German police shoot dead a U.S. soldier in Bavaria

Spiegel: German Police Fatally Shoot US Soldier after Hostage Crisis

I dont get why these are called "Tragedies"?! He pointed an M4 rifle at police, of course they are going to shoot him.

Walk a mile in another man's shoes whydontcha? Who knows what really happened to cause the guy (who was young) to go nuts?

1. He tied up his girlfriend
2. He pointed a gun at police (armed police!!)

I have served in Armed Forces and one thing you do not do is point a weapon at someone, loaded or not! Major bollocking from superiors. I am not surprised that he was shot at and killed, it happens, weapons arent the best at stopping someone.

Whatever caused him to go nuts, he had a gun and was trained in how to use it. Lethal use of force was apparently warranted, and appropriately used. Would you try to reason with a rabid dog because you didn't "walk a mile in its shoes" first?

Somewhere there's a unit armorer about to lose some pay and rank.

The soldier sounds like he lost it and the police had no choice in shooting him.

And that excuses it?

What's his age got to do with it (and he wasn't that young, he was 30)?

Bit rich. That goes down in "Classic Posts" and then shown to grandchildren as an example of fuckwittery.

Parnell didn't say it excused anything. Nor did he question the use of force. He was talking about whether or not is should be called a "tragedy" and in plain enough English for anyone to understand.

OMG, this is horrible.. I think police is getting just too aggressive and thoughtless nowadays!!!

They could have shot him in the leg or arm or something, and knock out the weapon from his hand, and get him tied and decide later about what to do... but KILLING him?!!
Horrible.
And, not proffessional at all!

No he wasn't. spillerkoln was. In plain enough English for anyone to understand.

Edit: Well said ES, horrible!

I think this can be called a tragedy, because one life is lost and because the policeman who shot had to decide in a split second whether he has to apply a so called "finaler Rettungsschuss" (there are strict rules for a potentially deadly shot, only when a threat to the life of the policeman or a third person is imminent). This decision puts him in a dilemma, and whatever he decides has grave consequences. The guy with the rifle could have run amok, but he also could have calmed down. How is one to know? I always wonder when police kill someone if there isn't a possibility to put somebody out of action without killing, e.g. aiming at the arm that holds the rifle in this case.

Listen. For the last and final time , I'm not interested.

Oh, touché.

A slightly more detailed report of the incident ... in German

A colleague of mine is a former policeman. He said if the perpetrator is running away from him and he doesn't stop, he aims (to shoot) for an extremity to stop him from running away, but, if the perp is coming at him or pointing a gun at him, he aims for something a bit more significant (ie torso).

Errrrr, how do you know they could have shot him in the arm or leg? A person that is shot in the arm or leg could be still capable of firing a weapon. That shot could hit anyone, including an innocent bystander.

Someone points a gun at you and you have a gun, you fire at the largest exposed part of that person, hopefully killing them outright.

Professionally that is what you are taught to do. A dead person cannot shoot back, quite simple.

The poster that questions whether it is a tragedy or not is correct. Point a weapon at an armed police officer and you are very likely, almost certainly going to be shot.

What is more horrible? A chap that is pointing a gun at an armed police officer and being shot dead for doing so, or chap with gun blazing away whilst police wait for him to empty the magazine and count the bodies later whilst the chap is "tied up" after killing a few people?

How do I know that the chap would "blaze away"...I do not. How do I know that the chap would have come in peacefully after putting down his weapon...I do not BUT I would not want to be looking down the barrel of a gun and hoping for the latter.

canaryman, I think (I hope!) that ES was being sarcastic...

Maybe they did shoot him in the leg, hit his femoral artery and he bled to death. Let's also not jump to conclusions and assume that we would know better when one points an M4 at you.

I hope you're making the sarcastic point here that it would be incredibly stupid to attempt to shoot someone who has a gun pointed at you in the arm/hand rather than just shooting where ever to take them down as quickly as possible

Mind you, in John Wayne movies, his "six shooter" could hit a moving man in the hand at around 600 yards. Seen it with my own eyes!!!

If someone points a gun at me and I can stop them from POSSIBLY pulling the trigger, I will. I won't be worried about using the least amount of force necessary, I will only worry about ensuring I walk away from the situation. So if that means shooting them in the torso or head, so be it. That said, I don't own and gun and am a damn poor shot, so I hope I never have to worry about it.

At the very least. But remember that the shitstorm will start with HQUSAREUR and roll downhill swiftly. At the very minimum, the Battalion Commander and CSM will get letters of repremand. The Company/Battery Commander and 1SG will likely get removed from their positions and, pending the outcome of any investigation, removed from service. The Armorer works directly for the 1SG/Cdr and will very likely face UCMJ action. Art. 15, not a Court Martial, I would think (if he/she at least reported the missing weapon). But also, maybe no one will be effected? Maybe the soldier signed out his weapon under normal circumstances (weapons cleaning, field exercise, rifle range) and then just disappeared? It's quite possible that the missing weapon & soldier were reported and proper procedures were followed to locate both? I'm not in Schweinfurt, so I don't know if there was a lock-down or not.

But then again, who is to say that the soldier didn't own his own M4? There are varients of the M4 that are authorized for personal sale. If he had all the required paperwork (Waffenbesitzkarte), he could legally keep the firearm at his residence. Until more information is available, we can't really know the full scope of the incident.

As for it being a tragedy, no. I don't care about the why's and how's. This was a 30 year old soldier (most likely a noncommissioned officer) that basically committed police assisted suicide. Loaded or not, any cop in his/her right mind will use lethal force when a trained soldier points a weapon at him/her in a situation like that. Lethal force (aka deadly force) was authorized in this situation and I don't feel that the police did anything questionable.

Now I'll sit back and wait for the shitstorm to hit. This will be a Europe-wide shitstorm and all units/garrisons will feel the effects. 100% sensitive items inventories, briefings, counselings, lock-downs (if anything so much as an NVG is unaccounted for), and much more.

From HQ USAREUR. Looks like the MPs were involved as well.

So it was his service weapon and according to the article it was loaded.

I don't think this is going to cause a big stir, actually. The case seems clear-cut. Guy flips out, pre-meditates enough to take his weapon off base, ties up ex, and then doesn't surrender to the police. No one is going to accuse the German police of handling this badly.

As to those recommending one just shoot his hand that's holding the weapon -- I think it is not that easy to aim in that kind of situation. The guy isn't just standing still at close range. Had the police been truly attempting to kill him, he wouldn't have lived for hours afterwards. As someone else said, they were just trying to hit him, since he pointed a loaded weapon at them. Someone points a weapon at you, you have the right to kill them.

As for proof -- if the helicopter with the heat video camera found the guy, then hopefully they would have filmed the whole altercation -- though I suppose you can't always make out exactly where people's arms are, and the weapon wouldn't have emitted any heat since he hadn't fired it yet and thus would be difficult to see -- but I doubt they will release the video even if there is one.

Mayor: Now Drebin, I don't want any trouble like you had on the South Side like last year, that's my policy.
Frank: Well, when I see five weirdos dressed in togas, stabbing a man in the middle of the park in front of a full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards, that's my policy.
Mayor: That was a Shakesphere In The Park Production of Julius Caesar, you moron! You killed five actors! Good ones!

The M4 is the service weapon of the majority for soldiers in the Army. And "Dienstschluss" just means "close of business", nothing more. It doesn't mean that he was issued his weapon for guard duty, just the the weapon wasn't returned to the arms room by close of business. There still isn't any information as to why the weapon was signed out. As I said before, he could have signed it out for cleaning. Weapons in the arms room are to be cleaned regularly by the soldier that the weapon is assigned to, not the armorer. There are too many unknowns still. And just because it was his service weapon doesn't mean it was loaded and the article that Freising linked doesn't state anything at all about the weapon being loaded or not. I won't say that a soldier doesn't have access to ammo because it is far too easy these days to scrounge up. But the post above implies that the soldier was issued a loaded weapon for duty and that he failed to return it. That's not the way it works in the Army, sorry. A soldier signs out the weapon from the arms room and any ammo that is to be issued will be issued at the location the duty is to be performed (at the gate or on a range). Soldiers don't simply get issued weapons and ammo to walk around with all day (in garrison, they do in combat of course).

Odenwalder, the article did say the weapon was loaded. Besides, what does it really matter whose weapon it was or how he got it? He misused it.

Oops, missed that part

IT will matter a lot to the dozen or so folks in his chain of command whose careers are on the line.

Some people just won't understand, DH.

Sorry, I was looking at it from a different, uninvolved point of view. DH and Odenwalder do have a point that there will of course be inquiries into how he got a loaded weapon off base -- but as far as I understand, isn't the soldier responsible for the weapon when it is assigned to him? Nobody checks a soldier going off base, and if his day of work wasn't finished, no one would have been looking for him or his weapon. Then again, despite having a bro-in-law in the Army, I don't know the details of how this stuff is supposed to work. I don't think my bro-in-law ever gets issued weapons...or at least he doesn't tell us all about it.

Edit: the gist of my earlier comment was that this will not have an effect on international politics or the relationship between Germany and the USA. Yes, there will be a dozen or so folks in the chain of command who get in trouble (maybe), but that is relatively little fall-out, on a global scale

It's just like going to the motorpool to perform maintenance on a truck. Being issued a weapon is nothing out of the ordinary for a soldier so I wouldn't see a reason why your brother-in-law would bring it up unless he dropped it on his foot and broke his toe or something.

Regarding the soldier in question, the amount of direct supervision he had with his weapons depends on his rank. Normally, unless there is a lockdown, cars are not inspected going off post. So it could easily happen that this trooper put the weapon in the trunk of his car and drove off. It is unlikely that he would have been issued ammo for any reason unless units in Schwienfurt are guarding their own gates. He must have had ammo of his own that he accumulated and then loaded.

I agree the police seems to have handled this in the only way they could have. I am not expecting any police officer who has a weapon pointed at them to just wait and hope the person won't shoot them or that the gun isn't loaded.
Of course it would be interesting, though, to find out what made this guy go nuts like that.

The police actions seem a bit stringent and barbaric to me. Surely the police could be equipped with some kind of fast acting tranquilizer guns for such occurrences. I assume this soldier was normally sane otherwise people would have noticed how he behaved with weapons before now. Most probably he was blind drunk.

I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and say that he was over in Iraq or Afghanistan at some point...I think that can exacerbate a person going nuts...

Let's be honest, what man hasn't at some point wanted to tie up a girlfriend, wife or some other female and threaten her with bodily harm?

He just took it step too far actually did it.

and maybe he was the Armorer.

Yeah, I was actually assuming something like PTSD... But maybe it was something else, who knows.

And Sanwald, yes he took it a step too far (but I would hope that not every man fantasizes about physically abusing his girlfriend), but had he just tied her up, he wouldn't have been shot for it either. Tying up his girlfriend is not what he was killed for, having a loaded half-automatic weapon pointed at a police officer is (or do you think every man also fantasizes about pointing a loaded gun at an armed police officer).

Seems a foolproof way of getting rid of that unwanted boyfriend.
Let’s play S&M tonight dear – you tie me up and then you brandish this gun at me.
Meanwhile you call the cops with your speed dial.

Jebus... the guy was aiming an M4 assault rifle at the police! A weapon like that easily penetrates standard police vests. If I was a police officer carrying only a freakin standard 9mm I would go for the kill-shot... the guy might have taken along his body armour as well (articles don't state that + the armour is easy to take along - no controlls on that) and his body armour is slightly more sophisticated than the police ones and the police knows that...

Thank you for explaining to me exactly why the police shot at him.

no, I don't believe every man fantasizes about it, but if a womans with a man long enough at some point he'll want to hit her, the thought usually goes like this "Man, If she doesn't shut up I'm going hit that bitch!"

Now, not every man follows through on this thought, but it's comforting ( in a Neanderthal kinda way)to think it. It usually is the point at wich a man realizes he's way to wound up and needs to calm down.

Not all men just want a hug and to sing Kumbaya.

and an M4 is a fully automatic weapon,too, just have to take the selector lever one step further.

Most of the Schweinfurt soldiers just got back in November from a very stressful 15 month deployment (not generally stressful, I mean they had a really bad deployment) in Iraq.

you're a keeper...

At least he is honest, we pretty much have all felt that way about a loved one at some point.

Most army M16/M4 are single shot / burst mode (three shots) ones, but still the effictive kill range of that weapon lies around 300m and it easily does penetrate police armour, cars, walls...

Thanks for the information. That sucks for them, yeah might be an explanation for this guy acting like that.

Schweinfurt is one of the bases in Europe with the highest number of deaths in the Iraq war: "Losses in Iraq hit Schweinfurt unit hard", Stars and Stripes, Aug. 6th 2007

Oh that is probably what Dolfan was referring to (I had been wondering). How shitty.

It wasn't regular police, but SEK (= S.W.A.T.). They use G-36K (short barreled assault rifle by Heckler&Koch) or MP5 (Machine pistol 5). Full body armour etc.
They are trained for shoot to kill scenarios. There's no messing around, but hitting central body mass with full force. Probably more than one at a time.
pic1
Pic 2 with G-36K in the background