Quote:
Originally Posted by chadritt
So all reports of him being unarmed and OUT OF THE CAR when killed are wrong? I mean...that would surely change things.
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Honestly, I never thought there was much credibility to that* in the first place.
What appears most likely to me (based on the various tidbits, I haven't read much since this morning so maybe something has changed that I'm not aware of yet)
Cop says "get back on the sidewalk" ... random thing, as he's unaware that these are his robbery suspect
Something is said/done that draws him back to the suspects
At that point Brown thinks he's about to get nabbed on the robbery and either lunges at the cop (from outside the car) or door stuffs him planning to make a break for it.
Somewhere in that process suspect 1 (eventual dead guy) and the cop are, let's call it "entangled", suspect ends up (whether by design or happenstance) with his hands on cops weapon, perceived (rightly or wrongly) as an attempt to disarm the officer.
Officer responds by ensuring that doesn't happen, likely with a short distance briefly established between himself and the suspect.
And if he perceived that as the situation then the shooting is justifiable (pending specifics of the policy manual that I haven't seen)
*edit to add: he may have been "outside the car and unarmed" but that does not equate to "was innocently minding his own business & doing nothing to precipitate the shooting"