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Student Killed During Home Invasion

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It's easy to be an arm chair Quarterback, but a lot tougher on the field.
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True, but we can certainly learn from tragic events and minimize the chances of it happening to us.

1. Keep your doors locked all the time.
2. If you're a police officer, you don't try to shoot a perp while he's holding a hostage in front of him. Will he shoot you? Maybe, but that's a chance you have to take.
 
This is ridiculously tragic. I read it thinking one thing, but it turned out to be this horrible scenario. :(

This is a tough pickle to chew. The article states that the officer encountered the suspect holding the victim at gun point as he was moving towards the rear door upon entering the home. This means the officer entered the home through a viable avenue of escape and shouldn't have engaged the suspect in a stand off like that. This should have been handled by SWAT, hostage negotiators and time. Although the officcer did what he had to do to protect his life, I'm pretty sure there could have been alternatives to this outcome.

I know Monday morning quarterbacking is no good in this situation, but from what the article states, other things could have been done, at least up until the final actions of the encounter. But then again, the article is a 3rd party account. There's what he said, there's what she said, there's what they said and then there's the truth.
 
An awful lot of things can happen in the quarter second or so that elapses between the time your brain says SHOOT! and your muscles process the information transmitted through your nerves, press the trigger, the round fires and the bullet arrives. Not only that, people often react to being shot (though sometimes they don't seem to, right away) and that can contribute to problems when a string of shots is being fired very rapidly.

Skip Gochenour presented in one of his lectures a case he had investigated where a homeowner actually went to jail for shooting a home invader in the back, when the invader reacted to the rapid string of shots fired by the homeowner by twisting away. The last bullets actually hit the invader in the side and back as he turned, before the homeowner could stop shooting. Turns out it takes as long physiologically to stop shooting as it does to start...

If you don't recognize the name Skip Gochenour, give http://www.paladintraining.com/audio/VOA_120303.mp3 a listen.
 
This means the officer entered the home through a viable avenue of escape and shouldn't have engaged the suspect in a stand off like that. This should have been handled by SWAT, hostage negotiators and time.
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You think the cops should have waited outside like they did at Columbine?

No way the cops were going to win. If they waited outside and the perp killed her, the press and all the armchair internet forum quarterbacks would be all over as to how they should have went in.

They go in and she gets killed, the press and all the armchair internet forum quarterbacks say they should have waited.

Just the way of the world today.
 
Folks,

This isn't a cop forum. It isn't a political forum. Please let us stick to STRATEGIES, TACTICS and TRAINING as applied to us armed citizens, if we could...
 
While folks want to talk about what else the officer could have done, it is a lot more helpful to focus on what the residents could do to help.

Besides the prevention step of locking the door to prevent casual entry, there are steps that can be taken once this situation has already begun to unfold.

1. The escaping sister could have given the arriving officers an idea of what was going on in the apartment; where the suspect was, who he had with him, where the others in the apartment were.
2. The victim could have been prepared to offer the officers the best chance to get a shot, while at the same time, protecting herself.

When the suspect removed the gun from her head, she should have tried to remove herself from the danger zone. Breaking away would have not only taken her out of the line of fire, but would have distracted the suspect to perhaps presented a better shots to the officer. The easiest and fastest way to do this is to just go limp and drop to the floor. Gravity is faster that any muscular motion and very few people are able to adapt quickly to a body which suddenly changes to dead weight.

We used to practice this at work in preparation for possible hostage situations. As the hostage clears the suspect, it is the shooting officer's job to stop the threat of the suspect
 
Firing EIGHT shots when they have a hostage right there in a headlock?

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/05/hofstra_college_student_being.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...hofstra-student-was-killed-by-police/2322929/

Yes lots of questions....

Did his gun have a lawyer trigger (like a NY-2 12 lb trigger pull and DAO?)

Did he have any special training to take such critically accurate shots?

Why did they enter so quickly? No SWAT or hostage negotiating team?

And so the hostage taker didn't fire a shot but 'menaced' by pointing the gun and the cop?

Now according to the cops the bad guy said, `I'm going to kill her,' not "I'm going to kill YOU".

All I can say is folks if you ever ever foresee the possibility of having a hostage situation and YOU may have to shoot to stop them I strongly suggest you practice like heck to make sure you can hit very accurately fast.

Otherwise secure the area and call in a specialized unit to negotiate.

And don't 'spray-n-pray'.

Deaf
 
I find it very difficult to get the message about about home security, keeping doors locked,, etc. to this aged child/adult.
 
para.2 said:
If you can't make the shot, don't take the shot.
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I am not one of the cop groupies here who think cops can do no wrong by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems likely the cop did everything right and it still ended badly. I don't see how the cop is to blame.
 
That's the really bad thing about what we study here. It's possible to do everything right and still have things turn out badly.

As has been said, we don't know all the details about what happened in this tragic incident. We may never find out those details. We don't need to jump to conclusions in the absence of sufficient information.

One thing we need to take away from this is the complete realization that we are each ultimately responsible for every projectile we fire. There might not be legal consequences in every case if something goes wrong, but there are still consequences - sleepless nights, for example. We encourage professional training and practice here in ST&T for this reason, among others that are also important.

An old friend of mine who was in harm's way a good bit during his life always said he would much rather be killed by his friends than by his enemies, if it came to dying in the middle of a fight. It took me a while to come to understand his reasoning, but I have come to agree with him. And on my own, I have come to understand through training and experience in scenario based drills and FOF that it is possible to do a lot of praying in the quarter second or so of reaction time between decision and action. There is an infinity of difference between hitting a no-shoot on the range and hitting one in real life.
 
I am not one of the cop groupies here who think cops can do no wrong by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems likely the cop did everything right and it still ended badly. I don't see how the cop is to blame.
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He had a no win situation. But "everything right" seems awfully unlikely -- 8 shots towards the hostage. Spray and pray. There is so much wrong with that I'm having trouble writing this. I guess maybe he hit her on the first shot and that made the rest OK? (that really is the most justifiable case I can come up with)
 
If you are ever in the unenviable position of facing a hostage taker...you'll wish you hard gotten more training and that you had practiced more. It isn't clear how the BG and the hostage were positioned. "In a headlock", to me, doesn't mean in front of him...but that was what I imagined prior to reading the term in the article.

I recently attended training which had us taking Discreet Shots to the head in about 1 sec. This was responding to a turning target, sidestepping and drawing from a holster. I would think one would usually approach a situation like this with your gun drawn. What limits your ability to shoot is the BG's gun pointing at the hostage...you have to wait for the gun to start swinging toward you.

The number of shots is pretty understandable. You really do shoot until the target is down...I consider myself fairly competent with a handgun and I wouldn't count on a single shot to put someone down. Another technique were learned was called the Zipper...a Close Protection technique to stop a charging attacker. This involves drawing and stepping off-line, while placing multiple shots in the target starting at the hips and continuing up to the head. A proven technique which has been found effective.

And, of course, there is the Bill Drill...6 shots from the holster. The last time I performed one of these was during a match where I had to turn (to force locating the target) while drawing and place 6 shots on a charging target. Just watching my sights and pressing the trigger, all 6 shots feel within 3" of each other...about 2 sec.

If you aren't shooting this accurately and at this speed, I'd highly recommend getting additional training to learn how to
 
At the risk of sounding insensitive, this does remind me of Gov Cuomo's 'you don't need more than 7 shots' law. Obviously police aren't subject to this. Maybe if they had to obey the same rules as citizens that eighth shot wouldn't have happened.

Ok, sarcasm off, that officer walked in to the worst possible scenario. Unknown environment, active threat, multiple innocents.

Taking a head shot under stress on a moving target is a bad idea. If you try and miss the bad guy is going to open fire at you or the hostage. Even if you hit you might not drop him. Might just crease him, nick an ear, blow out a few teeth or cheek. They are still in the fight.

And what then? You are getting fired at.

Think you can still put precision in to your rounds when muzzleflash and noise, not to mention supersonic projectiles, are coming your way at 7 or 10 feet? I'm good but I'm not a rock.

A handgun is not a precision instrument under the best of circumstances.

If it were a loved one and I had a clear shot I'd take it. But a stranger? Man, I don't know. If that person testified that they felt their life were in danger by my actions of firing at their captor, in my state, I'd be tried (at best) with assault with a deadly weapon, and spend a long time indoors. In a shoot in IL, if you are intervening, YOUR mindset isn't what comes in to play. It is the person you were defending. If they didn't feel their life was in immediate danger, you are screwed.
 
Besides having a locked front door the girls should have had pepper spray. I know its like bringing a knife to a fun fight but had they sprayed this guy and ran she may have lived.

It's one tactic that a lot of people who don't carry should adhere to. $10 for a bottle that attaches to your key chain.
 
Trent said:
Taking a head shot under stress on a moving target is a bad idea. If you try and miss the bad guy is going to open fire at you or the hostage. Even if you hit you might not drop him. Might just crease him, nick an ear, blow out a few teeth or cheek. They are still in the fight.
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I'll point out that nowhere is it stated that the target was moving...given that he was talking to the officer before swinging his gun toward the officer, it is likely that he wasn't.

And what then? You are getting fired at.
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The gun had begun to swing toward the officer before the officer's first shot, I think that would be an indicative that he was about to start shooting anyway...his action wasn't dependent upon the officer's decision to shoot.
 
9mmepiphany said:
I'll point out that nowhere is it stated that the target was moving...given that he was talking to the officer before swinging his gun toward the officer, it is likely that he wasn't.


The gun had begun to swing toward the officer before the officer's first shot, I think that would be an indicative that he was about to start shooting anyway...his action wasn't dependent upon the officer's decision to shoot.
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Thanks 9mm, I'd read that, but I would have to assume that if the first shot or three wasn't incapacitating the target wouldn't remain stationary for long. At some point something moves.

And even when otherwise stationary, during a conversation or confrontation your head tends to move around quite a bit (more so under stress, ever watch a nervous speaker in front of an audience or a person unexpectedly embarrassed? There are pronounced rapid head jerks, nervous glances, etc.).

So, stationary target at close range with a hostage to the side under an arm.

8 shots center of mass doesn't seem like a good tactic. But, there are no guarantees with a head shot. My father shot himself in the head at contact distance with a 45, and lived for 17 years.

IF you get the brain stem, it's instant, but that is a real small target obscured by lots of flesh and bone.
 
I am a big fan of police disengaging when they can when there are innocent lives at risk, and I criticize them when they can and make the choice not to do so.

This does not appear to be a case where the cop had that option.
 
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