From what I gather, this is another case of road rage that went bad and ended up stupid.
I am going to say something that will be unpopular with the Victimization crowd and those Bleeding Hearts and La Raza types: Turcio had it coming since he was suffering a bout of Machismo.
At 2:36, Turcio says he was driving all peacefully, and the other driver flipped him the middle finger (“el me venia sacando el dedo!”). The at 2:54 is where I reckon Turcio sealed his fate with his mindset “Aqui mandamos nosotros!” (We are in charge here!).
Also revealing is what the wife said right after that, something along “mira lo que hiciste” (See what you did?) and when he rejects it, she loses her mind and starts screaming at him. He argues back and ends up hitting the truck. He was then primed to do something stupid and eventually it came to be. The taser dose should have been a warning to Turcio that the cops were done playing games. but I believe his machismo shouted at him “You have a knife! You can take them all Daniel!” and he believed it.
The family is already seeking some monetary compensation claiming the usual “He did not need to be killed, he was murdered by the cops, blah blah.”
Nobody’s fault but his own.
Perhaps I’m being culturally insensitive here, but…
What, exactly, did he think he was going to accomplish by waving a knife at the emergency responders?
Machismo massively short circuits the brain into believing the quote from the country song: 10 feet tall and bulletproof.
This event was not his first attempt to reign supreme over anyone challenging his authority, as he perceives it to be. He’s successfully done something like this before, perhaps not to law enforcement but definitely to people he’s been challenged by. And it seems to me that in his mind he either was going to go to jail…again for drunk driving, or from an outstanding warrant, and he made the decision to just go out fighting, which he believed was more honorable. “Not going to be anyone’s bitch”.
“Honor is a thin cloak against the chill of the grave.”
Gotta take the shot when you can, but it looked like a three way crossfire with the first shot.
Tough SOB. Got Shot. Then Got Right Back Up and Got Shot some more.
He held on to that knife right to the end. .