She had to be killed for her own well-being. Obviously there was and is no other way to handle a house with a woman and children inside.

I hope we aren't expecting cops to start trying to reason with mentally ill people who are armed.

We need more info, preferably body cam footage. And since we keep on finding body and dash cam footage contradicting police reports (in this case "She had a handgun") I assume we will find the police once again open fired needlessly.

Fuck no! Don't 'reason' with anyone! Shoot the mofos! Why talk when you can shoot?

@2 #2: are you being sarcastic?

KCSO doesnt have dash cam or body cams for a reason.. FTP

They shot her while her kids were there? Would she still be alive if she was white?

The police needs to overhaul their whole recruiting, hiring and training process!

@4 @8 are cops supposed to hope they don't get shot when they encounter a mentally ill person with a gun? Are crazy people known to just hold on to guns for fun and never use them?

@7 Ok, so who should do them? Who will pays for them? What happens when they do a welfare check and they find a situation like the one here (a disturbed armed person with children present)?

All the outrage in the comments here without anyone knowing what actually happened. Typical.

@4, 8, 10: OF COURSE there could be a situation in which deputies were forced to shoot this woman in front of her children. anything is possible.

but is it possible there was a way to de-escalate the situation before it came to that? PROBABLY.

no one's going to hear anything but the deputy's side of this one; the kids are too young to be eyewitnesses. absent bodycams, we'll never know precisely what occurred. the tribe can make a huge stink about this if they want, and they have the resources to do so.

I meant @9, 10.

@11 Yeah, there's a lot we don't know about what happened. All the more reason to condemn the cops or the woman (or both). Amirite?

Maybe there was a way to de-escalate. Maybe there wasn't. Maybe the deputies were forced to shoot her. Maybe they weren't. Maybe the deputies are racist trigger-happy killers. Maybe the deputies are professionals who acted out of their training and concern for their and the children's safety. Maybe it was a complex, rapidly changing and dangerous interaction that quickly got out of control. Maybe we will learn the truth of all these things and more. Maybe we won't. One thing is for sure that woman's body isn't even cold and anonymous internet commentators are already condemning the cops. It won't be long for the hagiography of the victim to start. It is the narrative I have come to expect and I am certain I won't be disappointed.

Not that anyone asked for it or cares, but IMO right now is the time to grieve (if that is possible) and to focus attention on KCSO to make sure they stay open and transparent during the investigation.

Sounds like the officers broke into the house because no one answered the door... if she didn't know they were coming, and if she did have a gun, it may be that she was prepared to use it to defend against home intrusion. But the people who broke in were two police, not burglars, who shot her first.

Legally, if they entered her house without consent, they would have had to have had a search warrant.

@9:

According to the NRA, the answer would no doubt be, "absolutely." Also, isn't this precisely the sort of scenario 2nd Amendment types are always whinging about: citizen has unfettered right to own a handgun; cops bust into her home without a warrant and shoot her dead in front of her children. It's an open secret LEA's use "welfare checks" as a dodge around 4th Amendment proscriptions against "unreasonable searches and seizures", and in this particular instance, while there may have been some probable cause (based on the initial call of concern) to justify the entry, and assuming (for the moment) there actually was a handgun present, the very fact the deputies were aware of Ms. Davis' potential mental state, and that the entire purpose of their engagement purportedly was to DEFUSE a likely challenging situation, one would have thought they could have at least made some nominal attempt to do just that; but apparently, they elected, in the moment, to go instead with the ever reliable "kill first, and ask questions later" method.

@10:

Part of what is generating this outrage is the fact that we will now NEVER know what actually happened. The woman (along with her unborn child) is dead, the other children are too young to provide anything even remotely resembling eyewitness testimony, and the deputies - well, it's just their word against that of a dead mother who in life suffered from mental-health issues; who do you think people are more likely to believe?

Sad to say, but with increasing regularity, this is what happens when you call the cops.

Who thinks the police should have just left when nobody came to the door?

@17: The victim's grieving friends and family.

@15 "....who do you think people are more likely to believe?" In this country's toxic environment? The poor woman, of course. But it won't matter a bit what actually happened. The narrative cannot be denied.

@15 There are many vagaries of this incident that we may never know, like if the police shouted "POLICE" several times before entering. I would think that having a warrant or not would affect the outcome if someone were to shoot at police entering their home. But good job getting a quick insult in against folks that like hand guns. You sir are an ass.

There's a woman locked in her house with her two kids, is going through a mental health crisis, and is armed with at least 1 handgun. Exactly what should the response be?

@18 Until the mentally ill woman with a gun killed both her kids and then herself. Then we'd all be wondering why the police did nothing.

@21: as I said in the morning news thread, that is THE most remotely possible outcome.

@14) If the fuzz have 'probable cause' to think there is a crime or someone in danger, they may enter without a warrant.

@21, @25: Oh, yeah, right. The victim's grieving friends and family probably do not think the cop who busted in and killed their loved one should have just left. Guesses about what might have happened totally justify that they burst into this woman's home and shot her dead in front of her kids. Nothing to see here.

@18 Why didn't the victim's grieving friends and family go over to check on her when she reached out to them for help? They thought it would be a better idea to send a high school graduate with a gun over to see whats up.

@20:

"There's a woman locked in her house with her two kids, is going through a mental health crisis, and is armed with at least 1 handgun. Exactly what should the response be?"

Preferably, one that doesn't involve killing her and her unborn fetus,, leaving her children orphaned and probably traumatized for life. Yeah, I'll bet most people would consider ANYTHING short of that an appropriate level of response.

@30: Yep, you got me there. Potential blame inflicted by relatives trumps U.S. Constitution every time. "Should I bust into this house and point my gun at whoever's in there? Well, shit, the relatives are likely to blame me if somebody dies in there due to circumstances beyond my lawful control, but nobody is going to do more than shake their angry fists if I bust in and kill someone. Here goes!"

@31 You can't seriously question the deputies entering the home. They do NOT need a warrant as the circumstances clearly indicated the potential for imminent harm to the woman and the children they knew to be in the home. This part of the story really cannot be reasonably questioned, even by those with an agenda.

@32:

Granted, but what also cannot be reasonably questioned is the tragic irony that this woman was killed by the very authorities explicitly empowered to prevent her from killing herself.

@13: You are correct.

@29 She could have killed the children, the police, joined ISIS, and assassinated our next president, Donald Trump! You're too small picture.

@29 Nice shill to say oh i want everyone to be alive. But you didn't answer the question, I asked what the response should be, not what we'd all like the outcome to be.