This event happened so fast! Was the Officer right when he kept on shooting? Bad day for the robber…
Would you have the skill to put shots on target against this robber like the officer did? What does this off duty officer teach us about defending ourselves against a robber?
There’s going to be some question here about the officer shooting the robber in the back, but let’s take a look at what that means. The “fleeing felon rule” generally applies to Law Enforcement Officers in the performance of their duties, and since 1985’s Tennessee vs. Garner decision the ability to use deadly force to apprehend a fleeing felon by LEO has been limited to cases where the officer has probable cause to believe that the fleeing felon is a continuing threat of serious physical harm to the officer or the public. However, how that law applies to non-LEO varies state by state. Make sure to know your local laws so that you know the limitations of shooting a fleeing felon, especially if you’re not a police officer. Here it seems reasonable that the officer was acting to stop the existing threat, and that the robber had a firearm on his person that the officer couldn’t have known was left in the bag when the robber jumped back over the counter, and therefore deadly force is clearly justified here.