Tragedy befell the city of Hearne, Texas, recently. A 93-year-old woman was gunned down by Officer Stephen Stern of the Hearne Police. And now the people of the small town want this cop's badge. They want him fired and the Mayor is leading the charge.
According to DailyMail:
'There's no justification. Any police officer would know not to kill a 93-year-old fragile woman when they could have backed off,' said William Foster, 64, a retired professor in Hearne. 'She was no threat to him.'
'That lady should be living today. She should not have died like she did,' Embra [another mourner] said.
Damn, when you hear it that way, it sure sounds like the cop used awful judgement. If that was all there was to the story, perhaps we'd agree. But it's best we hear all the details before we pass judgement.
It seems this all happened after Officer Stephen Stem responded to a 911 call about a disturbance involving a woman and a gun. When Stem arrived on scene, the 93-year-old woman was wildly brandishing her gun and refused to put it down. She aimed at the officer and he fired.
Now comes the public outrage. But is it because of this woman's age, or because the officer could have possibly found another way to diffuse the situation? The officer was responding to the 911 call. It came in because of a reported dangerous disturbance and a gun. Officer Stern fired three times, hitting the woman twice and grazing her with the third shot. Was this the right course of action? Did he use justifiable force? Well consider this. If this woman had fired, that bullet would have left the gun with the same lethal velocity.
Then what if the senior-aged woman had fired first and the cop was dead, would there be such a public outcry? Would the neighbors and friends of the late Pearlie Golden be lamenting the loss of this cop because he didn't shoot Ms. Golden when he had the chance? I doubt it. It seems the victim in this case isn't the 93-year-old woman. And it's not the cop either. It's the system that lets people loose with guns.
Yes, this is a plea, a call to sanity. It's a shout out for gun control. This result is what carrying and brandishing a gun can get you into. This woman should still be alive, all things considered. But she's not. And the reason why? Not because the cop shot her. It's because she was waving a gun. If she didn't have a gun, I very much doubt she would have been hurt, let alone killed. And there would be no reason for this story.
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