Posted on 01/15/2006 1:51:35 PM PST by wagglebee
LONGWOOD, Florida (CNN) -- The father and brother of a teenager shot at school Friday while brandishing a pellet gun told authorities before an officer opened fire that Christopher Penley's gun was not real, the family's attorney said Saturday.
The eighth-grader is clinically brain dead and being kept on life support to harvest his organs, attorney Mark Nation said.
When Ralph Penley arrived at the school Friday to help police and school officials defuse the situation, he wasn't allowed inside, Nation said.
Nation said Ralph Penley was "angry" because he had spoken to police before he arrived at the school and told them Christopher did not have a real gun. Christopher's younger brother told school officials the same thing, Nation said.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Choice one is the best option in most cases, especially if you are not holding a firearm.
Choice two is a high risk choice at best and contraindicated if you are not holding a firearm or the speaker is a LEO.
Choice three will be made for you if you do not immediately successfully complete choice one or two.
The officer in this case should have been painfully aware of choice two, and owed it to himself and his family to prevent it.
***What if the child who was killed by the police was your child? What would you be saying then?***
How did I screw up so bad as a parent?
Oh, thats right, some folks can't handle responsibility!
I agree. We don't get to be teenagers in this Country and not know what happens when you bring a weapon to school and threaten other students and then turn it on an officer. He knew what he was doing and obviously the gun was real enough looking that a student close up on it couldn't tell the difference until he felt it breaking.
/sarc
If I am just walking down the street, and some cop starts shooting, or some man/woman dressed like a cop, I don't have the right to defend myself?
What the cop did, he had to do. I don't like that he shot the kid in the head (I think a wiser choice on part of the cop would be to shoot the kid in the chest, towards the right lung). But the cop could not take the chance that the gun was fake.
Also, like some said, the articles that have come out were a little fishy.
And there are such things are crooked cops (Miami Beach, Miami, Los Angeles, New Orleans).
It was not fake, it was a pellet gun. And just a few weeks ago here, a mother was killed when her son shot her in the heart with a pellet gun.
I'd shoot him in the chest, rather than the head.
Split second decision; kid who has taken hostages has gun that looks like a 9mm. He is holed up in a bathroom, and there is no way out. He puts the gun to his head, and then points it at you. The only clean shot you have is to the head. What would you do? Wait? Hope it wasn't real?
Look. I have been at one of these school shootings. I have seen a 14 year old boy kill people in my own school. I was shot at.
It is a very real threat. These kinds of crimes really happen. And they happen in an instant. There is no time to hope this, or maybe that.
The cops were called in to protect all of the children who were NOT pointing a gun at people. And they did that.
There are too many what-ifs in the "don't shoot to kill" scenario.
What if it really was a 9mm, and they shot him in the leg? What if he then starts shooting back, killing a cop?
Terrible situation. I fault the kid, and his parents to some extent, not the cops.
So are you saying there is some part in guilt upon the parent? Weren't there some that were saying it wasn't the parents fault?
I wasn't faulting the cop for doing what he had to do. I'd have prefered it with the don't shoot to kill method. Second, why didn't anyone think of using a stun gun instead? If they were in a school setting and in close quarters with the assailant, that they'd use stun guns.
Where's he supposed to shoot a guy - in the arm? That'll just tick him off - even if he can hit the appendage. Shooting the gun out of someone's hand only works on TV.
Cops are trained to aim for the center of mass because anytime a gun is fired, it is presumed to be lethal force. You don't shoot someone you are unwilling to kill.
"If I am just walking down the street, and some cop starts shooting, or some man/woman dressed like a cop, I don't have the right to defend myself?"
Yes, you do.
But LibertarianCandidate apparently has reason to believe the cops will be aiming their weapons at him. Now, the only reason I can think of for a police officer to aim a weapon at someone is a reasonable belief that the target's behavior poses an imminent danger to life and limb.
"I don't like that he shot the kid in the head (I think a wiser choice on part of the cop would be to shoot the kid in the chest, towards the right lung)."
Son, that may work in Hollyweird. In real life, the cop aims at center mass. Sometimes, when aiming at center mass, the round goes high.
(Note: I was a cop for a few years in the early 1970s before I got invalided out.)
I don't think I said shoot the gun out of the hand. If a cop did that, it would be far too reckless, and the guy would have to be a better shot than a sniper.
ROFLMAO
Your using Barney Fife to bolster your argument? You cannot be series.
This a good compairison between the "airSoft" BB gun and real Beretta Model 92.
These guns are made to appear identical in every way. They are even designed to operate identically so the "fake" one is as close to the "real" one as possible. Firearms manufacturers are threatened with law suits because their "real" weapons are used to kill people but you only have outrage at the police when they are competently doing their jobs.
That'd be no less lethal than shooting in the head - death would just be a little quicker.
More info in the article:
"One of Penley's classmates said he, too, thought the gun was real -- and that Penley was going to kill him -- until he grabbed the pistol and realized it was fake. "
...
"'"He started to point the gun at me, so I started to grab for it and he pulled it away,' Cotey told WKMG. 'And then I grabbed for it one more time 'cause he pointed it at me for like a little while, so I grabbed it and I twisted it and I pointed it at him.'
"It was then that Cotey knew for sure the gun was a fake. (Watch Cotey describe the frightening ordeal -- 1:33)
" 'While I was twisting it, it started to come apart like a toy gun would, like a dollar-store type toy,' he said."
...
Authorities pleaded with the boy inside the bathroom to put down his weapon, Eslinger said, but the boy refused.
"'He refused to even comment. All he said was his first name. He did not drop the firearm,' the sheriff said.
"Finally, the boy came out of the bathroom and 'raised the firearm in a tactical position and pointed it' at a SWAT team member, who 'decided to use deadly force,' Eslinger said."
A lot of LEOs now practice 2 in the center of mass and 1 in the head. Too many perps wear body armor.
fake or real, it appeared real enough to the teacher the kid held hostage and who begged for his life ..... funny how fast the grieving family lawyered up, isn't it ?
Indeed.
Wish we knew step by step what really happened.
Then, I might be able to answer your question.
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