A bit overstated. Only 1 of the 4 who actually went up the tower was a “civie” (former Marine Crum), and he did not actually get out and shoot the perp; it was 2 of the officers. Yes, people were firing from below as well as other officers, but they did not stop him.
“Martinez reached the observation deck first. He told Crum to remain at the door. McCoy and Day reached the observation deck a few minutes later. Day, after helping M. J. Gabour, had returned to the 27th floor. He realized Martinez had gone up to the observation deck and told McCoy. At some point Crum accidentally fired his rifle.
Around 1:24 pm, while Whitman was looking south for the source of the rifle shot, Martinez and McCoy rounded the northeastern corner of the observation deck. Martinez fired on Whitman with his revolver, missing, and McCoy hit Whitman twice with his shotgun. Martinez then took McCoy’s shotgun from him, having emptied his own weapon, and fired a final shot into Whitman at point-blank range. In the immediate aftermath, Martinez was nearly shot himself by those on the ground, who did not yet realize that Whitman was dead.”
Yeah, so if all those civilians would have just ran and hid allowing the sniper the time to shoot at will those 3 law enforcement officers would have handled it just fine?
Even if the civilians shooting back were ineffective they distracted the shooter. My point is that without civilian back up there would have been more civilians killed.
And forgive me for not going into great detail but as it turns out when this was occurring I was somewhere in the jungle getting shot at myself and it was years after that I was even aware it happened.