Kind to the Cruel...

Young Co-ed is taken hostage by thug...

Police officer responds to situation.

Thug...

...confronted by cop, puts girl into headlock, gun to her skull, and threatens to kill her.

He then reportedly turns gun toward cop, using girl as shield.   Cop opens fire, killing both him and the woman.

Who's to blame for Andrea Rebello's death?

Interesting back and forth at Instapundit via reader emails, and some other in the comments of the article  linked above.

I think there is some validity to the idea that the cop might have responded to the call differently, as he was fully aware that a hostage situation was in play.

A roommate of Andrea's was sent out to an ATM by the thug to get cash, and she instead called police, so the police knew the somewhat what they were dealing with here.

Perhaps surrounding the house with police might have been better, or perhaps not openly confronting the criminal in a position where the officer could have been fired upon and thus be forced to respond in kind.

As someone mentions on Instapundit, it appears the officer was NOT trained to deal with the kind of shot required to kill Dalton and spare Rebello.  That takes specialized training.  It would have been better had he gotten that kind of training, in hindsight.

All good points.

Now, having gotten that out of the way, let's also realize that second-guessing is real easy in the aftermath.

The police had no idea what was exactly happening in that house when he got there.

For all the police officer knew, Dalton Smith was torturing, raping and/or murdering Ms. Robello and other people in that house.  He went into that house most likely thinking that some truly horrendous could be happening to 3 innocent people while he waited, so he chose to go in.  He had every reason to fear for his life, but he went in anyway, hoping to prevent a tragedy.  The fact that a tragedy occurred is not his fault, because he was not he one who created the situation in which Andrea Robello lost her life.

Let's assign the blame firmly where it belongs.

Dalton Smith.

You'll notice Mr. Smith is wearing some sort of orange shirt.  That is not some sort of bold fashion statement, or part of a pumpkin costume from a Halloween past.  It is from a jumpsuit, the kind supplied to you when you have been behind bars.

Dalton Smith was a repeat offender.  News reports I have read claim he had previously been convicted of such crimes as armed robbery, assault, auto theft. At the time of this shooting, he was wanted for violating his parole.

Dalton Smith broke into the house where Andrea was sleeping, he took her and others hostage and he put the gun to Andrea's head, and then pointed a gun at a police officer.

Dalton Smith is the one responsible for Andrea's death.

But, he is not alone.

The society that left Dalton Smith roaming the streets after he had proved multiple times to be unfit to be walking around free is guilty.  I would love to get a final tally on his rap sheet, being that he was only 30 years old when killed, but suffice to say he was not some wayward youth.  He was a grown man for whom the thug life was a way of life.

The society that decided that such a reprobate, who had on multiple occasion committed acts of violence and criminality, should have the freedom to do what he did, leading to Andrea's death, is guilty as well.  By being kind, or at least indulgent, to a person who had shown they could not behave in a lawful and civilized manner, they were in the end very cruel to Andrea Rebello, and to the officer who will now have to live with what he was forced to do.

At the time he was standing in a sorority house, holding a gun to the head of a young woman who I am betting was about half his size, Dalton Smith deserved to be chained up, breaking rocks or picking up garbage.  Had be been so, not only would Andrea be alive, but perhaps in 10 or 20 years, Dalton might have been tame enough, or broken, enough, that he could have returned to society and live out some semblance of a decent life.

INSTEAD, he's lying in a morgue somewhere, as is Andrea, and he will go to the afterlife with the death of a young woman added to his list of sins.

Good job, indulgent society!

Now, those of the progressive ilk (I don't call them liberals, I will explain why in another post), will try and blame society for not "helping" Dalton Smith, for "failing him", forcing him into his life of crime.  Instead of condemning society for not keeping an animal off the streets, for exposing innocent people to violence and death, they will bemoan how poorly society performed in assisting Mr. Smith, leading to his villainy.

Bullshit.

First, society will never completely eliminate men like Dalton Smith, and that being the case, it has a duty and obligation to keep them apart from the people who don't make theft and violence a way of life.  When it fails to do so, it fails, period.

Second, progressives will always credit the idea of a systemic failure of society creating criminals by failure to care or empathize enough with them, but never seem willing to embrace the idea that the systemic coddling and leniency of deviancy they advocate might in fact be a contributing cause.

They will also accept no criticism of cultural practices and behaviors which they view as being politically incorrect, no matter the evidence indicating they are indeed contributing factors to the creation of a "man" like Dalton Smith.

Why? Because reducing violent crime, even against women, is of minor importance when it comes to maintaining certain narratives.