I am very sorry for this man and his family. And I am also sorry for those officers who had to make that decision, pretty much without any guidance from a responsible official, the sheriff being who he is and all. And no one wants to have to end up taking a life. It's not ever going to be something you can leave behind you easily.
The telling thing was that, as the driver's wife said, "if he'd just gone on a little further, he'd have run out of gas." Yes, and if we're projecting outcomes, I'd bet that if he'd run out of gas and been forced to stop for that reason, he probably would've jumped out of the truck and run. But maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't have ended up shooting him. I think that sadly, he pretty much chose the outcome he got.
The DA is a responsible person, and based on what he heard, he made the right decision. Can you sue somebody in public office for being offensive? For saying and doing ugly things that reveal them as an offensive jerk? Not really. And can you predict, from miles away, not knowing the situation, not knowing the details, simply from what you've observed and what you have learned on the job from watching people behave, exactly whether somebody is a danger or not? As I said, in this part of the world, you ASSUME, until everything else in the world tells you different, that EVERYBODY is armed. Someone who has already made the decision to let the police chase them for miles, ramming police cars, avoiding directions to stop, equals guess what? He's probably a danger, he's decided to let the cops kill him, and he might just want to take one or two of them with him. Sad, bad, but nothing to do with some of the other unjust shootings we've seen in other cities throughout the country lately.

