Someone below said they saw a hammer

Posted on: May 8, 2020 at 09:40:41 CT

If the kid was carrying a hammer, they would be justified in brandishing a firearm. There are two very separate things going on and people want to conflate them. The first is brandishing the firearm, which they clearly did. The evidence will show if it was justified.

The other thing is using the firearm. They didn't do that. All the shots were fired during the struggle for the weapon and it's hard to assign blame to a party in this case for the use of the firearm.

To give you a more clear example, if I have a gun and somebody else is standing near me with a hammer (or a knife, etc) in a place like a convenience store and they clearly aren't fixing something, I am justified to draw my firearm. If they start to approach me while holding the hammer, I am justified to use deadly force and shoot them because a hammer is definitely a deadly weapon and them approaching me is considered force. This is clear-cut justified use of force.

I don't know if the hammer thing is true, I never heard about it in this case until a few minutes ago. All I want to point out is there is a lot of evidence yet to come out in this case that will be used to determine the justification for the display of deadly weapons and the parties intents that led to the shooting. I don't speculate on things like that.