Local Knoxvilleians probably already know about the shooting of a shoplifter at the South Knoxville Wal Mart two nights ago – (updated story here). It seems that Zachary Blaine Russell was shopping lifting light bulbs and that cost him his life. I must admit my first question was what type of lamps – incandscent, LED, CFL, etc, and next I thought – “I wonder if he was going to sell them at Green Acres this weekend?” Those thoughts were not meant to be funny, but in hindsight they are sadly honest and sadly funny at the same time.
Moving on, some seem to say now that Mr. Russell, the dead shoplifter, was afraid to go back to jail and that is why he made the move to pull the gun on the cop. I guess that is death by cop due to fear of jail, but I don’t know. It seems that the officers tried to tazer the man, but the tazer was not successful and Russell still got the gun pointed at the officers. At that time they shot and killed him by KPD officers John Mays and Tolliver Robertson.
We all probably know, or have meet, or interacted with some police officers that were rude, short with people, aggressive / overly aggressive / harsh, and who seemed to like the job sololy due to the power it brings them over others. Officers like this make many assume that any officer related shooting is basis’d due to the actions of this type officer. In this case though, none of those things matter, and none of those things occurred in this case. These officers were not doing nothing wrong, or unprofessional.
Pull a gun on a armed person (cop or not) gets you shot. It is reasonable, right and fair that the guy got shot. No exceptions, no well buts.. he pulled a gun and pointed it, he got shot. It turns out that the gun had a round in it, but it did not matter in this case that the gun was ready to shoot or not. He pointed a gun at a officer.
Even if the gun was unloaded, this guy deserved to get shot. The officers have no way of knowing if the gun is or is not loaded. They have to shoot. They have to defend themselves. They have to protect others.
This was a good / fair shooting. This is one time that the KPD officers did everything right, no mistakes. A piece of equipment failed, but they still had to act. The only bad thing here was the tazer did not work. and that is unfortunate.
In the end that equipment failure cost Mr. Russell his life. I am sure his family will likely consider suing the tazer manufacturer for producing a faulty device which probably cost Mr. Russell his life. That will be a interesting case to follow, but it has no bearing on the shooting as once the officer had their lives, or the lives of others, threatened it was time to shoot.
Great job officers John Mays and Tolliver Robertson