MovieChat Forums > Adam-12 (1968) Discussion > Eyewitness - Justified shooting??

Eyewitness - Justified shooting??

posted 10 years ago by slackersmom
2 replies | jump to latest

Watched Eyewitness yesterday. It ends with Malloy & Reed cornering some violent robbery suspects to a place called Travel Town, which looked like some sort of train museum or something. Anyway, the bad guys had shot their robbery victim and had also shot numerous times at Malloy & Reed during the chase. But then Malloy shoots one of the bad guys... as he's running away. Is that considered a "good" shoot? Seems kind of questionable to shoot at someone who is not only not shooting at anybody at that moment, but who is also in the act of running away. Every time I see this episode I wonder whether Pete's shooting is justified. Also, a moment or two later Reed shoots the other bad guy, and it looks as if he killed him. But the episode ends there and we don't see any consequences. In real life we know that they'd both have to go through the post-shooting process and questioning, and Reed would be accountable if the guy is dead, but none of that is addressed.

[–] badge7213 10 years ago

Pete would likely be covered under 'fleeing felon rule.' (See wikipedia entry, although it's not necessarily the best explaination.)

[–] seldon913 10 years ago

Not sure what the fleeing felon rule entails, but the guy had already fired off shots where it was lucky no innocent bystanders had been hit and still had the gun which makes him still a viable threat in my book. Today the press would probably get every member of his family on camera saying how horrible it was and not listen to a word from anyone who had seen him shooting.