There were alot of complicating factors. IIRC:
1. Undercover police looking for a suspected armed serial rapist.
2. Late evening.
2. Darken apartment entry vestible.
3. Probably due to his limited English skills, Amadou doesn't understand/react properly to the officer's commands.
4. Gets out his wallet (He probably thought he was being robbed). This act was interpreted by lead officer as going for a weapon.
5. Lead officer fires then slips on steps of vestible, falling backward. Interpreted by other officers as being shot. Sets off a barrage of "defensive" fire.
6. Vestible echos and re-echos officers' own gunfire giving impression that Amadou is continuing to fire back at them.
7. Black race of suspect and and white race of officers. Unpleasant to think about but probably a factor, at least subconsciously. (When incident originally ran, I recall a posting that four BLACK officers would probably have had a roughed up but very much alive suspect to take to the station vice a dead one with 19 holes in him headed for the morgue.
Nineteen hits out of 41 shots.
IIRC, all the officers had semiauto pistols, probably with high capacity magazines. Have never seen individual round count, but I suspect the officer who slipped only fired a very few rounds. Sounds like the rest just emptied the clip. Maybe 2-3 seconds rapid firing with say... 10 seconds for the entire incident.
Never heard if Amadou's mother received any compensation for his death.
Interesting. I did think the actual shooting only lasted a very short time - a few seconds.