Destinee Thompson was supposed to be on her way to lunch with her stepmother in August 2021 when Colorado police, mistaking her for a robbery suspect, fatally shot the pregnant mother as she fled in her minivan.
Destinee Thompson was supposed to be on her way to lunch with her stepmother in August 2021 when Colorado police, mistaking her for a robbery suspect, fatally shot the pregnant mother as she fled in her minivan.
No one has a legal obligation to speak to the police. If she was a suspect, they could have stopped her before she entered her vehicle. This was murder.
That isn’t entirely true. In roughly half of the states, if an officer suspects you of a crime you are obligated to identify yourself and provide your name. Colorado is one such state.
This lady partially matched the description of a robbery suspect who had threatened someone with a knife. They tried to stop her before she entered her vehicle, but were not able to. They had every right to ask her name and what she was doing, to determine if she was the knife wielding robber they were looking for, and she was legally obligated to answer.
They should not have escalated by breaking the window. However, once she started driving the car dangerously, lethal force was justified. Whether lethal force was absolutely necessary would depend on specifics we don’t know from this article, but the legal bar had been met. The fault is with their escalation prior to the use of lethal force.