On Wednesday, April 25, 2018, Detroit Police arrived in a paintball war zone.
Detroit’s Lower Eastside was in the midst of a full-on paintball war happening in broad daylight in the streets at the intersection of Cooper Street and Moffat Avenue.
Over 50 people, everyone armed with high-powered paintball guns, were shooting each other in an East versus West friendly rivalry.
The guns were .68 caliber paintbull guns, capable of shooting 20 balls of paint per second.
One person even blasted the cop car! Davon Williams was arrested for shooting the cop car with his paintball gun.
Hey, at least they weren’t real guns.
Fun Fact:
Paintball originated in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in the 1960’s!
Charles Nelson of the Nelson Paint Company in Kingsford, Michigan.
According to Detroit’s Jimmy Doom, “Nelson developed balls of paint that would splatter on impact to be used by forest rangers to mark hard to reach trees. They were designed to be shot by .22-caliber pellet guns.”
“In the early 1970’s, Nelson reached an agreement with Daisy Air Rifle in Plymouth, Michigan to manufacture the ‘Splotchmarker‘, the first gun specifically made to shoot paintballs. It later became the 007 Nelspot.”
“Paintball really took off in June 1981 when Robert T. Jones started The First Annual Survival Game in the New Hampshire forest with guns that could shoot one paintball at a time.”
History of Paintball (it all started in Michigan in the 1960’s)
http://www.nelsonpaintball.com/about-us/
