I don't know why, but this just reminded me of something I saw when I was a teenager ( a long, long time ago in a place far, far away). I was at my parent's house sitting in their living room. Their house was located across the street from a bank. As I sat, I heard popping sounds and my parents wondered who was blowing off fireworks. I got up to look out the picture window saying that sounded more like a gun. Sure enough I saw a guy run past our backyard from the direction of the bank, with a gun in his hand. Curious me, I ran outside to get a look. As I got to the sidewalk, I looked and saw a guy crouching and firing his gun with both hands right across the street from me yelling; "Stop, FBI!" The perp continued running down the street.
Now there were at least ten shots fired between the two. Houses were behind the perp and storefronts behind the FBI agent. Shooting across the street at one another was crazy! Bullets were hitting the houses and the storefronts, no doubt about it. Neither the perp or the agent got hit.
The perp broke into a house a block away that had a two 10 year old boys playing inside. One kid ran out as soon as he saw the perp. The other was my best friend's younger brother. My best friend's younger brother got grabbed as a hostage by the perp. The perp held him and demanded the FBI provide him an escape vehicle.
Soon, there was a crowd of maybe a dozen people, including me, watching the events unfold from half a block away.
The escape car was provided and parked in the driveway to the two story house. The perp came out with his gun aimed at the kid's head. As he neared the car, this kid did the damndest thing ever. He threw his arms straight up and dropped to the ground. That left the perp with one of those "oh ****" moments. You can't imagine the gunfire that followed. It was like a war zone. The perp was a dead as dead gets. Not a whole lot of rounds hit that perp, but a whole helluva lot of rounds hit the escape car and the house.
I guess my point in all this is that when bad things happen, even trained law enforcement officers have to take some risks as to what's behind their target. Dangerous seconds can make for some dangerous actions.
By the way, I went over to my best friend's house later that day and his younger brother was there, too. I asked him were you scared? How did you know to just drop to the ground with your arms up? He just grunted and said; "I don't know." He acted like this sort of thing happened every day. Gotta say, that kid was as cool as a cucumber!
