Kit Roberts
If you've ever wondered what it might be like to be a police officer involved in an active shooter situation, then one video will give at least some idea.
The body cam footage was made public in September 2022, and shows an incident which took place in Tacoma Washington in August of the same year. Watch the incident for yourself below:
In the video, the officer, who was identified as Christopher Munn, is sitting in his car while responding to reports of shots being fired on 28 August, 2022.
Munn puts his coffee on the dashboard and gets out of the car, before going to the trunk and retrieving an assault rifle.
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Shots can be heard being fired in the background as he makes his way to the back of the car.
Finally, the officer aims and takes one shot, before saying: “Shots fired. Suspect’s down.”
It was later confirmed that he had taken the shot 183 yards, or around 167 metres, away from the suspect, who was identified as Peter Tyler Collins, aged 40.
Local reports said that Collins had exchanged gunfire with police officers who were responding to a report that he had assaulted his nephew in South Tacoma.
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Ring doorbell camera footage of the incident shows Collins retreating into his home.
He was then seen out back, with an officer yelling at him 'let me see your hands man', before telling him not to get in the car.
Collins replies 'What?' and the officer repeats the instruction to not get in the car, before the gunfire begins.
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Collins was killed in the 16-minute-long exchange, despite medical efforts to resuscitate him. The coroner ruled that he died from a gunshot wound to the chest.
Investigators found that he had been shot twice, with one of the wounds being self-inflicted.
Neighbour Kimberley Lott took cover in her apartment while the exchange took place.
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Recalling the fear that she felt, she told Kiro7: “It’s just really crazy that somebody that’s mentally unstable can even have like those type of guns."
According to Forbes, there have been 602 mass shootings in the US in 2023 as of November 14, with a 'mass shooting' being defined as one where four or more people are killed or injured, not including the shooter.
Mass shootings also represent a minority of gun violence, with suicides using a firearm being the largest proportion of overall deaths.
In 2020, guns surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for children in the US.
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As of October 26, more than 35,000 people have died from gun violence in the US in 2023, an average of 118 people a day.
Of those, more than 1,400 were children.