Debate Me Bro

For people to debate you, you need to make a claim. Asking a question doesn't work.

To answer your question. No it wasn't justified.
Understandable? Sure. But not justified.
There is no good justification for revenge killing. It's literally just a version of "Because I felt like it."

The deputy he ran over, wasn't even the police officer that shot his son. Those are different and unrelated agencies. So he didn't even get revenge properly. He just murdered a random cop. Because he felt like it.

Well, you didn't define justified for this purpose, so there's two ways to look at it, imo

One is the standard concept of justifiable homicide, and this doesn't meet that criteria. There were other options, there was no immediate danger, etc.

But that's not the only way we're allowed to look at whether or not someone could kill and it be an acceptable choice.

I personally believe that a parent avenging their child, even when the child is an adult, is one of those things where even if they're wrong, and provably so, it isn't exactly a cold blooded murder, even if it was premeditated. There's just too big of an emotional punch to having one's family killed. That doesn't mean it's automatically acceptable, it just means there's room for the decision to be something that is excusable eventually. And yes, that concept would apply to the parents of a person killed by the parent of a previous killing. I'm not saying it's good, I'm not saying it should be a get out of jail card, I'm just saying that the motive involved is compelling enough to be worthy of consideration.

Now, justified or acceptable in this case? The chances of the officer that killed their child getting off no matter what the evidence was is there. That the decision was made after seeing the footage in person definitely makes a charge of aggravated murder dubious.

However, as far as I've seen after checking the provided links, and searching for other articles, the parent in this case didn't go after the person who shot their child. They, in a highly charged emotional state, targeted a random officer.

The ever heated debate over whether or not cops are an omnipresent threat to begin with can't apply here because this isn't what that was. This wasn't a reaction to cops in general made as an act of revolution or protest. Well, it doesn't seem that way based on the chain of events.

It may have been the proverbial straw, and the father was starting a campaign to take out police in general, but it's such a recent event that no motivation has been stated by him. If it does come out, maybe it would change things, I dunno

But it looks more like he came out of seeing his son killed by cops, then saw a cop standing there alive, and directed his grief and rage at the officer, despite there being no reason to believe that officer is the one that killed his son. That cop that killed his son was part of a specific unit, and wouldn't have been out directing traffic.

So if we want to say that a parent avenging their child is justifiable, it's a massive stretch to apply it in this case. It wouldn't really be vengeance on a scale and in a way that I can personally find totally excusable. At most, I would say that it should be a more limited charge, and a lighter sentence.

If someone wanted to say that any killing of a cop is automatically justified, I'm not going to debate it because it goes beyond this specific situation, and OP didn't ask about it. I will say that pretty much no killing is automatically justified, but even that's tangential to the post.

No, killing the policeman a day after he killed your son is not justified. Regardless of if the shooting was justified or not.

The reason we have courts is to stop revenge attacks like this because the participants aren't in a position to make a fair judgement.

However its completely understandable why he killed the cop the next day.

Context would be useful for those handful of people who live outside Ohio and are not up to date on local news.

Understandable but not justifiable.

My personal view is that violence is only justified in narrow conditions of self defense—and I define self-defense more narrowly than many people do in common parlance. So while I understand the injustice and rage the father might feel, I can’t see how this was defensive in nature and so I would have to say it was the wrong thing to do.

I would be inclined to be lenient here but I don’t really believe in punitive justice anyway since it’s not generally a defensive form of violence. But particularly in this case, the father had very legitimate grievance and the chance of re-offending seems low barring additional information. A restorative justice model seems especially appropriate here.

A man’s son was killed by a gang and he killed a gang member who had no direct connection to the killing.

I find it hard to blame the father. If you’re part of a gang involved in murder you should expect retribution.