Charitable reading of his thought process: “huh I wonder if this is the guy I’m here to deal with? I bet it is, I’ll go collect him. Oh shit, oh shit he’s getting away! I have to stop him from getting away!”

But here’s the thing that I don’t think gets surfaced enough: let’s say this was the guy and let’s say he was getting away. If you had captured and arrested him “properly”, the penalty wouldn’t be death by firing squad. Even if he was charged with resisting arrest he wouldn’t be sentenced to death by firing squad. So certainly there’s no possible universe where shooting a person is an acceptable tool of arrest. People sometimes debate in situations like this about how dangerous it is for cops, and how they need guns for protection, etc etc. But in situations like this I think it’s better to reframe:

The police are supposed to be the first step in a process. Collect bad guys, contain bad guys, then another part of the system judges and sentences. I’m not arguing this is the best way to do this, just that even the people who like police tend to feel this is how the system is meant to work. So definitely we should all be able to agree that handing out harsher sentences at the first stage of the process than the last stage would ever consider should just be impossible to justify. If you can’t collect the bad guy without killing them, then I guess they got away. Even if they’re guilty. It’s better than someone being dead.