LAST EDITED ON 11-10-05 AT 06:32 PM (EST)

I'll leave this here for the debate, but I think I disproved my own theory. See below...

LAST EDITED ON 11-10-05 AT 03:04 PM (EST)

It looked pretty simple.

"Establishing shots" of high grass indicate two groups in the same area. Shannon running in the woods. Tailies walking in the woods. A gun shot. A wounded Shannon. Ana Lucia holding a gun. Ergo, Ana Lucia shot and killed Shannon.

Not so fast.

Mr. Eko told Ana Lucia that the tailies were a day's walk away from the fuselage folks. We never saw the two groups in the same frame. We only know that we heard a gunshot, and Ana Lucia fired her weapon (the slide is pulled back, as it would be on a weapon whose last round has been fired).

Back to Shannon. When Sayid catches up to her, she collapses in his arms, and he brings her to the ground. He then looks up at the killer or killers. And we only see one person, from the waist down. We are supposed to believe that person is Ana Lucia. But we don't even know for sure that Shannon's got a gunshot wound. That's an awful lot of blood. Perhaps she's been stabbed.

But suppose...
The two groups are still 20 miles apart. After all, there's plenty of high grass on the island. Was Ana Lucia firing at something else? An apparition? Desmond? Danielle? A polar bear? Quite possibly Ana Lucia has just shot and killed Cindy, the suddenly missing tail section survivor who may have been trying to silently rejoin the group.

The look on Ana Lucia's face indicates that she is surprised by what she has just done. She would not recognize Shannon. She would recognize Cindy, and would be surprised if she'd just shot one of her "teammates."

Add this: Unlike the surreptitious Others, Shannon is crashing through the woods loudly shouting out Walt's name. She is being followed by Sayid, who loudly shouts out Shannon's name. Yet neither Michael nor Jin hear them and respond. Certainly Michael would respond if he heard Walt's name.

And during the last shots, when Sayid is cradling the body and staring at the killer or killers, there is no look of recognition for those fellow survivors who are presumed lost at sea. But he does seem ready to confront the killer.

Conversely, in the tailies shot, there is no reaction other than stunned silence from Michael and Jin. Might they have reacted differently if they recognized Shannon and Sayid?

So despite my earlier theory that Ana Lucia was going to be the killer, I'm now proposing that Ana Lucia shot at something, and it wasn't Shannon.

Someone else killed Shannon. We will learn the killer's identity in a later episode.

OK, perhaps I'm insane.

Shannon's wound doesn't look like a gunshot entry wound, it looks like a stab wound. But an actual gunshot entry wound wouldn't be as colorful.

Ana Lucia earlier in the episode:

The killer:

Note the long club tied with twine is in both frames.

So yeah, I'm insane. Nothing to see here... move along. Go back to your lives.