• PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPM
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    6 hours ago

    It’s out now, there’s a link to a news report in one of the other comments. They claim he had a gun in his hand, at the moment that you can see in the video him coming from between the dumpsters facing towards the cop. You can’t see his arm because it’s dark, but I have a hard time believing that at that moment the gun could be pointed anywhere but at the cop, if that’s true that he was running with it in his right hand. He wouldn’t even have to be intentionally aiming it, just holding it without holding his arm weirdly behind him or something.

    I would want to see the full bodycam, which supposedly was posted but I haven’t seen. Presumably it should make it pretty clear whether the claim about the gun is accurate, because the gun would be right next to him after he’s shot and visible on the ground when the cops go up to him.

    I don’t know man. I’m still trying to reserve judgment, but if you have a gun and you’re running around in a “guns out” situation and popping out between obstacles at a cop who was focused on something else at the time (the other guy who was running into the woods), you might get shot. Even if you dropped the gun by then or you’re just trying to get away at that point. Definitely if you’re still holding a gun. This isn’t like some guy who was just getting into his car with a sandwich, or a mentally disabled person who was calling for help, or anything like that. This is someone who created a deadly situation all on their own. One of his buddies had shot some people not long before, too, it doesn’t take some kind of crazy leap of logic to say that maybe he took time to make sure to be carrying the gun while running from the cops because he was open to the idea of shooting at the cops, as opposed to for some other reason.

    That’s my take on it right now. Maybe I’ll see more, and we find out the first cop was lying when he said the kid had a gun, or they planted one, or something, but that’s my take after seeing the first person video.