"Undoubtedly" is too strong. Likely, sure, but I don't know enough about the surrounding terrain to know if they could blend in and disappear before the cops arrived, and I dont' know whether the car was registered to one of the perps and could be tracked back to him, or it was stolen.
I guess my sympathy with protecting property would stop a little short of what Reid seems to have done -- deliberate ram a man on foot (not buying the old foot-stuck-on-gas-pedal story).
What's relevant isn't whether you buy that story, but whether a jury will buy it. Or will choose to believe it so they don't have to convict (i.e. jury nullification). Or if a prosecutor will conclude that the jury is so likely to do so that prosecuting would be a waste of time. It only takes one person who believes the wrong-pedal story to hang a jury.
You make a good point.
Not being a lawyer, I've never thought much about strategies aimed at jury nulification (beyond that great, old, anti-PC Jack Lemmon film, How to Murder Your Wife). I can see where it might be very useful to give the jury something to at least pretend to believe.