The ambush of a Greenville police officer with so‑called Dragon’s Breath shotgun rounds has forced South Carolina residents to confront a kind of ammunition many had never heard of, let alone seen in action. Surveillance video of the attack shows a police vehicle suddenly engulfed in sparks that look more like a pyrotechnic display than a conventional gunshot, underscoring how far some shooters are willing to go to maximize shock and damage. As investigators and firearms experts unpack what happened, the incident is rapidly turning into a test case for how the state handles exotic ammunition that is legal to buy but capable of catastrophic harm.
At the center of the debate is a basic tension: South Carolina’s relatively permissive gun laws allowed the suspect to obtain incendiary shells that are restricted or banned in other parts of the country, yet the rounds’ dramatic visual impact and fire risk raise questions about whether they belong anywhere near a neighborhood street. I see the Greenville ambush as a moment when technical details about ammunition, obscure state statutes, and the lived reality of frontline policing collide in full public view.
The Greenville ambush that shocked South Carolina
State investigators in GREENVILLE COUNTY, S.C., say a South Carolina officer was sitting in a patrol vehicle when a suspect opened fire in what authorities describe as an ambush. Video released by those State investigators shows the cruiser suddenly lit by a burst of bright, cascading sparks as the first round hits, then more flashes as additional shots follow. The officer was wounded but survived, and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is now investigating the shootings as a targeted attack on law enforcement rather than a chaotic exchange of gunfire.
Separate footage from nearby surveillance cameras captures the suspect stepping out and firing at the marked vehicle, with each trigger pull producing a spray of incandescent particles that bounce off the car and the pavement. Investigators later said the attack happened on a Sunday, according to the coroner, and that the ammunition used was not standard buckshot or slugs. Instead, they concluded that the shells were a specialized incendiary load, a detail that immediately shifted the conversation from a single shooting to a broader reckoning with what kinds of ammunition are circulating in the state.
How Dragon’s Breath rounds work
Experts quickly identified the shells as a type of incendiary shotgun ammunition commonly marketed as Dragon’s Breath, a round designed less for traditional hunting or self‑defense and more for spectacular visual effect. In a televised breakdown of the Greenville attack, a firearms specialist explained that the pellets inside these shells are replaced with burning metal fragments that ignite when fired, creating a plume of sparks that can extend several feet from the muzzle of the gun. That analysis, shared in a segment on the Greenville ambush, emphasized that the rounds are rare in typical criminal cases but extremely dangerous when used at close range or in confined spaces…