Patterico's Pontifications

2/26/2014

Does This Seem Somehow Familiar?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:08 am



Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection:

For a dramatic example of how quickly a fight can go bad even for a trained, experienced, and armed police officer against an unarmed aggressor — an example with eerie parallels to George Zimmerman’s defensive shooting of Trayvon Martin — see this bit of cellphone video.

It captures a Kansas City Police Officer having to go for his gun after an unarmed suspect he was attempting to arrest got the upper hand and started beating the police officer’s head into the sidewalk. The officer fired twice, with one of those rounds tearing through the attacker’s diaphragm, liver, and heart, and killing him.

Although these events took place last December 1, the video was only just released when the grand jury empaneled to review the shooting returned a “no bill” against Police Officer Donald Hubbard, meaning no criminal action will be taken against him for the shooting death of the attacker, 26-year-old Anthony Bruno. Bruno was himself an off-duty firefighter.

Bruno had been celebrating his marriage that evening when he got into an argument with a taxi driver outside the Kansas City Marriott Downtown and began to beat the driver. Officer Hubbard was working off-duty security at the hotel, wearing his uniform, and responded to the conflict, catching up with the departing Bruno some distance down the street.

Hubbard attempted to arrest Bruno, who was non-compliant. Soon the men were wrestling on the ground, where it appeared that Hubbard had the upper hand. In an instant, however, Bruno had flipped Hubbard onto his back on the sidewalk, and begun raining down vicious blows that caught Hubbard’s skull between Bruno’s fist driving down from above and the concrete below. Hubbard’s injuries would include a broken eye socket and a fractured cheekbone, although it appears that Bruno had only time for less than a handful of blows.

Sensing the loss of consciousness and fearing he would be beaten to death, Hubbard drew his service pistol and fired twice into Bruno’s chest.

Here’s the video. It goes without saying that if you are disturbed by violence you should not watch it:

Note also the idiot commentary of the onlookers.

Thanks to redc1c4 for bringing this to my attention.


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