A police officer in suburban St. Louis fatally shot a man who pointed a gun at him outside a gas station on Tuesday night, the authorities said.
The episode occurred less than five miles from Ferguson, Mo., where the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager in August by a white officer prompted months of protests and started a national conversation about race and the use of force by the police.
The St. Louis County Police said in a statement that a police officer from Berkeley, Mo., was doing “a routine business check” at a Mobil gas station near the St. Louis airport around 11:15 p.m. on Tuesday when he approached two men he saw along the building’s side.
“The Berkeley police officer exited his vehicle and approached the subjects when one of the men pulled a handgun and pointed it at the officer,” the county police department, which is leading the investigation, said in a statement. “Fearing for his life, the Berkeley officer fired several shots, striking the subject, fatally wounding him. The second subject fled the scene.”
The police said they had recovered a handgun at the scene.
Local news accounts and social media posts showed that a crowd of people had gathered outside the gasoline station after the shooting, and that a large group of police officers from several jurisdictions had responded.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/us/berkeley-missouri-police-shooting.html?_r=0
It's the wild west out there. I would say that if someone did pull a gun and point it at a cop, the cop would be justified in shooting. But my question is, what was the basis of "the routine business check?" Why was the cop approaching that car and those men?
