Home Invasion Hostage killed by Police Fire

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berettaprofessor

berettaprofessor

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Here's an unfortunate incident all the way around: A Hofstra Univ. student was held hostage with a gun to her head by a home invader. The home invader turned the gun towards a responding police officer who opened fire with 8 rounds, hitting the hostage in the head and killing her. The intruder was also killed.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/18/us/new-york-student-killed/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

I can't imagine the pain of the victim's family or of the police officer involved. The lesson for us? Maybe it's not so easy to take out the guy holding a hostage as it seems to be in the movies.:rolleyes:
 
this also proves that just because you're an LEO, doesn't mean you're the only people qualified to carry a gun as leftists claim.
 
Wonder which shot out of the 8 fired was the one that hit the victim? Emptying half a clip rapid fire will make your groups open up.
 
While I admit it is tragic for the hostage and their family/friends, beyond that, I have to wonder where this thread will go... Will it be that LEO doesn't practice enough to be an expert shot, or will it be that LEO needs to practice less due to conspiricies on ammo availability?
 
Real life is usually far different from movies and it behooves all of us not to mistake the two.
 
mister_murphy said:
While I admit it is tragic for the hostage and their family/friends, beyond that, I have to wonder where this thread will go... Will it be that LEO doesn't practice enough to be an expert shot, or will it be that LEO needs to practice less due to conspiricies on ammo availability?
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I am one to typically jump on law enforcement. So let me be the first to say that I could not imagine being in the shoes of the LEO that pulled that trigger.
 
Wish there was more context...

Atleast the article says that the Bad guy was struck 7 of the 8 times.

I don't think any amount of training short of religious practice could've prepared anyone to make a hostage shot like that under pressure, let alone the meager firearms training LEOs in some departments get.

I hope the victim's family can recover quickly. I really hope the LEO can come back from this, I can't imagine the guilt the guy is going through right now.
 
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He should have taken a carefully aimed shot at the suspects head BEFORE the gun was aimed at him. I wasn't there, so there's no way to know if he could have done anything differently.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2
 
Impureclient said:
Wonder which shot out of the 8 fired was the one that hit the victim? Emptying half a clip rapid fire will make your groups open up.
Click to expand...
Two observations, based on having been in several de-briefings with officers involved in shootings and having been training folks to shoot for many years

1. It is highly unlikely that the officer knows which shot or even how many shots he fired. When someone is about to shoot at you, your focus is to start shooting back.

2. Depending on their technique and level of training, follow up shots need not be less accurate than the first shot. If you can put 3 shots into a couple of inches, there isn't any reason to believe that you couldn't put 5 more in that group
 
How many people could put any shots into a 5 inch group shooting at what may be a moving target hiding behind a hostage, while being shot at themself? Sometimes life puts you in a situation where there's no good solution, for the LEO or the unfortunate victim.
 
He should have taken a carefully aimed shot at the suspects head BEFORE the gun was aimed at him.
Click to expand...

Idealistically, that would be best. Realistically, as far are courts see it, there is an argument that the suspect wasn't a threat until he was aiming at the officer.

In a situation like this, there's just no good solution. Maybe the cop should have practiced more. We all should. Maybe he shouldn't have taken the shot with the hostage there. That's not something to tell a guy coming under fire, especially when the suspect might be just as likely to kill the hostage unless he's being shot at, anyway.

A million things could have been different and there's no way to say if the outcome would have been. The only thing to do here is keep the family and the officer in heart.
 
Maybe the story here is that the cop should not have put himself in a position where he was left with the choice of kill or be killed. Yet another instance where intervention by the police only made the situation worse. If he was going to kill her, he'd have done it already, so the police could have backed off and waited, hell, maybe even let the guy think they weren't there at all.
 
Deus Machina said:
Idealistically, that would be best. Realistically, as far are courts see it, there is an argument that the suspect wasn't a threat until he was aiming at the officer.

In a situation like this, there's just no good solution. Maybe the cop should have practiced more. We all should. Maybe he shouldn't have taken the shot with the hostage there. That's not something to tell a guy coming under fire, especially when the suspect might be just as likely to kill the hostage unless he's being shot at, anyway.

A million things could have been different and there's no way to say if the outcome would have been. The only thing to do here is keep the family and the officer in heart.
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No, the gun was being aimed at an innocent person. He could have pulled the trigger at any time. A headshot on a hostage taker who is aiming the gun at the person's head is ALWAYS justified. Too risky to count on any other outcome than an instant off button cns shot with a single carefully aimed shot, as the officer had learned. If policy is to blame, policy needs to change.

I'll tell you one thing, if a man has a gun to my wife or kids head, I'm taking the shot the moment I'm able before he even thinks I'm serious.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2
 
I'm not judging the officer innocent or guilty. As a father myself, I can say that the very least I would want is for the matter to be looked at carefully and my heart goes out to this girls parents. But in the heat of the battle sometimes things happen that weren't planned for and that shouldn't happen.
 
ChaoSS said:
Maybe the story here is that the cop should not have put himself in a position where he was left with the choice of kill or be killed. Yet another instance where intervention by the police only made the situation worse.
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There's no way to know that was ever a possibility. Many departments have mandatory response policies, especially in regards to violent crime.

There are far too many unanswered questions to jump to any conclusions or attempt to critique the officer's judgment. Anyone who wants to use this event as fuel for the anti-LEO-fire can go ahead and do that, but it won't be justified until additional information is revealed.

All we can really do with this is use it as a reason to discuss the pros and cons of responding to various hypothetical situations that are assumed to be similar. Anything more than that is not only going to be fruitless, its also completely disrespectful, toward both the victim's family and the officer in question.

If you have the full details of an incident and want to play crime scene investigator, that's one thing. Using a news editorial and attempting to recreate a scene and assign blame is another thing entirely, and its anything but high road.
 
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CoyoteSix said:
Wish there was more context...

Atleast the article says that the Bad guy was struck 7 of the 8 times.

I don't think any amount of training short of religious practice could've prepared anyone to make a hostage shot like that under pressure, let alone the meager firearms training LEOs in some departments get.

I hope the victim's family can recover quickly. I really hope the LEO can come back from this, I can't imagine the guilt the guy is going through right now.
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It is of little comfort to the family of the victim that the perpetrator was hit 7/8 times.
The only thing that matters to them is that their loved one is dead.

I know armchair quarterbacking is much easier than decisions made on the spot but maybe waiting for a hostage negotiating team with trained marksmen would have been a better option.

The second problem is that most officers try to put the most lead possible downrange.
We see this quite often where dozens of shots are sent downrange instead of a few carefully placed shots. Again hindsight is 20/20 but it doesn't help this girls family.
The primary goal of the exercise is to save the hostages not catch the bad guy.

I hope this officer will be able to live with the decisions that he made.
 
maybe waiting for a hostage negotiating team with trained marksmen would have been a better option.
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Residents of New York need to address that with their LE departments. As I mentioned earlier, many departments have policies of mandatory response to violent crime. For instance, Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers who respond to an active shooter situation are required to respond immediately without waiting for additional resources or backup. Expect similar policies nationwide - and very possibly the reason for what happened in this particular scenario.
 
It is the bad guys fault, he set everything into motion.

The ladies family is hurting and I have to believe the LEO is feeling a lot of pain too.
 
berettaprofessor said:
Here's an unfortunate incident all the way around: A Hofstra Univ. student was held hostage with a gun to her head by a home invader. The home invader turned the gun towards a responding police officer who opened fire with 8 rounds, hitting the hostage in the head and killing her. The intruder was also killed.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/18/us/new-york-student-killed/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

I can't imagine the pain of the victim's family or of the police officer involved. The lesson for us? Maybe it's not so easy to take out the guy holding a hostage as it seems to be in the movies.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

That dudes career in law enforcement is done and he will be sued for wrongful death you can be sure of that.

Sent from my mind using ninja telepathy.
 
^^ pretty sure that was a justified shooting. I don't think his dept. Will throw him under the bus like that.

Also, I don't think any attorney could convince a jury/judge thatan LEO shouldnt have shot when a weapon was pointed at him.

If they try to fry him for not waiting for back up he's defended by his dept response policy

Hell, if he didnt respond and the girl still died theyd still try and fry him for not responding when he should've.

It's not easy making decisions like that. Especially if neither one will turn out well if things don't go as planned.
 
Bobson said:
There's no way to know that was ever a possibility. Many departments have mandatory response policies, especially in regards to violent crime.

There are far too many unanswered questions to jump to any conclusions or attempt to critique the officer's judgment. Anyone who wants to use this event as fuel for the anti-LEO-fire can go ahead and do that, but it won't be justified until additional information is revealed.

All we can really do with this is use it as a reason to discuss the pros and cons of responding to various hypothetical situations that are assumed to be similar. Anything more than that is not only going to be fruitless, its also completely disrespectful, toward both the victim's family and the officer in question.

If you have the full details of an incident and want to play crime scene investigator, that's one thing. Using a news editorial and attempting to recreate a scene and assign blame is another thing entirely, and its anything but high road.
Click to expand...

It may be the cop, it may be the department, it may be the training that he received. I don't know, but I do know that the police are too quick too rush into a situation and escalate it in too many situations.


But I do think that it is unfortunate that the modern police place their own lives above that of those that they are supposed to be protecting. It takes one hell of a good shot to play the hero in that situation like they do in the movies, and if you aren't that good of a shot, you know that you are likely to kill the hostage to potentially save your own life.
 
My take away from this tragedy is:

1) Shut doors and lock them. An open door invited this criminal into their home, destroying lives forever (not just the girl who lost her life, but the lives of all around her - they will never be the same, especially her twin sister).

2) Carry inside your home. I don't and I should start to. No one knows when someone up to no good suddenly appears to do harm.
 
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