De Menezes 'shot for 30 seconds'

[Briar]

De Menezes 'shot for 30 seconds'

Witness feared terrorists were attacking train as police fired at Brazilian, leaked statement reveals

Vikram Dodd and Hugh Muir


Armed police officers fired at Jean Charles de Menezes for over 30 seconds when they killed him at Stockwell tube station, according to a witness statement made to independent investigators and obtained by the Guardian.

The witness says the shots were fired at intervals of three seconds and that she ran for her life fearing terrorists had opened fire on commuters...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1556856,00.html

[Missy M]

1. I find this whole incident to be so weird....

I was under the impression they didn't start shooting him until they had him pinned down. Why did they shoot 10 or 11 times? Why did they shoot him at all if they had him down?

[Briar]

2. What I find weirder

is the obvious reluctance of our great and good to condemn the shoot to kill policy.

[Missy M]

3. Shoot to kill on mere suspicions is unthinkable...

many innocent people could be shot because they look or act suspicious for various reasons or to someones erroneous interpretation.

[non sociopath skin]

4. Sounds increasingly as if some of it wasn't "shoot to kill" ...

... in that the poor guy was well dead when some of the shots were pumped into him.

I work on the assumption that a firearms ace has at least some idea of the firepower it needs to kill someone. So why the fcuk did they keep on firing?

The Skin

[mrfrapp]

5. That's a Long Time

When discussing this subject with people who seem to like the idea of killing people willy-nilly I've made the point about how long it must have taken to fire off seven head shots. The point being that if they won't concede "shoot-to-kill" being a bad idea, that they should at least recognise that in this case the killing was unnecessarily brutal. That the gunmen should have realised after say, the second head shot at the most, they should think to themselves, "hey, perhaps this guy is dead already". I've counted off ten seconds or so to illustrate just how long the gunmen must have had to think about, to realise what they were doing but I didn't my wildest imaginings think they devoted a whole 30 seconds to his execution.

[Taxloss]

6. Eleven shots in thirty seconds?

I sincerely doubt it.