Are you saying police are afraid of the dark? Everyone pulled over at night is a criminal bogeyman?
No, not at all. But here we have the dangerous hour of the night, a man in the age range of active criminality, who hopped out of the car, grabbed something and perhaps stooped down behind or beside the truck with that object. We have no indication of what the cop said, I assume, but we also don’t know what the kid might or might not have said by way of explaining what he was doing. Had he stayed in the truck and explained that he didn’t trust his park gear when the cop came up to the vehicle, it probably would have been a minor inconvenience (with maybe a ticket for driving a truck out of compliance) rather than this tragedy.