It's called "gettin' your gun off". It feels good, and there's not that many opportunities to do it, so when the right time comes along, trigger time!

In a "suicide by cop" scenario, it's a win/win.

I don't think this would be much of a news item (or lawsuit) if not for the incredible number of shots taken to stop the threat. If you feel the need to reload and keep shooting even though five other officers are emptying their guns at one man, there may be a problem...

Most cops are scared little girls & thats why they act like they do & the other ones have their God complex and abuse their power! They were just in a hury & wanted it to end quick! So they could get back to traffic tickets i.e thats where the money is now days!

ok don so your new strategy is that every time the cops roll up on someone holding a weapon they should immediately shoot it out of his hand? And you're also suggesting officers carry around a .22 pistol for this purpose? btw this guy had already been tasered to no effect, so i doubt a .22 to the hand was going to do much. Cops are officers of the peace. They are not military. They are not trained killers. They are normal folks who have to handle a lot of situations. You are asking that the guy that lives down your street be able to disarm a man with his own sidearm at will. Good luck buddy. If this is so feasible why aren't we training our military to just shoot weapons out of everyone's hands? why kill a man when you can just disarm him? You must be a huge fan of westerns. Why would I train to to take an incredibly risky shot such as shooting a gun out of your hand when I can make a center of mass shot with much higher chance of incapacitating you? And what's going to happen when a guy holding a gun also happens to be a skilled mechanic and the shot to the hand has ruined his career? Well of course he's going to sue the cops. I guess then your strategy will be that the officers need to be able to either put a bullet down the barrel or shoot the side of the gun to knock it out of his hand. Or maybe arc a round so it hits him in the head and knocks him out. If you're wanting trick shooters in every squad car I hope you're more than willing to dish out the taxes to pay for this training.

Wait, cops are being sued over the wrongful death of a suicidal man carrying a shotgun? So who would the family sue if the guy killed himself? How would they take it if he had killed someone else and that person's family sued them for wrongful death?

Granted, 59 shots is a bit excessive, but still, he was suicidal and carrying a gun, so the situation needed to be contained. At least no one else really got hurt.

But it does seem to be the American way now to SUE SUE SUE!

When I was growing up my father trained me to safely and accurately use firearms.
He taught me to control point of impact by making me use a Glenfield model 80 .22cal to hit the primer of a 12ga. shotgun shell at 25yards.
I got very good at doing so, even though I couldn't even see the primer at that distance.It was a practice in control. I could see the shell but not the primer so I had to place the shot where I knew the primer should be. I was trained equally well with all firearms. I can take multiple head shots at the 75ft mark without a miss and I am as confident in my abilities as one person can be without having them actually tested in real life circumstances.
With that said , I still find your proposal laughable. ANY firearms instructor will tell you that making head shots or aiming for someone's hand is ludicrous. Such repetitive accuracy is only capable by someone who lives, breathes and sleeps shooting and even then it is only at inanimate targets.
You assume that sniper training can aid in this case, but snipers are trained to kill from a far, taking as much time as needed to accurately guage distance, wind, etc. and they are using state of the art, high powered rifles, scopes and in most cases a spotter.
This incident was a closer range with multiple aggravating circumstances. I'm not excusing anything, I am simply saying that your position on this issue is pure lunacy.
Those of you that think police should have the ability to shoot the wings off a fly at 50 paces have no grasp of reality and I would assume they are more along the lines of the cliche' "internet tough guy".

excuse me JESCO,i must have missed that statement in the report that states he already had the gun pointed at them when the police showed up.LOL i thought it said he was sitting on the porch ,but watever i could shoot his hand offf with a 22 caliber pistol from his own driveway un less it was over 30 yrds, idiot thats 90 feetanywhere within that range is very capable of being hit by a 9mm handgun!DUH THEY SUPPOSE TO BE MARKSMAN.gimme a break !!!u must be a cop!!

Sir, I HAVE had military training as well as safety training in preparation for my concealed carry permit.

As you stated, they recommend body mass shots, and as I've stated many times before, my Accu-Man target has 50 shots, fired from my S&W 9 mm, and of those 50 shots, I had four in the "4" range and the rest were body mass shots - in the "5" range - which was damned near perfect, according to the instructor, or a score of 100.

But you are correct. The target was still. It did not move.

Somewhere in my past, I had talked to a police officer - actually, a military policeman - who had boasted about his firing abilities (comparing them to mine, even though mine was expert, and that seems to be the best qualification in military training) and he said he got all head shots during his very first qualifying round.

I doubted that, but never confirmed it or had it confirmed. But my point was that I assumed (bad mistake!) that police officers would have to have much more intensive training in handgun firing than we mere mortals.

If that's wrong, then it SHOULD be that way. They should be very far removed from the rest of us. They should be trained as well as snipers are trained in the military.

BECAUSE ... just as you mentioned, stray bullets from a barrage of 59 shots could have hit anyone or anything and if you have no more control than they appeared to have (according to Mr. Jones' shot by shot review of the report), maybe you shouldn't be allowed to shoot in the first place.

Somehow you all on this forum have decided that, no matter what, the police officer is always in the right.

I'm not sure how you got to that point, but I don't believe anyone is above reproach. If police officers can let an adrenalin rush (or testosterone) propel them into a shooting frenzy like the one portrayed here (emptying and reloading weapons to continue shooting a man who has already been shot repeatedly), they are not any safer than you or I with a gun.

Having never faced a man with a gun trained on me, I suppose I can't really comment on the thought processes in that situation, but common sense - COMMON SENSE - would beg that no matter the threat, this many shots from six officers, two of whom emptied and reloaded and continued to shoot even more, is overkill - no pun intended.

You can excuse it until you're blue in the face. It's wrong. Period.

Don S., PLEASE sign up as a range instructor for the KPD and surrounding agencies. I'm sure they would LOVE to learn how to shoot someone's gun out of their hand with a pistol at distance without causing any other damage. I don't know how you perfected that shot but surely you are interested in spreading your skills to those that need them most. I would be VERY interested to find out how you shoot a gun out of a man's hand when he is facing you and pointing it at you, giving you a target that's about 4x3 inches. And Oliver, please go to a defensive shooting course and see how many times the instructor tells you to aim for someone's head. i'll give you a hint before you go: it's zero. A headshot is really one of the dumbest shots you can take. it's a small target relative to the center mass of a person, and the instant you draw a gun on someone what do they do? flinch. so now you're small target is also a moving one. No law enforcement or military branch in this entire country save for snipers teaches to take headshots. I can easily place 10/10 pistol shots in a center of mass target at 15-25 yards. Headshot maybe 4/10 at best. and that's a PAPER TARGET that isn't pointing a gun at me.

I can fire 16 rounds from a Glock in about 4 seconds. 59 rounds is not excessive. As previously noted, officers are trained to fire until a threat is neutralized. If all 6 officers felt that they were in imminent danger, then all 6 officers were justified in firing their weapons. If you people take the time to listen to that video (kudos JJ), you can clearly here that they repeatedly advise him to drop the weapon. There were several volleys of weapons fire. The officers attempted to neutralize the threat repeatedly. If the threat is not neutralized, or is reinitialized, the officers are justified in continuing to fire. The problem with this case is some money grubbing attorney and a family that sees an opportunity to make some quick money. This lawsuit will be dismissed by the federal judge and the shooting will be ruled justifiable by the TBI. They didn't shoot him, kill him, and then keep shooting the corpse.

I would also like to respond to the suggestion that a head shot would kill without the need for multiple shots.
Though people have survived being shot in the head, it is almost a certain death sentence.
With that said, hitting a target as small as, and as mobile as, someone's head is terribly difficult and increases the chance of a missed shot, giving away your advantage of first shot and/or hitting something/someone beyond your intended target. Aiming for "center mass" is the most responsible use of lethal force.

Again, if those of you making such comments had ever tried such shots you would know the extreme difficulty involved in successfully doing so. Even as close as 25 yards the movement of a guns barrel by a fraction of an inch moves a bullets impact point by a couple of feet or more.

I am not gonna comment specifically on this case, but I will comment on people's perceptions of how scenes like this "should" be rectified.
First, Police are NOT trained to fire to incapacitate. They are trained to not fire their weapon unless life is at risk and they do so to KILL.
Firing a gun is considered "lethal force" and it's intent is to destroy a threat. Using a firearm to subdue is reckless and only serves to prove that the use of deadly force was not warranted, considering that you didn't feel threatened enough to kill before you or another was injured or killed.
Second, if you think you can just shoot the gun from a man's hands, then you are either a internet blow hard with no idea of the skill/luck needed to do so, or you are one of the best shots to grace the firing range and should be easily found on YouTube shooting the eyes out of wanted posters at 100 yards while hundreds of you amazed fans look on.
I have been shooting pistols for over 20 years and I go to the range on a regular basis and I would NEVER attempt such a difficult, and reckless, shot.
Once a threat is recognized, an officer is trained to "fire and assess" which means they are trained to fire until the threat is neutralized and then assess that it is indeed neutralized. Meaning: Never assume that because you have shot a man, that he is immediately dead or incapacitated. Some people have survived multiple shots or have lived long enough to kill or maim before succumbing to their wounds.
I don't know what happened on the day that Alonzo Heyward was killed, so I have no idea if proper procedures where followed. I can say, however, that 59 shots divided between 6 officers can be fired in a matter of seconds and neither of the officers should have been concerned with the amount fired by another if they themselves perceived a threat and chose to fire.

A good line is worth repeating, so here goes:

"Just flip the circumstances and ask yourself what would have happened to six guys on the street if they'd shot a cop 59 times."

Let's say only 43 wounds exist - entry and exit wounds - and that each cop "only" fired about 10 rounds each.

That's not excessive?

The guy who suggested shooting the gun from the man's hand from a protected position is right on the money.

Sometimes the testosterone levels are so high, common sense goes out the window. Macho men with guns seem to be able to shoot anyone, for any reason, and SOME people on this forum will defend it and try to justify it.

There is NO defense for this murder. NONE.

If the macho men wanted to simply kill the man, all they had to do was shoot to kill - one shot. Two, if you're unsure.

A shot to the head will kill nearly anyone, and will certainly immobilize any human being on this planet.

Unless you were there, and you know how many actual shots there were that entered the man's body, you cannot swear to what you are saying.

And the flip side of that is that, if 59 shots were fired and only about half those struck the body of a man who was already dead from the first few shots, then anyone and everyone in the area, including those who "might" have been in the house, were endangered.

Either way, the macho men were insane, even if only for those few moments.

jesco white u n charles good are complete idiots.i woulda shot the damn gun outa his hands from behind my patrol car then called an ambulance!!!we'll see how O.K. it is if it happens to one of u or your family members[i hope to god above that it doesn't],but if u live in Kingsport its a possibility every day of your inconsiderate lives.

Before you start congratulating mr. jones on his "chilling" description of the wounds, please read the ME report for yourself. the man was had 43 WOUNDS, NOT BULLET STRIKES. That 43 counts ENTRY AND EXIT, and in some cases rounds entered and exited one part of the body and entered another (for instance being hit in the arm and it passing through to midsection). But the media hates to tell you that. The article's headline is incorrect as 59 shots were FIRED at the man, they DID NOT HIT HIM 59 TIMES. The guy was probably hit about 20-22 times, so about 4 hits per cop. In a span of several seconds that's not an insane amount. Imagine if you and 5 friends were standing around and a man pointed a gun at you. Would you wait on your friend to the left or right to start shooting? Do you figure "hey someone else will handle this"? If so one of you is going to be dead. In situations like this there isn't time to designate a shooter or decide how many rounds to fire. you fire until the threat is over. If it was one cop firing 59 shots i could see that as excessive. but it was 6, so each cop on average fired just under 10 rounds. If you think that's out of line then why don't you head down to the police dept. and teach them your shooting techniques.

Mr. Jones, your comment chilled me to the bone! The simple way you outlined the individual shots shows how insane and over the top this murder was.

Thank you for spelling it out so we can't deny the god-awfulness of the thing.

Well, most of us can't, anyway.

59 shots is definitely excessive, but I'm more concerned with the 16 shots that didn't hit him than the 43 that did.

Granted 59 shots seems excessive...but even a cops bullet-proof vest won't stop a high- powered rifle bullet and they were at a stand-off distance so ask yourself..what would you do? if he raised his weapon on you or one of your friends.
Pistols against rifles is not a good match-up to begin with.

Duuuh....it's the best way to commit suicide. Call the police and tell them your going to kill yourself with the shotgun already in your hand. Wait till they all get out of their cars and your too chicken to pull your own trigger, just point the gun at them and they will do the rest for you! Perfectly legal! Your objective has been made for you without any backing down.

Wow, Mr. Jones. Grand post there.

You can listen to a complete audio recording of the shooting here.

http://wdef.com/video/complete_police_dashcam_recording_in_alonzo_heyward_shooting/08/2009

This article his highly misleading!

A mere 43 of the 59 shots hit the suspect, who was standing quietly on the front porch of his home with a gun pointed at his own head. 59 shots is a total exaggeration. That was only the shots fired, not the shots that hit him while standing on his porch, not running, not walking, with unknown persons in the house behind him that was being shot into.

A bullet to the chin.

Another bullet to the chin.

A bullet to the throat.

Another bullet to the throat.

Bullet to the neck.

Bullet to the mouth.

Bullet to the ear.

Another bullet to the ear.

Bullet to the shoulder.

Another bullet to the shoulder.

Another bullet to the shoulder.

Bullet to the left arm.

Bullet to the right arm.

Bullet to the wrist.

Bullet to the hand.

Another bullet to the hand.

Bullet to the ribcage.

Another bullet to the ribcage.

Bullet to the chest.

Another bullet to the chest.

Bullet to the lungs.

Bullet to the heart.

Another bullet to the heart.

Another bullet to the heart.

Another bullet to the heart.

Bullet to the stomach.

Another bullet to the stomach.

Another bullet to the stomach.

Bullet to the kidney.

Bullet to the liver.

Bullet to the pancreas.

Bullet to the back.

Another bullet to the back.

Bullet to the thigh.

Another bullet to the thigh.

Bullet to the groin.

Another bullet to the groin.

Bullet to the knee.

Another bullet to the knee.

Bullet to the lower leg.

Another bullet to the lower leg.

Bullet to the ankle.

Bullet to the foot.

I bet right now they are kicking themselves and wishing they had stopped at 58 shots.

YEA.U DID,SEAMUS

The original story stated that at least one, if not two of the officers emptied and reloaded.

Capacity in most pistols officers carry is 15.
Not likely anyone reloaded.
Did I miss seeing where the guy was hit 59 times ?.

Bingo! Dead men tell no tales.

How many shots does it take to kill a man? One well-placed shot should do it. Two would be "making sure."

Ten would be "overkill." One cannot even fathom people emptying their guns and reloading, shooting 59 times. What would possess someone to do that?

Is it the "pack of dogs" mentality? Macho men get together and try to outdo each other? What else could possibly explain it?

You can try to clean it up and pretty it up and say "you don't know because you've never been there," but you cannot explain away this kind of hideous killing.

There is no need to shoot someone that many times. He was dead long before they finished. And he didn't fire a single shot.

Every time I hear "suicide by police" I get fighting mad. The dead guy can't say "no, I didn't want them to kill me."

Only the cops are left to explain their actions - or justify them.

As a gun owner who has been through basic training and also the required gun safety course to get my carry permit, I object to this kind of savagery. There is NEVER any acceptable excuse for this affront.

Just flip the circumstances and ask yourself what would have happened to six guys on the street if they'd shot a cop 59 times.

Yeah. That's what I thought!

ahhh man the cops thrive on this kinda stuff.ask the inmates at sullivan county how many times they had there heads cracked... for what? the coppers coulda shot the arm that held the gun!!!even 59 times he woulda still lived!!dead men tell no tales

Something wrong here...How can it be wrongful death if the guy was suicidal? He wanted to die in the first place. Also if you point a gun at a cop your life is forfeit no matter how many rounds are fired.

i challenge any of you super men to stand in front of someone who is emotionally unstable and holding a gun while making threats of suicide. then have that person point the gun in your direction. if you are all correct in your convictions, the only person that will shoot is the suspect. i guess the bullets will bounce off all of you.

Learn to read folks. Officers fired 59 shots. If the man was running, in a car or hiding behind something, they could have hit him far fewer times or not even known if they had hit him.

Another good thing is the taxpayers will no long have to support this threat to society.

And Lisa, when faced with a dangerous person with a gun, police protocol is shoot to kill. That is a fact.

Mike Myers - LOL

I seem to recall from an earlier story that the officers emptied their clips, reloaded & kept on shooting.

Shot 56 times. Hmmm. Let's kill him and then kill him again. I am sure that after the first 20 or 30 shots, the police were still in great danger and feared for their lives.
Dr. Kovarkian was prosecuted and persecuted for helping people commit suicide. I now realize his problem. He didn't have a badge and a gun.
I always thought the police were to shoot to disable the individual while maintaining human life if possible. 56 shots does not sound like they were simply trying to stop the man and disarm him.
From this article, the man didn't even fire his gun, was just "toting" it around and, at one time, pointed it in the direction of the officers.
Can we say adrenalin overdrive or roid rage? And I mean the officers, not the victim.
Just one person's opinion from what facts I have available.

I agree, the number of shots is excessive, it's not like they were shooting Michael Myers or anything.
Not sure if it's a wrongful death or not, but if they could be charged with shooting him too many times after they had killed him, they would definitely be guilty of that.

I believe the number of shots will be a factor. It sounds excessive. I doubt they guy was much of a threat after the first 30 or so.