Lyft driver shoots two carjackers in Philadelphia

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Jeff White said:
There is a reason most police departments have policies against shooting at people in moving vehicles. That reason is that unless your backup gun is a 90mm recoiless rifle in an ankle rig, you aren’t carrying anything that will reliably stop a vehicle.
If you disable the driver the most likely outcome is the creation of a 2500 pound or more unguided missile.
There are very few situations where shooting at the driver of a moving vehicle would be the best choice.
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And yet the FBI scores handgun ammunition effectiveness in part, on its ability to penetrate ballistic gel after penetrating a car's door and windshield. Mind you, I'm not arguing with you. By all means, I'd get out of the way if possible and I would make that the key element of my React to a Vehicular Attack Battle Drill. Evading the oncoming vehicle would almost always be step one I should think and preferably in such a way so as to be behind it as opposed to alongside it or in front of it. If it was a car plowing through a crowd of people, I might have to do some quick critical thinking.
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The FBI doesn’t rate any handgun ammunition to stop a vehicle. Why not? Because none of it will and it’s folly to try. Those penetration ratings are for shooting at a suspect in a stationary vehicle. There are many scenarios where it might be necessary to engage a subject in a stationary vehicle.

Are you at all familiar with basic physics? You have to apply enough force to overcome the momentum. Do you have any idea how much force it would take to stop a small vehicle moving at oh say 15mph? You aren’t going to find that in any hand held weapon that isn’t designed for military use. Even the 90mm recoiless rifle I gave in my example is going to rely on destroying enough of the car that the parts dragging will create enough resistance.to stop the car. I shot a lot of vehicles on Army ranges with the 90mm recoiless rifle, the M72A2 and A3 LAW, the M2 .50 caliber, the M60 and M240 machine guns and the M249 SAW. None of those weapons works as well as they do in the movies.

The idea that your going to stop a moving vehicle with a handgun is just silly. Talk about a Golden BB. If you somehow hit the main engine control module (which you can’t see from outside the car) you might succeed in shutting the engine down but I don’t think there is anyplace you can hit to activate the brakes.

Tires are pretty tough, hitting them enough times to rapidly deflate them would be pretty hard if the car was coming at you. Even if you did the car is going to roll on the rims until there is enough resistance to overcome the momentum of the car.

I’ve never seen a car with an alerter like there is on a railroad locomotive that will apply the brakes and shut the engine down if the driver doesn’t hit the button in time. So even if by some miracle you get the mythical no reflex kill shooting the driver through the windshield you still aren’t going to stop the car.

As for taking the shot of the driver is heading for a crowd of pedestrians, you just took responsibility if the car continues on into the crowd. Unless you have ESP or pulled out your pocket crystal ball you have no way of knowing that the driver intends to run people over. Attempting to save their lives can easily ruin yours. I can envision the plaintiff’s attorney reading policy after policy on shooting at moving vehicles to the jury. I can see a parade of certified LE trainers on the stand explaining to the jury why those policies exist.

Please drop any thought of shooting at someone in a moving vehicle. It’s neither smart nor justifiable except in the most extreme cases.
 
OK, based on what was reported.....just my thoughts and perspective.

Rear end me once - accident...I probably get out and look to exchange info - the normal.
Rear end me trice - OK, situational awareness needs to kick in and let you know something is very wrong here. You need to get on the phone with the police or have the passenger do it while you stay vigilant as the driver and prepare to flee while still in said vehicle.

If I were a ride share driver, I'm having dash cams(front and rear) plus an internal camera installed for a myriad of reasons, not limited to ones like this.

If you get to a point where you have been extricated from the vehicle. Property is property, and while it would suck being stuck without a vehicle, unless there was some other scenario like a loved one was still in the vehicle when they tried to flee with it or they tried to swing back by and run you over of shoot you from the car....there really is no compelling reason to open fire on the vehicle. As others have mentioned, if you do strike or incapacitate the driver, you've now got a potentially erratic rolling battering ram going who knows where. You also have the chance of missing the vehicle or ricochets sending bullets toward unintended places unnecessarily.

As soon as the driver and passenger were out of the car, the most prudent action, if possible would have been to run away, seek an advantageous position to protect self and call for help.

All speculation as not a lot is known of what truly went down. Unfortunately, I have had past experiences similar to this and have acted differently. I've had someone rear tap me. I looked in the rear view and didn't like what I saw....so drive directly to the nearest police station. At the time, cell phones were those old brick motorola's and I didn't have one. Once I got to the police station, they stopped following me and I gave my report. Thankfully I was by myself at the time, so I just shut the car off and ran into the station and told the desk sergeant on duty what had happened. I never saw those people again and they were never caught, as it was late at night and I couldn't get a positive id on the people in the car or the car itself.

I'm blessed though that I have a brother and father that taught me all about these kinds of things from a very small age. I just wish that more people had this opportunity I was given to learn and take it seriously.
 
With the way these things go now, there is a good chance he will be sued civilly by the mutts who committed the crime.

"Yeah, I robbed him at gunpoint and threatened to kill him, but he didn't have to shoot me. I was just about to enroll in college, after I got my GED, and turn my life around. I was thinking about going to medical school.

Now I'm disabled and will have to be on SSI for the rest of my life. He should have to pay what I would have earned as a doctor".
 
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a single mother, holding down two jobs and needing her older car to take her child to day care and getting to her jobs, her car is her ticket out of proverty and to loose it to a dirtbag who thinks he needs it more than her needs to be gone, to jail or the morgue. maybe a timer switch that could pushed on that would let the engine run for only 5 to 10 minutes, with the hood needing to be raised to reset the timer.
 
Jeff White said:
Please drop any thought of shooting at someone in a moving vehicle. It’s neither smart nor justifiable except in the most extreme cases.
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Whether or not it is smart can be debated based on individual situational context. As far as being justifiable, the laws are no different that if the person wasn't in a vehicle. The only thing making the cases "extreme" is that the person is in a vehicle as they make up such a small percentage of shootings.
 
Double Naught Spy said:
As far as being justifiable, the laws are no different that if the person wasn't in a vehicle.
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Unless the defender is also in the vehicle, the reasonableness of the act will be evaluated differently, and that is a major element of justification in a legal defense of self defense.
 
Jeff White said:
The FBI doesn’t rate any handgun ammunition to stop a vehicle. Why not? Because none of it will and it’s folly to try. Those penetration ratings are for shooting at a suspect in a stationary vehicle. There are many scenarios where it might be necessary to engage a subject in a stationary vehicle. Are you at all familiar with basic physics? You have to apply enough force to overcome the momentum. Do you have any idea how much force it would take to stop a small vehicle moving at oh say 15mph?
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I think you're the only one talking about trying to disable the car here. I'm certainly not. The Lyft driver apparently wasn't trying to kill the vehicle either.
Jeff White said:
As for taking the shot of the driver is heading for a crowd of pedestrians, you just took responsibility if the car continues on into the crowd. Unless you have ESP or pulled out your pocket crystal ball you have no way of knowing that the driver intends to run people over. Attempting to save their lives can easily ruin yours. I can envision the plaintiff’s attorney reading policy after policy on shooting at moving vehicles to the jury. I can see a parade of certified LE trainers on the stand explaining to the jury why those policies exist.
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That's why I said you would have to use critical thinking in that situation as opposed to a thoughtless battle drill. I'm specifically thinking of the Nice France truck attack where the driver was doing a lot more than "heading for a crowd of pedestrians". He was in the crowd actively using a semi truck to kill innocent people. I didn't say that I would immediately start blasting but if the opportunity to safely shoot through the vehicle and kill the homicidal maniac presented itself, you would have to take that shot or you would have to live with the knowledge that innocent people died because of your pusillanimous inaction for the rest of your life and my state law would back me up fully in that choice. Regardless, It's a highly unlikely scenario but we are talking about when you would shoot into a car so it's probably one of the few instances where you would have to put some thought into it.
 
redcon1 said:
The Lyft driver apparently wasn't trying to kill the vehicle either.
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He most certainly was not.

redcon1 said:
...but if the opportunity to safely shoot through the vehicle and kill the homicidal maniac presented itself, you would have to take that shot or you would have to live with the knowledge that innocent people died because of your pusillanimous inaction...
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And how might shooting the driver save them?

redcon1 said:
...my state law would back me up fully in that choice.
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I most seriously doubt it

redcon1 said:
...you would have to put some thought into it.
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Not much. The time to think about it is now.

The idea is beyond ridiculous.
 
eastbank said:
maybe a timer switch that could pushed on that would let the engine run for only 5 to 10 minutes, with the hood needing to be raised to reset the timer.
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That is a brilliant idea! :) And the button or switch should be hidden under the dash. Or voice-activated?

Are you mechanical enough to design one? Such a product would definitely sell well.
 
redcon1 said:
I think you're the only one talking about trying to disable the car here. I'm certainly not. The Lyft driver apparently wasn't trying to kill the vehicle either.
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So it's totally acceptable to disable the driver and create an unguided missile?

redcon1 said:
I'm specifically thinking of the Nice France truck attack where the driver was doing a lot more than "heading for a crowd of pedestrians". He was in the crowd actively using a semi truck to kill innocent people. I didn't say that I would immediately start blasting but if the opportunity to safely shoot through the vehicle and kill the homicidal maniac presented itself, you would have to take that shot or you would have to live with the knowledge that innocent people died because of your pusillanimous inaction for the rest of your life and my state law would back me up fully in that choice.
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So you walk around looking to stop a terrorist attack?

You might check out these articles:
https://www.policemag.com/610538/point-of-law-shooting-at-moving-vehicles

https://whyy.org/articles/should-po...elaware-attorney-general-wants-it-restricted/

https://www.aele.org/law/2010all09/2010-09MLJ101.pdf

https://www.police1.com/suspect-pur...s-for-cops-in-scotus-ruling-g6GyUSuYoiRWAHAn/

Fourth Amendment violations aren't applicable to a private citizen, but then again private citizens can't claim qualified immunity.
 
redcon1 said:
I think you're the only one talking about trying to disable the car here. I'm certainly not. The Lyft driver apparently wasn't trying to kill the vehicle either.

That's why I said you would have to use critical thinking in that situation as opposed to a thoughtless battle drill. I'm specifically thinking of the Nice France truck attack where the driver was doing a lot more than "heading for a crowd of pedestrians". He was in the crowd actively using a semi truck to kill innocent people. I didn't say that I would immediately start blasting but if the opportunity to safely shoot through the vehicle and kill the homicidal maniac presented itself, you would have to take that shot or you would have to live with the knowledge that innocent people died because of your pusillanimous inaction for the rest of your life and my state law would back me up fully in that choice. Regardless, It's a highly unlikely scenario but we are talking about when you would shoot into a car so it's probably one of the few instances where you would have to put some thought into it.
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Too bad Jeff reported shooting the tires doesn't work, if it worked that would actually STOP (or at least way slow down) the vehicle.

Of course in movies shooting the tires always works...
 
old lady new shooter said:
oo bad Jeff reported shooting the tires doesn't work, if it worked that would actually STOP (or at least way slow down) the vehicle. Of course in movies shooting the tires always works...
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Stop sticks don't always work either and they are designed to slowly deflate the tires so the driver doesn't lose control and turn the car into an unguided missile.
 
Kleanbore said:
And how might shooting the driver save them?
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By reducing the vehicle's speed possibly or causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle and, ideally bring the vehicle to a stop by running into an obstruction if even for a moment. The last thing you would want is for the vehicle to retain or increase its momentum in an unobstructed avenue of attack against the crowd so anything you could do to decrease his momentum and/or impede his plan of attack would give the crowd time to get out of the way. Every second you could delay his forward progress would save lives. 30 seconds would just about completely mitigate the attack I would think.
Kleanbore said:
I most seriously doubt it
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Section 2901.05 | Burden of proof - reasonable doubt - self-defense.
(B)(1) A person is allowed to act in self-defense, defense of another, or defense of that person's residence. If, at the trial of a person who is accused of an offense that involved the person's use of force against another, there is evidence presented that tends to support that the accused person used the force in self-defense, defense of another, or defense of that person's residence, the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused person did not use the force in self-defense, defense of another, or defense of that person's residence, as the case may be.
You're clearly using deadly force in defense of multiple others here. Unless you really screwed it up, you wouldn't even go to court. You would have to exercise the same level of caution that you would have to exercise in any self defense shooting.

Kleanbore said:
Not much. The time to think about it is now.
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Well, we are thinking about it now. In the Army, we had "battle drills" that were designed to reduce thinking e.g. react to near ambush, react to far ambush, react to contact etc. Battle drills are great for a lot of commonly encountered scenarios but when you're encountering something as uncommon as the Nice truck attack, there is no battle drill. You're almost certainly gonna have to assess, think, plan and execute so the best way to train for something like this, IMO, would be to train yourself to assess, think, plan and execute while your heart is pumping 120+ bpm, while you're breathing 30 respirations per minute or more, while your vision is narrowed and perception of time is dilated and you have adrenaline running through your veins.
 
Jeff White said:
So it's totally acceptable to disable the driver and create an unguided missile?
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An unguided missile is preferable to a guided missile in this instance.
Jeff White said:
So you walk around looking to stop a terrorist attack?
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I'm sorry Jeff, I thought we were talking about strategies, tactics and training as it applies to various scenarios including vehicular attacks in this case. How shall we limit our discussion of this subject matter in the future? I don't really train to shoot at vehicles for any reason because it's so unlikely but the subject has come up so.;..
 
old lady new shooter said:
Too bad Jeff reported shooting the tires doesn't work, if it worked that would actually STOP (or at least way slow down) the vehicle.

Of course in movies shooting the tires always works...
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The Niece truck was slowed down and ultimately brought to a stop by throwing a scooter underneath it and forcing the driver to contend with members of the crowd that were attacking his vehicle. One individual actually mounted the truck and took a butt stroke to the head. Another passing cyclist got the door open but had to break contact when the driver pointed a gun at him. All of this slowed him down and led to the disablement of the vehicle. I would think a half a dozen shots through the driver's door would accomplish the same thing.
 
redcon1 said:
By reducing the vehicle's speed possibly or causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle and, ideally bring the vehicle to a stop by running into an obstruction if even for a moment. The last thing you would want is for the vehicle to retain or increase its momentum in an unobstructed avenue of attack against the crowd so anything you could do to decrease his momentum and/or impede his plan of attack would give the crowd time to get out of the way. Every second you could delay his forward progress would save lives. 30 seconds would just about completely mitigate the attack I would think.
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First I want to say I very much admire your desire to want to stop the maniac.

I never thought much about a scenario like Nice except to hope I would be able to get out of the way, which considering that I don't move too fast I guess would mean just try to get behind a bunch of other people.

I agree with a lot of what you wrote but what if shooting the driver causes his foot to push harder on the accelerator pedal?
 
redcon1 said:
I'm sorry Jeff, I thought we were talking about strategies, tactics and training as it applies to various scenarios including vehicular attacks in this case. How shall we limit our discussion of this subject matter in the future? I don't really train to shoot at vehicles for any reason because it's so unlikely but the subject has come up so.;..
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In this case it’s better not to talk about shooting at the drivers of moving vehicles because it’s not a good idea except in very limited circumstances that the private citizen is exceedingly unlikely to encounter.

With a good imagination one can come up with a justified reason to shoot at just about anything.

Preparation is all about preparing for likely scenarios. No one has the time and resources to train for every possible scenario.

This might be a good topic if Niece type terrorist attacks were not such a rare occurrence. There are a lot more reasons not to shoot at the driver of a moving vehicle then there are to shoot at one. It’s not 2005 and we aren’t in Iraq. If shooting at the driver of a moving vehicle was a viable tactic why have the police almost universally banned it? The police are much more likely to encounter that situation then the private citizen.
 
The attack in France is not in question here.

In the case of the Lyft driver, his justification would depend upon whether the triers of fact would conclude (1) that stopping the car had been immediately necessary to defend against an imminent threat of death or serious injury and (2) that shooting at the driver had been a reasonable way of doing so.

I can see neither, particularly since the driver was shot while passing the shooter.

One may not lawfully use deadly force in response to what someone has done or to what someone may do in the future.
 
old lady new shooter said:
I agree with a lot of what you wrote but what if shooting the driver causes his foot to push harder on the accelerator pedal?
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Then, it could be argued, that he will be even more likely to lose control of the vehicle. I maintain that in this case at least, the guided missile is far more dangerous than the unguided missile. If the missiles guidance system is exsanguinating, all the better. This driver was attempting to maintain a speed that would allow him to maneuver the vehicle into random fleeing people in front of him while maintaining enough momentum to not be slowed down by their bodies or other obstructions. He was swerving back and forth to hit people in a relatively confined space. He was moving fast but still slow enough to maintain control of the vehicle. He was traveling at about 55 mph initially but through the efforts of his would be victims, he was slowed down and ultimately stopped. is it an unlikely scenario? Kind of but not as rare as some would like to think. It happened twice in America in 2017 in NYC and in Charlottesville, VA. Globally, it happened a total of 11 times just in 2017. It happened in my own state in 2016 at the Ohio State University campus. That Jihadi lost control of his vehicle after hitting someone and crashed into a brick wall and then he exited the vehicle with a butcher knife and started stabbing students. In the past 11 years, there are 37 such recorded incidents occurring globally according to wiki.
 
Kleanbore said:
One may not lawfully use deadly force in response to what someone has done or to what someone may do in the future.
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Stephen Willeford shot a BG who had just shot up a church full of people but was not shooting at the time Willeford shot him. He also pursued his vehicle with the help of a passing motorist, and shot BG further. In an interview I saw he said he feared BG would go to the next church down the road and shoot that one up also. He was universally hailed as a hero.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/stephen-willeford-sutherland-springs-mass-murder/
 
Stevie-Ray said:
Nah, I've seen at least a dozen movies where the tires are shot out and the car still goes for miles, until it's on it's wheels only, and even then, though sliding amid a shower of sparks, goes until totally out of control. Way too long to be considered a stop.;)
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I was actually trained to kill vehicles in the military and that was my pretty much my job. There are different "kinds" of vehicle kills. Bust a track on a tank and you get a "mobility kill". It can still fight but it's done maneuvering. If you damaged the weapon system such that its weapon systems were rendered inoperable, it's a "firepower kill". It can maneuver but it has reduced offensive capability at that point. If you were able to shred its antennas so it couldn't radio back to its buddies, it was a "commo kill". If whatever you did prevented the vehicle from carrying out its mission, it was a "mission kill". If you blew the turret off the hull, incinerated everyone inside it and/or otherwise turned it into a burning hulk, it was a "catastrophic kill" which is what you always want but you don't always get.

So, shooting out tires certainly won't get you an immediate catastrophic kill :( but it could get you a mobility kill and/or a mission kill :D which could be perfectly acceptable depending on the circumstances but those circumstances are, from a legal standpoint, probably pretty limited.
 
old lady new shooter said:
Stephen Willeford shot a BG....
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I don't see the connection. Do you take from this that one may lawfully employ deadly force because of what a person might do, absent a basis for reasonable belief that the person does pose and imminent danger?
 
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