Posted on 08/09/2016 9:02:24 PM PDT by grundle
A woman is dead after she was accidentally shot by a Florida police officer in a citizen training academy roleplay scenario gone wrong.
Mary Knowlton was one of two participants randomly selected from a group of 35 for a shoot-don’t shoot simulation during a two-hour training Tuesday at the Punta Gorda Police Department, Chief Tom Lewis told reporters at a press conference.
“During the first scenario, in a horrible accident participant Mary Knowlton was mistakenly struck by a live round,” Lewis said.
She was transported to the local hospital where she was pronounced dead.
“I am asking that if you pray, you pray for Mary’s husband and family and the officers and witnesses involved in this incident,” Lewis continued. “Everyone involved is in a state of overwhelming shock and grief.”
Florida Department of Law Enforcement is already on scene investigating.
“The Punta Gorda Police Department realizes that our community will have many questions about this incident. However, we are taking care not to jeopardize the investigation,” Lewis said.
He declined to answer any questions from reporters on scene and did not address why there were live rounds in the weapon.
The officer, who has not been named, is on administrative leave pending an investigation.
Punta Gorda is a city of 17,000 located on the Gulf Coast, located just over 20 miles northwest of Fort Myers.
Chief bears some culpability.
In today's political climate, this is beyond belief.
This is unforgivable stupidity, and the thug needs about 200 years in a supermax. With great authority comes great responsibility. If he's smart, he'll eat his own gun, tonight, and save everyone a great deal of aggravation.
“Involuntary manslaughter, plain as day.”
Involuntary manslaughter?
Why don’t you test that theory and blow some innocent person’s head off during a roll play incident?
Then, please get back to me when the let you out of prison in 75 years.
Lottery winner!
He probably did, but I don't think he ever killed anyone, accidentally or otherwise.
Another reference to fired “several times” at the 73 year old woman:
And be in jail.
Actually that’s rule #2. Rule #1 is that all guns are always loaded with a round in the chamber.
Well, there is one fact known - in a training environment a real bullet came out of a gun and killed a person.
The officer might have been handed a pistol that wasn’t his but I was always taught - when handed a weapon treat it as loaded and check/clear it.
If it was his weapon - he belongs in jail.
I recall a story a freeper told where he was at his friend’s house trying out the new trigger in his friend’s handgun. They unloaded the weapon with the rounds sitting on the table. He squeezed off a few dry-fires at the water-cooler in the corner of the basement.
Then the friend’s wife called them up for dinner. The freeper went into the downstairs bathroom and when he came out, there was the gun and the rounds still out sitting on the table.
He picked up the gun to dry-fire at the cooler a couple more times before heading upstairs.
“BANG!”
At least it was just a water-cooler! For some odd reason his buddy had reloaded it with new rounds from the box, rather than just replacing the rounds he had taken out.
>>It must be hard for a perfect person like yourself to live in such an imperfect world. /sarcasm
There is no room for “imperfect” when dealing with guns. You either get it right or you get someone hurt or killed. Period!
The rules for any kind of dry-fire or Simunition training are very strict, because imperfect gets people hurt or killed.
You remove ALL live ammo from the room or range after double-checking that all guns are unloaded. Then you check again before anyone starts dry-firing or loading blanks or Simunition. If anyone enters the room, you stop and check again.
Perfect is MINIMUM STANDARD. It can be done. This woman died on a range that should have been free of live ammo. That’s all we need to know. There are no “mitigating facts” to absolve the sponsoring cops of all blame.
.....and charge him with criminally negligent homicide, just as they would anyone else
One horrible instant that ruined two families lives......be thankful that it wasn’t your own!!!
4 later
While the number of these shootings are rare they have happened enough for trainers to adopt a whole list of safety measures when conducting force on force training.
Every body from the OIC, RSO,s to the instructors failed to do their jobs I would think that a lot of heads should roll over this shooting.
Making sure the safety protocols are followed is every ones responsibility from the person in charge to the persons actually doing the training.
Besides the officer who did the shooting there are or should have been others that should have prevented this
Did the victim get to have a loaded gun, too?
Don't you just hate it when some know-it-all completely undermines your desire to delay making self-evident conclusions about an 100% avoidable accident?
Life is so much easier when you have a well developed mechanism for excusing needless, preventable, failure.
/contempt
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