On Deciding Not to Pull the Trigger

If soldiers in a war zone can avoid killing innocent civilians in a split second, why couldn’t a federal agent do the same thing in an American city?

I didn’t imagine when I joined the Army and volunteered for the infantry that one of my duties would involve anything resembling census work. But in 2004, that’s exactly where I found myself. Not full time, mind you, but still. In between overwatch patrols, convoy security, and counter-battery mortar missions, it was decided that ahead of the first free elections in Iraq in January 2005, some form of door-to-door enumeration needed to happen, a way to get a rough sense of who lived where in places like Kirkuk. And who better to handle that than a bunch of hard-charging young infantry grunts. The job itself was straightforward enough: going door to door, asking people whether they identified as Kurdish, Arab, or Turkmen, how many people lived in the house, their ages, that sort of thing. Pretty much the same thing census takers do everywhere, except of course that these “census takers” were wearing body armor and helmets, carrying M4 carbines and SAWs, and moving through neighborhoods alongside uparmored Humvees with heavy machine guns mounted on them.

I was a 24-year-old NCO and had been a squad leader for most of the year we spent in northern Iraq. On this particular census patrol, we were moving down a wide street with our vehicles in the middle pulling security while we worked door to door on either side of them. As we advanced, the distinctive sound of fully automatic AK-47 fire erupted from around the corner at the next intersection, and a car suddenly came into view. One guy was driving. Another was leaning out the window firing his weapon. The whole thing probably took less than a couple of seconds. To my right I saw our .50-cal gunner start to pivot his weapon toward the car at the same time my M4 was already seated in my shoulder, my red dot lining up on the gunman. Other rifles were raised and it would have taken less than a second to reduce the vehicle and the humans inside it to a smoldering pile of scrap metal had we opened fire.

You know how they say time slows down? It’s true, or at least it feels that way. Or maybe it’s your brain that speeds up. Either way, I can still clearly remember lining up my sight, my thumb flipping the selector from safe to fire, my finger taking up slack on the trigger while my brain was gathering information and running calculations: fighting-age males, fast-moving car, weapon present and firing. But layered over that was something else. The gun, while generally pointed in our direction, was also angled mostly upward toward the sky. I registered the look of surprise and then panic on the young man’s face. He wasn’t expecting to see an American patrol in the middle of the road as they came around that corner.

Because I was near the front of the column, as time snapped back to full speed I remember yelling “hold your fire” while running forward and waving my arm. I don’t know who heard or saw me, or if it mattered at all. Either way, no one fired. The kid with the AK stopped shooting and ducked back into the vehicle as the driver punched the gas, speeding off around the next corner.

We immediately went after them and caught up just as the car was pulling into a house that was already crowded with people. They tried to run, but we caught and detained them. With the help of our interpreter, it became clear pretty quickly why the house was packed. It was a wedding party, and the young men in the car we chased down were the brothers of the person who had just gotten married.

Celebratory gunfire is a real thing over there. When people celebrate something, they’ll sometimes fire their AKs straight up into the air, kind of like fireworks. I remember it happening on a much larger scale earlier that year. During the Olympics in August 2004, Iraq pulled off a surprise upset over Portugal. My squad was spending a rare night off duty on base, no LP/OP patrols, no counter-fire missions. We couldn’t watch the game, but we were kept updated by the sound of gunfire. Every time Iraq scored, it felt like everyone in town grabbed a weapon and dumped a magazine straight up into the sky. As the clock ran down and Iraq won, the gunfire rivaled the grand finale of a Fourth of July celebration. Crazy, I know. I have no idea how often people are hit by falling lead, but it’s one of those cultural realities you just learn to accept.

Twenty years later, I still think about that day sometimes. Mostly because there always seems to be another police-involved shooting in the news that never should have happened: an officer killing a kid because they mistook a toy gun for something real, or a person being gunned down because he failed to comply with shouted commands in a moment of confusion or fear.

I have a couple friends who are or were cops, and have a deep respect for most law enforcement officers and the incredibly difficult job they do, one I wouldn’t want. Most officers show up every day trying to protect their communities and make split-second judgments under enormous pressure. Having been in similar positions myself in the army, I can understand how these moments go wrong.

It’s no secret within combat units that, regardless of whatever the official rules of engagement might be at the moment, the unwritten rule is that it’s better to make a wrong decision than hesitate and send one of your own guys home in a flag-draped coffin. As a squad leader, I told my guys that if they genuinely believed they or their teammates were in imminent danger and a civilian died because they judged wrong in the moment, I would have their backs and take responsibility with the command. And I meant it. On that January day in Iraq, if one of my soldiers had opened fire and killed those two young men that were spraying bullets in our general direction, I would have defended their actions. Given the circumstances, I don’t think anyone in the chain of command would have even questioned it. It was that close and that fast.

It may not always look like it from the outside, but American service members in combat roles spend an enormous amount of time and energy trying not to harm civilians. We may not receive the kind of formal de-escalation training police do, because we’re not policing American cities. But we do train to assess threats deliberately, to slow ourselves down enough to make intentional decisions, and to accept some level of personal risk. That doesn’t mean civilians don’t die. Those deaths are not treated lightly or casually, even in war. But they still happen, and some amount of “collateral damage,” a grossly inadequate term, is inevitable no matter how hard we try to avoid it.

That sounds harsh. And shitty. Because it is. War is harsh and shitty, and sometimes the best outcome you can hope for is still a deeply imperfect one. In a combat zone like Iraq, where insurgents are actively trying to kill you with IEDs, ambushes, and car bombs, soldiers are trained and conditioned to assume danger at every corner and read ordinary actions through the lens of possible threats.

And yet, if a group of young infantry soldiers on their first combat deployment could slow things down enough to avoid killing civilians, without the formal de-escalation training police are meant to receive, then the obvious question is this: why couldn’t a 43-year-old federal agent with decades of experience do the same thing in an American city?

On January 7, during a large federal immigration enforcement operation in a residential neighborhood in Minneapolis, 37-year-old Renée Nicole Good, an unarmed U.S. citizen and mother, was shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross while she was seated in her SUV. According to eyewitnesses and multiple videos that have circulated online, Good was in the vehicle attempting to move after being ordered out when an agent fired into her car as it was pulling away. Local officials and bystanders say she posed no imminent threat at the moment the shots were fired, even as federal spokespeople immediately defended the agent’s actions as self-defense.

Good had been involved in community efforts to monitor ICE activity, which officials later pointed to in defending the shooting. Video released after the fact shows her SUV partially blocking a lane of traffic before the encounter escalated, a fact federal officials have seized on to justify what followed. But blocking traffic isn’t a lethal threat, and it doesn’t explain firing into a car that was moving away.

We’ve all seen the videos by this point. The New York Times conducted a detailed analysis of the incident, comparing the agent’s cellphone footage with recordings from other angles. What the footage clarifies is the positioning between Ross and the vehicle in the seconds before the shooting and how the encounter escalated. Most importantly, it shows how Ross moved himself into a dangerous position near the vehicle in the first place, a choice that created the risk he would later claim justified lethal force.

From the first moment, Ross’s approach looks off in ways that experienced law enforcement voices have been openly questioning. Instead of keeping distance, using cover, or staying out of the vehicle’s path, he circles around Good’s SUV and ends up near the front-left corner, the exact kind of place officers are trained to avoid because it creates a problem you didn’t need to create in the first place.

And then there’s the phone. The footage that went viral wasn’t official body-cam. It was video shot on a personal cell phone in his non-shooting hand. In any encounter that actually has a chance of turning dangerous, I would want both hands free in case I needed to grab and control someone or draw and fire the way I was trained and how I assume most law enforcement officers are trained: two hands on the weapon, stable stance, deliberate aim. Instead he’s filming while closing distance, looking more like someone trying to document a confrontation than end one safely.

What happens next is the moment where the self-defense narrative collapses. Video from multiple angles shows another agent on the driver side of Good’s SUV giving commands and violently yanking on her locked door. Conflicting verbal commands are being shouted, one agent yelling to “get out of the fucking car,” while other voices are heard directing her to leave the scene.

Good, obviously frightened, turns her wheel and begins to move forward and away from Ross, who is positioned near the front driver-side corner of the vehicle. Ross, still holding his phone, draws his weapon and fires at least three rounds. The first shot goes through the windshield near the edge, close to the driver-side frame. Subsequent shots follow through the driver-side window as the vehicle passes him. He remains upright. The SUV continues down the street. Ross then mutters “fuckin’ bitch” as the vehicle rolls away and crashes into a utility pole and nearby parked cars.

Nothing about the claim of self-defense adds up. Under any reasonable definition, self-defense requires an immediate, unavoidable threat. A car moving away from you doesn’t meet that standard.

Even if you accept the ridiculous idea that Good was attempting to use her vehicle as a weapon, the physics still don’t work the way that defense wants them to. If you’re standing directly in front of a car that’s suddenly accelerating toward you, you have about a split second to react. You can jump out of the way, or you can draw and fire. You can’t realistically do both. And even if you kill the driver, the car doesn’t magically stop with them. The vehicle keeps moving, and you still get hit. Objects in motion stay in motion. Newton figured that out a long time ago.

Given those options, any sane and reasonable person chooses the first one. They get out of the way, most likely without their prefrontal cortex ever getting a vote. Survival instincts take over.

In the video, Ross appears to step aside and then fire anyway, including the shots through the open window after the vehicle had already passed him. That isn’t neutralizing a perceived threat. It’s reacting after it’s already gone.

I live in Texas, an open-carry state. Legally, I’m allowed to carry a firearm, if I so wish, and use it to protect myself or others from imminent harm. If I had an argument with a motorist and then stepped in front of their slow-moving car, fired into it as the driver tried to maneuver around me, and then claimed I feared for my life, I wouldn’t have the President of the United States defending my actions. I’d be sitting in jail awaiting trial for murder. With video evidence, I’d almost certainly be convicted, and rightly so.

The reason this is even a debate isn’t because the public can’t understand what it saw. It’s because a federal badge changes the assumptions. And because the federal government tried the case in their own minds before the blood had even had time to dry. Kristi Noem and Donald Trump rushed to microphones to call the shooting self-defense and label the victim a “domestic terrorist” before they even knew who the victim was. They’ve worked hard to construct an alternate version of events that doesn’t exist in the videos.

Generally speaking, I try to be open-minded. When a cop shoots someone, I don’t automatically assume he set out to kill them. I try to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that most police officers, like most people, don’t wake up looking for an excuse to pull the trigger. Some might call that naïve optimism, and that’s fine. My brain defaults to not assuming the worst about people, regardless of their job. I try to allow for nuance and see things from both sides. But here, I just can’t see another side. Try as I may, I can’t watch these videos and see anything other than an intentional homicide that could and should have been avoided.

As far as I can tell, there are only two possibilities. Either Ross decided to shoot an unarmed woman at close range because he was angry and out of control. Or he panicked at the slightest movement of a car and started pulling the trigger out of fear. That’s it.

It has since been reported that Ross was injured months earlier after being dragged by a vehicle. If he was emotionally unstable or carrying unresolved trauma from that incident, then ICE never should have put him back on the street in an armed enforcement role. If that kind of instability is common or ignored within the agency, that’s an institutional failure. But that’s a larger argument for another piece. Here, I’m trying to stay focused on the smallest units of truth. One moment, one decision, a dead civilian, and multiple video angles.

It’s always difficult to put yourself inside someone else’s head in the seconds before they pull a trigger. To claim certainty about intent is to claim an omnipotence we don’t possess. But I can say this with confidence: I’ve been in a similar situation, and it was more dangerous than this one.

When those kids came around that corner firing a fully automatic assault rifle, I wasn’t on a street in an American city. I was in Kirkuk, Iraq, a war torn country filled with guns and bombs and enemy fighters hellbent on killing Americans. And still, I was able to slow things down, rely on my training, and recognize that a perceived threat wasn’t actually an imminent one.

And what’s more, it wasn’t just me. There were about twelve of us on that street that day. All armed. All on alert. No one wanted to get killed or lose a brother at the tail end of a 13-month deployment. Several of us had a clear line of sight on the vehicle. No one would have been questioned if they had fired in that split second. We probably would have been praised for acting quickly to protect our fellow soldiers. And yet every one of us recognized that a possible threat wasn’t an actual one, and made the same decision not to kill civilians.

So my question is simple.

How did Ross, himself a veteran of the Iraq War, with more information, in a far less dangerous environment, during a slower-moving encounter, fail to reach the same conclusion?

Was he that poorly trained? That rattled? That incapable of controlling his response?

Or had he already decided, when he pulled out his phone, walked into the danger zone, and raised his weapon, that someone was going to die?

We may never know. Because what we do know is that the Trump administration and the Justice Department appear determined to make sure he never has to explain it in a courtroom. And if ICE agents are going to be treated as if they’re above the law, then we certainly shouldn’t expect this to be the last time an unarmed civilian dies at their hands.

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