Why Kill Her?

            From what is known from news reports, Miriam Carey tied to ram a White House barricade and then fled police in a high-speed chase to the Unite States Capitol where they cornered her and shot her to death.

            Why?

            Carey had no weapon. She hit a Secret Service agent with her car at the White House, and then rammed a police car when she put her black Infiniti into reverse. A Capitol police officer was injured, but reports are unclear as to whether Carey was directly responsible for the injury.

            So why kill her? Was there no other way of stopping her from whatever she was trying to do?

According to one video clip, the police had managed to stop her car in front of the Capitol and surround it with guns drawn before she sped off. Couldn’t they have disabled the car by shooting out the tires? There must be other ways to stop a speeding vehicle.

Many questions remain about Carey. Why did the 34-year-old dental hygienist travel 275 miles from her Connecticut home with her 1-year-old daughter, who was not hurt during the incident, and ram a White House barrier?

News reports claim she had mental health issues related to postpartum depression, but again, why was it necessary to kill her?

As one expert on police use of force, Geoffrey Alpert of the University of South Carolina, told the Associated Press, “I think the question we have to ask is, ‘What threat did she cause? What threat was she to the officers, to the public, to the politicians?’”

From news reports and videos, it didn’t seem like a great threat, but without more facts it’s just second guessing. An investigation is planned, but that doesn’t guarantee we will get satisfactory answers. We hope we do.

The concern is this: Has our fear of terrorism become so great that we are seeing terrorists everywhere we look? Have we now decided to shoot first and ask questions later? Miriam Carey’s death seems so significant to these issues.