hard to feel a lot of sympathy for the deceased.

How soon will it be before the family of the robber files a lawsuit against DC for wrongful death?

I'm sue his mother will attest that he was a good boy and that the police planted the gun.

He didn't deserve to die, but it is very hard to feel any sympathy at all with someone who died stupidly trying to harm another.

Sadly, if the robber had targeted a civilian instead of a police officer, he would have gotten away with it and continued to rob people at gunpoint. It's too bad the robber died, rather than just being wounded and arrested, but the end result is one less gun on the streets, and one less criminal willing to use a gun.

I think we could all stand to be a teensy bit more tolerant of crossdressing nazis. I mean, say what you want about National Socialism; at least it's an ethos.

zippy - Don't put that quarter in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket. It's your lucky quarter. Anywhere but in your pocket, where it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is.

drew -- the DC gun law exempts active and retired police officers.

"Why is an off-duty police officer walking around armed in Washington (even if to fill up his gas tank)?"

Cops in DC are required to carry their weapon and their radio with them even when off duty. The theory is that if they see a crime in action they can be johnny-on-the-spot and step in. Seems plausible to me.

Nah, nobody deserves to die. But folks like this who use a deadly weapon against another human being deserve to be beaten with truncheons to within an inch of their lives, so that they can spend the rest of their days limping around town as a warning to the rest of us.

How do you decide that trying to rob a uniformed cop is a good bet? Maybe it was dark enough that the suspect didn't notice who he was robbing until it was too late?

Gee, I dunno, maybe he wasn't trying to rob him at all. Maybe he was just begging change and some jack-booted brownshirt decided to pop the chump and then put a throwaway nearby.

Gonna be tough to get the alleged perp's side of the story, as the only one he'll be talking to is St. Pete for the immediate future.

I've decided to wear my ACLU hat today. The NRA one was getting kind of ripe.

@hillman: you're mistaken; MPD officers are NOT *required* to carry weapons and radio off-duty. They're allowed to, but certainly not *required* to.

This event goes to prove that persons familiar with guns are able to thwart robbers. Why don't more cops get robbed when in uniform? The would-be robbers know they might be armed. Same would be true for Joe Citizen, but he isn't allowed to carry a weapon.

The alleged "would-be robber" was my cousin. I've known him since I was a child. My mother, and her siblings knew him since he was a child. My grandparents and his parents (my great aunt and uncle) saw him grow up (My mother and sister are crying right now as I type this).

Any of us will tell you he wasn't the person the lot of you are painting him to be. And no, none of us are in denial. He was shy, quiet, with a big heart. When my aunt (my mother's younger sister) was a kid, he protected her from school bullies. He was intelligent, positive, and every time I saw him at family gatherings, he always was able to smile and ask how his little cousins were doing (even though last time I saw him, I was 18-I'm gonna be 19 tomorrow-, I was still his 'little cousin').

Last people who talked to him tell how he was saying he was tired of living. The off-duty cop was wearing uniform. He knew what he was doing, he never fired the gun, he had time to fire that gun, but he didn't. It was suicide by cop, not a failed robbery. What he did was commit suicide by cop.

"Sadly, if the robber had targeted a civilian instead of a police officer, he would have gotten away with it and continued to rob people at gunpoint. It's too bad the robber died, rather than just being wounded and arrested, but the end result is one less gun on the streets, and one less criminal willing to use a gun."
---I don't know much about his trials and tribulations that pushed him over the edge, and what I do know, I'm not gonna divulge to the likes of you (those who took the time to make jokes, and casting judgement upon my cousin, saying he's a dumb criminal, a would-be robber, or whatever else). But I know for damn sure my cousin was a great person who was under heavy stress. The end result was actually, one less cousin, one less father, one less husband, one less brother, one less son, and one less good heart in my life. I've lost someone who I loved and cared about, someone who always had time to ask how I was doing, and even asked about how my band was doing, even though the music I played wasn't his taste.

To add more insult to injury to this situation was that I found out about his death on Friday, my father called me with the news. My mother has just come out of surgery, so I had to keep my mouth shut til she found out about it on Saturday when my grandmother and aunts came to tell the news. And its now past midnight, April 14th, today's my 19th birthday, with his coffin on my conscience.

The things I've come to realize just within this weekend made me realize, we see these things on the news and don't take the time to think that the person who got shot the night before is our cousin, our brother, our sister, our husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, etc. So now here I am, trying to tell you lot on this site that there was a good man behind this article who died that night.

And no, I'm not gonna hold animosity toward the cop who shot him, not even those of you who spoke insensitively about him and his situation. Right now, all I am holding is a heavy heart.

dead soul: sorry for your loss, but the facts remain...your cousin walked up to a police office with a gun drawn. to expect an end result any other way that what happened is folly.