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Comment by aaomidi | Hacker News Reader

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He was so committed to nonviolence that he purchased a handgun and somehow one of the bullets from that gun ended up in a state trooper’s abdomen.

From the Georgia Bureau of Investigation [1]:

> Today, the GBI received confirmation from a firearms transaction record that in September 2020, Manuel Esteban Paez Teran legally purchased the firearm that was used in the shooting of a GSP trooper.

> The handgun is described as a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9mm. Forensic ballistic analysis has confirmed that the projectile recovered from the trooper’s wound matches Teran’s handgun.

1. https://gbi.georgia.gov/press-releases/2023-04-14/gbi-invest...

This was classic lawyering - pay for your own autopsy to get the story you want. We know three thing, the guy who got shot:

1: Purchased a S&W 9mm pistol

2: That pistol was on his possession at the protest

3: A police office was shot with that pistol

The guy who got shot was then shot by the police ~50 times, so not surprising he was shot in the hand. That's not evidence of one's hands being up in the air.

Asking earnestly: what makes this and not the police's own reports "classic lawering"? A value-neutral outlook would require us to consider both equally.

(And note: we don't actually know anything besides (1). (2) is a claim by the police, and (3) is the product of a pseudoscientific ballistics analysis by the same. Accepting them as fact goes well beyond the neutral viewpoint.)

I don't know what happened and I fully admit that, but let's take the cop section out of it, so none of this "Cops lie all the time" business.

    1) A person was shot by someone at the scene

    2) A different person who was in conflict with the first person had a gun with the same ballistic profile (caliber etc.)

    3) There are two separate parties with an interest in the outcome who witnessed the crime

    4) The first party with an interest, was actively aggrivating people at the scene, causing hightened tensions

    5) The second party was in direct conflict with the first

I have a hard time believing the first party shot their own in order to press charges on the second party. It doesn't pass the Occam's razor test, TBH

EDIT: I suck at formatting

It doesn't have to pass Occam's razor. It has to pass (or would have had to, had they not killed him) the standard of reasonable doubt.

Edit: Sorry, this puts words in your mouth. I mean to say that I don’t think Occam’s Razor is a sufficient level of belief in these kinds of situations.

I mean, they have a photo of the gun, on the ground at the crime scene.

We have a police photo of the gun &c &c.

They have the purchase records for the gun connecting it to the shooter, so how would the gun be there if the guy didn't bring it?

Purchase records are not evidence that someone carried a thing to a place. I can think of any number of plausible scenarios, including that the police moved it, someone else moved it, the photo is taken out of context, etc. And of course: the victim might have brought it themselves.

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