“The agent hears that, and starts pulling out his gun to defend himself -— because he is in front of the pilot.”
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According to a statement released by Homeland Security agents are taught never to approach a car from the front for obvious reasons. And they are also told that shooting the driver will not stop the car from moving forward so the correct action is to get the hell out of the way. But this cowboy was pissed that she clipped him and so decided he had every right to take her out and now finds himself in trouble. At this point his best hope is for a sympathetic jury. This is the sort of thing that happens when you rely upon inexperienced police officers. I would say inadequately trained as well except that it appears that he was properly trained he just chose to ignore official protocol.
I agree with that. Pulling a gun will not stop a car from hitting you, and you're better off concentrating on getting out of the way. BUT: The road was icy. You can see other agents slipping. He did not have much traction to get himself out of the way at that point. The first shot may have gone off when he was propelled backwards. Sort of like Vince in Pulp Fiction. Ooops, I shot Marvin in the face.
Either way, if he doesn't get hauled to court over this, he'll still have to live with having killed a mother-of-three, even if she was a nasty leftwing idiot. Some may shrug that off, others wont.
The front angle video does show him get a nasty bump when he leans forward to push on the hood (dumb!) and she accelerates, in any case. The gun must have already been in his hand then. It happens so quickly from there that he had no time to draw and aim. Image quality is on par with the Zapruder film though 😁