wouldn't shooting someone make the bomb go off?

(and i thought they didn't carry guns)

According to the article, if they believed he was a bomber, they probably shot him in the head.

God, I hope it was a bomber, and not somebody being terribly, terribly foolish.

amberglow, they've been carrying guns for a while now. It's just them Bill Hicks CD's that are frozen in a time ten years ago... ;)

And yeah, what on earth.... Some of the witness reports sound like they nearly emptied a gun into the guy after he had been restrained.

"One of them was carrying a black handgun - it looked like an automatic - they pushed him to the floor, bundled on top of him and unloaded five shots into him."

i didn't know..i only see Bobbys and i never see holsters/guns at their hips on them when i'm in London.

In all fairness, if they thought the guy was about to detonate a bomb, shooting to kill is a defendable action (even after being restrained). I mean, what's the use of restraining the guy if he has some cleverly rigged switch that will blow both him and you up?

If the guy wasn't really a bomber and he was just horsing around, well I guess he got killed for being stoopid.

Some police can carry guns, but it's the exception rather than the rule. The guys doing the shooting here were plain clothes so they may have been undercover police, though I wonder if they weren't secret service. We might never know.

It seems entirely sensible to me to kill a suicide bomber - though I'd like to know how certain they were before they killed him. If his bomb turns out to be his packed lunch then things will get very interesting.

Yeah, I'm not surprised they shot him. Thoroughly. There just isn't much wriggle room in this sort of situation.

Now, who wants to go into business with me on the Next Big Thing: 100% see-thru bags, belts, briefcases and backpacks?

I'm in!

Beacuse gawd knows, stuff like this, bought ten years ago is hopelessly way out of fashion now.
≡ Click to see image ≡

*chokes, sputters, falls over laughing.*

I'll say what I said in Meta:

My main concern will be whether we find out if people like this were actually terrorists or innocent victims -- and not after a spirited campaign to hide the truth. Do we even get to find out about the mistakes so that we can evaluate the methods used is what I want to know.