Confirming the kill

I wrote yesterday about the importance in many situations of killing a terrorist who might still present a threat. It reminded me of an incident in the Old City of Jerusalem a few months ago. The New York Times reported then.

According to the police and witnesses, two armed security guards who work at a nearby yeshiva were walking near the Jaffa Gate on Christian Quarter Street when the young man attacked one guard and took his gun. He shot the guard in the upper chest and ran toward the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, chased by the second guard, the witnesses said.There was an exchange of fire and bystanders were wounded, mostly by ricochets. The gunman was badly wounded, witnesses said, slumping against a wall, and was told to drop his gun. He died in a narrow street lined by shops. Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab member of Parliament, said that the man was killed when he was already down, but the police said that they could not verify the charge.

One witness told Israel Radio: “I saw the wounded man on the ground wasn’t moving at all. I didn’t see anything in his hands. I saw two security guards continuing to shoot at the man.”

By quoting the witness and referring to the account of the killing as a “charge,” the reporter Steven Erlanger implicitly accuses the guards of over-reacting.

Only later in the article do we learn:

Two other security guards who have lived in the Old City for 20 years were nearby, both armed. They refused to give their names, but one said: “We work according to rules, and one of the very clear orders we have is that when we see a terrorist who is armed, we are instructed to shoot back at him until we kill him. This way we will prevent a bigger incident.”

I know that the witness says that he/she didn’t see anything in the attackers hands, but that doesn’t mean that there was no weapon nearby either.

Given that the attacker had shot a number of people before he was killed, he hardly deserves the benefit of the doubt. At the time the guards were bound to “….prevent the bigger incident.”

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.