The point I was trying to make is that there is no entity or police force out there that trains people to shoot to wound (with the possible exception of Special Forces who might have specific needs to do just that for intelligence ends, and even then I am only guessing at that)
In this case, I have to believe the officer was not shooting to kill, he was most likely just shooting to hit any part of the man advancing on him and it didn’t even enter his mind what part, be it arm, foot, or face that he might hit.
If he could make choices like that in that compressed time frame, he is a far more capable person mentally than I could hope to be.
That said, I did have a situation once where I was doing about 50 mph in an MG Midget in the left hand lane, and came over the crest of a hill to see a car stopped there about a few yards in front of me.
Everything kind of stopped in my head, and I was thinking slowly, deliberately and clearly “I am going to hit this car. I can’t stop. I can’t go into the left lane as there are cars there. I can only go up over this six inch curb onto a narrow concrete apron. It’s my only choice.”
So in the blink of an eye, I cut the wheel, smashed over the curb and came to a screeching stop with the guard rail a few inches from my door on my side, and the cars stopped in the left lane a few inches off my right door. Not a scratch on the car.
But the thing I remember most was seeing out the corner of my eye, the posts holding up the guard rail, painted white, in slow motion going by...whiff...whiff...whiff...whiff. There was no noise of course, but when I look back on it, it was as if my mind was making its own sound effects. All this took place in the span of about three seconds.
I have always wondered if that is what it is like for great athletes like Larry Bird or Ted Williams, where things slow down like that.
Or what it may be like for someone like this cop who had to make the choice and pull the trigger on a huge man rushing at him. So you may be right. But my commonsense tells me it probably happened so quickly that it might be huge pieces of what was going on that he didn’t see at all. He might remember the grease stains on the front of the fat guy’s shirt, but never even saw the faces of people watching directly behind the guy rushing at him or cars whizzing by on the street just inches away.
Strange how the human mind works.
Your experience has been noted by many others.
Time seems to ‘slow down’ in stressful situations, especially where it’s a matter of ‘life or death’ for the person involved.
It’s like the old saying ‘My whole life passed before my eyes’.
The human brain is a super computer that outdoes every man-made supercomputer ever built or likely to ever be.
You noticed that sound disappeared: The brain shut down unnecessary inputs to concentrate on the ‘problem’ at hand.
The sequence of events went into ‘slow motion’ in your head: All computation of the situation was ‘sped up’ turbo fast to get all the possible outcomes analyzed in order to choose the safest or least destructive choice.
Scientists tell us that REM dream sequences while we are asleep last for only a few seconds, yet the dreamer experiences a long, maybe minutes or hours long dream. It’s the brain unleashed to go as fast as it wants or needs to to organize thoughts or information during the sleep period, like a dog that has been cooped up in the house for a long period finally able to run free in the yard or field.
When under stress the same brain takes on a whole different operation program........................