just because she was trying to run them down isn't a good enough excuse to shoo........ oh wait. yes it is. now her family is complaining that they shouldn't have shot her with a baby in the car. those dam police put her baby in the car.
they should go shoot the rest of her idiot family now.

See Charlie, Although you may not realize it, that's exactly the point I was trying to make. First off, she wasn't trying to run the police down. She ran her car into the gate. The police that were surrounding her car were injured as she panicked and tried to escape. Other than her car, she offered and showed no signs of any type of weapon or threat to the police. Once they had chased her down and taken out her car with the pit maneuver all they had to do was arrest her. Instead they poured shot after shot into her car. It's a wonder the baby wasn't killed or injured also, but as luck would have it, it wasn't. To me, her family is acting like any other grief stricken family would. I'm sure that if it was your wife is similar circumstances you would be reacting in much the same manner as her family is. I think any of us here would.

There are several people here that have said that considering the shooting at the Naval Yard a week earlier it's understandable why the police shot at her, and I tend to agree with them, but I've also always thought that each incident was supposed to be judged on it's own merits by the police. Apparently, they didn't do that in this case.

Again, please understand, as I've been saying all along, I'm NOT making any excuses for the dead woman. What she did was wrong, dangerous and she injured 2 police officers. (And obviously signed her own death warrant in the process, cause you can't injure policemen and be allowed to live). I just think that the police used excessive force when they subdued her. I really think they could have done a better job. Hopefully, this incident will serve as some type of training program for police so they can better hone their situational awareness skills.

the next question..... if they hadn't shot her and she had escaped long enough to crash into a schoolyard of kids killing several including her own baby would the officers then be criticized for not killing her when they had the chance?

Come on Smoke.. that's a fantasy hypothetical scenario with zero basis in factuality. You could just as easily say if she had escaped to Cape Canaveral and stolen a rocket to the moon would the police have been justified in using a missile to shoot her down. We have no evidence that she was planning to do anything like what you suggest. But..... if in fact, the police shot her to prevent her from doing what you suggest, then what's to prevent them from killing any one of us using the same rational?

The police are not allowed to theorize on what might happen in the future, only on what has happened already. She might just as easily have driven home, parked her car in her driveway, taken her meds, gone to bed and not remembered a thing about the entire incident the next day. Who's to say differently?

of course it's a hypothetical question.... I don't think I presented it any other way???

I really don't know what happened but as best as I can understand it she was trying to forcibly escape by ramming her car through police officers.... IF THAT IS THE CASE then deadly force is authorized by our current laws and they would have killed me or you or anyone else..... an automobile IS a deadly weapon.

male or female makes no difference here.... none at all.

the fact that she has mental problems doesn't give her a pass but does make it a tragic event that SHOULD have been avoidable.... One COULD argue that anyone who entered into a battle with the police had mental problems.


Who knows, maybe the first secret service man could have stopped the situation by telling her he would take her to the president and removing her from the car and detaining her right there and then.

Let me add that IF she was disarmed by the car being disabled then I fully agree that she should have been arrested but my understanding is that she was still moving the vehicle when shot

Good to have respect for the law and all, but really?

I wonder too about how she was able to ram the gates and not do any damage to the front of her car. Must have utilized a "soft ramming".

I guess you didn't see the videos on the TV news. I agree that the damage to her car looked minor. And it really didn't look like she was deliberately trying to run over the police ... It looked like someone that was in a panic that was trying to escape.
She backed up, then went forward on an angle, backed up again, turned the wheels and went forward again.. got out of the box she was in and sped off with a police car chasing her. Went around a circle where a second police car joined the first in the pursuit, and then sped off down the street. At no time up till then had the police opened fire at her.