Be careful when being a hero: the tragic shooting of Johnny Hurley
I want to be clear, I am not victim-blaming.
No to go off on too much of a tangent, but that is a phrase that I have come to hate. To me, victim-blaming is when you say or imply “the victim deserved X because he/she did Y.” Unfortunately, it has come to mean “finding any fault with the victim’s actions that lead to their demise.”
I approach these situations from the point of view of a forensics expert, i.e., that it’s necessary to understand the totality of what happened, and that includes the actions of the victim. Such an analysis can be done without saying the victim deserved their fate.
For example, no woman deserves to be stabbed to death by a vagrant. Still, it should be noted that a woman, walking alone in a secluded area under an overpass where mentally unstable vagrants are known to live, is taking an unnecessarily high risk. If the point of forensic engineering is to understand why something bad happened so it can be prevented in the future, we need to understand what happened so that we can tell other women to avoid going into secluded areas under overpasses where mentally unstable vagrants are known to live.
This to me isn’t victim blaming, it’s understanding the situation fully.
No to the prime topic of this post.
A Good Samaritan with a gun, an armed civilian, stopped a mass shooter in Colorado. However, he was killed by the responding police.
A Denver man, who was one of three people killed during a shooting in Arvada this week, is being remembered as a hero for his actions.
The tragic shooting took place on Monday in Olde Town Arvada, claiming the lives of Arvada Police Officer Gordon Beesley, Colorado resident Johnny Hurley, and the suspect.
“If not for the heroic actions of Mr. Hurley and Arvada Police Officers on that day, more innocent lives would have been lost,” Detective David Snelling with the Arvada Police Department wrote in a release on Wednesday.
This news article explains how this tragedy unfolded.
“Samaritan” who killed Arvada gunman was shot by officer while holding suspect’s AR-15, police say
An Arvada police officer fatally shot “good Samaritan” Johnny Hurley in Olde Town after Hurley killed a gunman intent on murdering police officers and picked up the gunman’s AR-15, investigators said Friday.
Minutes earlier, the gunman ambushed Arvada police Officer Gordon Beesley, fatally shooting him. Hurley shot the gunman, identified by police as Ronald Troyke, and was holding Troyke’s AR-15 rifle when an Arvada officer arrived, according to a timeline of events released by police.
Investigators found a note written by Troyke with multiple statements about wanting to kill police, including, “Today I will kill as many Arvada officers as I possibly can.”
The incident began with a 12:49 p.m. call to police from Troyke’s brother who asked for a welfare check because Troyke was going to “do something crazy,” according to the timeline.
Soon after, at 1:17 p.m., police dispatch received a call about a “suspicious person” in Olde Town Square, police said. A teen reported being approached by an older man who made a weird noise and showed them a condom, police said.
Beesley responded to the square at 1:31 p.m., parking on Webster Street before walking through an alley toward the plaza.
Troyke pulled up in his truck, parked and ran after the officer with a semi-automatic shotgun, police said. Troyke then yelled at Beesley, and shot the officer when he stopped and turned around, according to the timeline.
After he killed Beesley, police said, Troyke shot out the windows of a patrol car and fired shots in the air. He then returned to his truck to retrieve an AR-15 rifle.
As the gunman ran back toward Olde Town Square, Hurley shot him with a handgun, according to police. Hurley, 40, of Denver, had been shopping inside the nearby Army Navy Surplus Store when he saw the gunman walk by, a witness previously told The Denver Post.
“A responding Arvada Police Officer then encountered Mr. Hurley, who was holding the suspect’s AR-15,” police wrote. “The officer shot him.”
Now look at this from the point of view of the police.
They have a warning that there is a crazy guy out there who wants to kill as many cops as possible.
One officer has already been killed in an ambush.
They have a potential mass shooting event on their hands.
They roll up on the scene and see a guy holding an AR-15.
They stop the potential mass shooter with the exact and appropriate tactics that police (except the BrCoward County Sheriff’s Department) have been trained to use since Columbine. Shoot the fucker before he can kill anyone else.
Except that this time the guy with the AR was a Good Samaritan who just took out the real threat.
This is absolutely tragic but totally understandable.
The key element that made this go from “hero CCW stops cop killer” to “Good Samaritan killed by cops” is the moment Hurley picked up the AR.
Hurley did not deserve to die for what he did. I understand the impulse to control the bad guy’s weapon so he can’t use it again. But the cops rolling into a potential ambush didn’t know that and did what they were trained to do.
Take Hurley out of this for a second.
Had the cops rolled up, saw Trokey with his rifle, stopped, and immediately took him out, we would all be saying “good shoot.”
We need to look at it from this point of view so that we don’t make this same mistake in the future.
CCW permit holders are good at taking out mass shooters.
The lesson to learn is what do to once that has been done.
DO NOT TOUCH THE MASS SHOOTER’S WEAPON
If you’ve done your job he’s incapacitated. If he moves towards his weapon, shoot him again. But do not try to secure his weapon. You are not a cop, that is not your job.
When the police start to roll up on the scene, DO NOT APPEAR TO BE A THREAT.
Reholster or put down your weapon. Put your hands up. Appear as not threatening as possible.
Of course, if you have time call the police yourself and tell them you are the good guy, but you may not have time for that.
The police are going into a dangerous situation. You want all their snap judgments to be in your favor as an innocent to be protected.
You survived the bad guy, now you have to survive the police encounter.
This was tragic but totally avoidable.
I am not victim-blaming. I am doing a forensic analysis of this event to impart lessons to other CCW Good Samaritans so they can make it home alive instead of being praised as heroes posthumously with a Go Fund Me for the family (verified by the Arvada Police, see the first news article).
