Police Officer’s Instinctive Response Killed Colleague
An investigation into a case where a police officer had shot his colleague during a training role play exercise in June 2008 has been informed that the officer had shot instinctively, though the exercise had merely been a drill.
The circumstances are similar to the not so old case of Keith Tilbury, where Tilbury, a police civilian worker was shot by a police officer in a safety demonstration, although Tilbury had survived. The training, through role play, had been going on in an abandoned factory, in the course of which the personnel were using live ammo. PC Ian Terry, a firearms specialist, was hit by a Round Irritant Personnel shot while playacting the role of a criminal trying to escape in a car.
The exercise’s objective had been to immobilize the vehicle by deflating its tyres, and when it had stopped, to pull out the alleged robbers. Apparently, the red-faced police department stated that all the participating officers had been duly instructed to keep their shotguns aimed low.
Nigel Meadows, the Manchester Coroner in charge of the inquest for this case did not announce the name the police officer who had fired the fatal shot due to legal reasons, but said that the officer claimed to the IPCC to be unaware of the fact that the whole exercise had been a shoot scenario. Meadows further said that officer asseverated that he had responded instinctively to a gun threat from PC Terry, even though all the people involved here had been informed that it was a training exercise.
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