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We spoke earlier of the triad for justification to constitute "imminence". We aregoing to look at this in further detail. As a review the triad is "INTENT", "WEAPON" & "DELIVERY SYSTEM". In our last blog post we learned about intent.
A few days ago the district attorney's office in South Carolina ruled that a Greenville County deputy was justified in shooting at a suspect who was attacking her in a residence. She was attempting to arrest an unarmed subject when he became assaultive and started to attack her. He was unarmed but attempted to gain control of the deputy's firearm so she fired her weapon. She missed the intended target and grazed the suspect's mother who refused to step aside. Their has been an outcry in that region about the mother being shot and the deputy being cleared but she did not intend to inflict deadly force on the wounded mother. A video of the body cam has a link below.
Another factor besides "intent" is "delivery system". This is the ability to deliver the harm to the potential victim in an imminent threat or about to happen. When the delivery system is considered met is dependent on the threat type and distance. If it is a firearm, it is the line of sight unbroken by cover. (remember cover will STOP a round). If a knife is the threat then we consider approximately 21 feet to be the "kill zone" or imminent distance. The next blog post will educate you on where the 21 foot rule was predicated upon and why it is a nationally accepted standard. If it is an unarmed assailant, like in our body cam video, it is considered to be about 10 feet. Unarmed threats need much more articulation as to why they put your life in reasonable jeopardy of great bodily harm or death but in extreme cases such as this it can and does happen.
Check out he officer's body cam video below and let me know if you have any further questions about this or similar incidents.