Fatal mixup at Costco

William Parcher said:
It's hard to say what he may have been thinking.
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He can think whatever he wants, whenever he wants to think it, as long as that thought doesn't involve the murder of 1 and the harming of 2 more.

William Parcher said:
He was holding his child and was somehow knocked or pushed from behind. If he lost consciousness it was probably because his head hit the hard floor. Who knows what he saw when he came to. He may have thought that this is an organized child abduction by three pedophiles. Not an innocent but highly-odd son and his caretaker parents. Instead a violent child stealing crew.
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I seriously don't think this passes the sniff. He got pushed in the back while sampling food. He was holding his son, and he woke up with his son still there. Getting pushed in the back would cause you to lunge forward, I'm not sure how he blacked out (whiplash maybe?), and we'll have to wait to see the video.

Do you feel that's a reasonable reaction to have when pushed? You feel you have the right to pull out a loaded weapon and shoot someone on the off chance that it might be a super organized child abduction ring that's taking place in the middle of a superstore while standing in line with multiple other people? That's a logical conclusion to come to? The best step for the people to abduct your child is to make a huge show of pushing you hard enough to cause you to black out? Weird.

William Parcher said:
Who knows what he thought?
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Or if he even did, amiright?

William Parcher said:
Do you think his thought was, "I'm going to shoot three innocent people right in front of my child because, well, because why the hell should I not do that?"?
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No, I think his though was, "How dare you push me when I'm holding my child?" Which caused him to get pissed off and then he shot people.

In fact, check this out. I even have 2 words to explain it, Negligence (he didn't even survey the situation), homicide (yeah, a person is dead because of him). Yup, fits pretty well if you ask me.
 
William Parcher said:
Maybe it wasn't a push knocking him down and instead was a fierce sucker punch causing unconsciousness before he hit the floor.
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mAYbE iT wuz AlIEnZ?!?!?!

Yeah, it's called situational awareness. I think that might actually be somewhere in a cops training protocol. Like, I don't know, maybe before you pull a gun and start shooting people you take a quick second to process data.

But yeah, yours works too.
 
plague311 said:
No, I think his thought was, "How dare you push me when I'm holding my child?" Which caused him to get pissed off and then he shot people.
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Oh my! You and I are not going to be able to converse with each other on this incident.
 
William Parcher said:
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Who knows what he thought? Do you think his thought was, "I'm going to shoot three innocent people right in front of my child because, well, because why the hell should I not do that?"?
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The thing is that it doesn't matter what he thought. He had no justification or rationalization for opening fire at three unarmed people in a crowded store. There is no evidence or claim that he identified himself as a police officer and ordered them to comply.
 
Bob001 said:
The thing is that it doesn't matter what he thought. He had no justification or rationalization for opening fire at three unarmed people in a crowded store. There is no evidence or claim that he identified himself as a police officer and ordered them to comply.
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There actually is a claim that he identified himself, but you're absolutely right. It's going to be tough to play the "I was super scared" card with this one. He was in a pubic grocery store, and suffered no physical damage after the initial push.
 
p0lka said:
Afaik, schizophrenia can become a disability if affects your day to day living, as far as claiming disability benefits is concerned anyway.
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Exactly. I believe the important point is that schizophrenia is itself a psychotic disorder. Depending on the specific manifestation and intensity of the disorder, many people with it can still find ways of functioning in their day to day lives (perhaps with pharmacological assistance). Under these circumstances it would not be a "disability." However other people have sufficiently severe symptoms that cannot be adequately treated and that do disrupt their ability to function in society (due to limitations of the drugs themselves, lack of access to appropriate treatment, or and unwillingness to undergo treatment). These individuals would be defined as "disabled."

Just as having impaired vision can be disabling or not depending on its severity and its precise nature.
 
Bob001 said:
The thing is that it doesn't matter what he thought.
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It might matter in a courtroom or formal hearing if it can be reasonably argued that he thought his child's life was in imminent danger.

"If I don't immediately shoot these violent criminal people they will kill my child." Or something like that.

The argument would be judged with relation to justifiable homicide.
 
plague311 said:
This is the part that got me as well. It makes absolutely no sense even in the slightest. I read the article 2-3 times just to make sure I wasn't missing something.

So he gets pushed in the back and "briefly loses consciousness". Ok, fine. Then he wakes up, without have any idea of what happened, and just starts blasting these people. First off, if he got pushed in the back, how the **** does he know who pushed him? If he blacked out, then wouldn't he wake up confused? Concussed perhaps? Wondering what happened? In this case, he just wakes up and starts "pew pew" all over the place. Including at innocent people trying to defuse the situation.
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Contrary to the movies, loss of consciousness from a concussion is frequently very brief and/or incomplete. It can be more like being "stunned" or "dazed" where the victim loses full awareness but isn't actually asleep. It can be accompanied by dissociation where the victim loses track and memory of what they were thinking or doing....even though they never stopped doing or thinking. Concussions can be caused by force that is NOT directly applied to the head.
 
Shadowdweller said:
Contrary to the movies, loss of consciousness from a concussion is frequently very brief and/or incomplete. It can be more like being "stunned" or "dazed" where the victim loses full awareness but isn't actually asleep. It can be accompanied by dissociation where the victim loses track and memory of what they were thinking or doing....even though they never stopped doing or thinking. Concussions can be caused by force that is NOT directly applied to the head.
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Right, stunned or dazed. Which would imply some form of confusion after the incident.

Even if we take into account your definition it still doesn't give him any reason to reach for a gun and shoot. I get that William keeps busting out this random ass "but they were after my kids!" style of argument, despite there being absolutely no evidence that he thought that at all. Either way, being pushed, stunned, dazed, etc. doesn't give you a right to shoot someone. Let alone fire your weapon dangerously into a line of people waiting for food. It's, and I feel like I've said this before, negligent.

Also:
California is not a stand your ground state, but does recognize the "castle doctrine," which applies to one's home, place of business, or other real property. Similarly, an individual using deadly force to protect his or her property has no duty to retreat.
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Was this man, a police officer, doing any of the above? Was he ever in any actual danger? Were his children? It doesn't matter if he believes he was or not, despite that being implied. That's why it isn't included in the law.

Bottom line, this guy belongs in prison and I have no doubts he'll end up there. I'll take a shot as a toast when I read about it.
 
Perhaps the son knocked the cop down, the parents were giving him aid when he came to? So the paranoid cop opens fire? Cops are trained to be paranoid.

Do you think we will ever see the video? I suspect only of he is proven guilty, Costco does not want cops to think Costco is not supportive, or the cops won't show up for shoplifting complaints.
 
William Parcher said:
It's hard to say what he may have been thinking. He was holding his child and was somehow knocked or pushed from behind. If he lost consciousness it was probably because his head hit the hard floor. Who knows what he saw when he came to. He may have thought that this is an organized child abduction by three pedophiles. Not an innocent but highly-odd son and his caretaker parents. Instead a violent child stealing crew.

Who knows what he thought? Do you think his thought was, "I'm going to shoot three innocent people right in front of my child because, well, because why the hell should I not do that?"?
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I think he probably thought something to the effect of "ahh, what's happening, shoot first, ask questions later." Which is kind of a common problem with jumpy cops.

If this exact same situation had happened with a regular gun-toting American, they'd certainly have been arrested.

I mean, I think they would. The story is pretty bizarre. I'm not sure I understand what happened, but the main detail coming through is the situation was chaotic and confusing. I understand the overwhelming instinct to protect a child, but you can't just open fire inside a store because you're confused and startled.
 
isissxn said:
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I mean, I think they would. The story is pretty bizarre. I'm not sure I understand what happened, but the main detail coming through is the situation was chaotic and confusing. I understand the overwhelming instinct to protect a child, but you can't just open fire inside a store because you're confused and startled.
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Here's an idea: If an off-duty cop is permitted to carry his sidearm (and my understanding is that for legal reasons departments will permit but not require officers to do so) they should also be required to carry pepper spray and a baton, so in an off-duty confrontation they have the same use-of-force continuum as they would on-duty. Their choice wouldn't be do nothing or open fire. And a cop who shot somebody when he could have defended himself with pepper spray or a baton would be held liable.
 
Did anyone report what happened to the kid the officer was holding during all this chaos? Did he drop him? Was the child injured?

The story is wildly confusing.
 
Bob001 said:
Here's an idea: If an off-duty cop is permitted to carry his sidearm (and my understanding is that for legal reasons departments will permit but not require officers to do so) they should also be required to carry pepper spray and a baton, so in an off-duty confrontation they have the same use-of-force continuum as they would on-duty. Their choice wouldn't be do nothing or open fire. And a cop who shot somebody when he could have defended himself with pepper spray or a baton would be held liable.
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Yes, that really would make sense. I agree.
 
casebro said:
Do you think we will ever see the video?
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Leaks are fairly common.

isissxn said:
The story is wildly confusing.
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A lot of information is completely missing. Some reported information conflicts with other reports.

It seems too early for any scenario to be much more likely than any other scenario.
 
isissxn said:
Did anyone report what happened to the kid the officer was holding during all this chaos? Did he drop him? Was the child injured?

The story is wildly confusing.
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I've got a tracker on using google alerts but everything so far has kind of been a rehash. That's a good question though and might lend some credence to William's idea that they were after his kid. If he got up and didn't see him because he had dropped him, or the kid got scared and was crying.

It's still not a reason to cap 3 people at leisure, but it would at least mean something.
 
It was reported that he announced himself as being police. This suggests to me that he was trying to change the behavior of someone, probably the dead guy. Why say that you are police if you are just going to spontaneously shoot. Why bother?

Maybe what he said was, "Police! Put the child down slowly! Put the child down now!"

We have almost no idea what happened or was said or what.
 
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