tombstone's annual three-day celebration of its wild West history. More than 1,000 tourists witnessed the early afternoon shooting, Miller said.

All Vigilantes reenactments have been canceled for two weeks while the marshal's office investigates and the troupe examines its procedures, Miller said.

"We have safety protocols, but obviously they aren't good enough," he said.

(Reporting by Brad Poole; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Eric Beech)