I would allow some leeway for sure. But I am in a different state.
Could you have sat there and watched someone choke to death on their own blood? Or would you have "finished them off"?
After being in such an incident, how cogent do you think your thought processes would be? Shock does some very weird things to people. This is why officers and soldiers are trained to deal with bodily responses to those stresses.
I think people are ascribing evil motivations where there doesn't need to be any such thing.