CNN's Piers Morgan ripped into the University of South Alabama police on his show, saying that a 5'7", 135 lb. freshman whether on drugs, drunk or simply out of his mind for the moment does not pose a deadly threat to a trained officer.
Gil Collar, an 18-year-old freshman, was running through the campus naked, shouting profanities, saying he was on a spiritual quest. Police responded when he banged on the window of their headquarters, and shot him in the chest when Collar allegedly took a "fighting stance" and refused to respond to an officers' warning and repeated retreats, according to the AP.
The university's police department posted a message on its Facebook timeline this weekend that thanked the community's supportive messages, but it may have assumed too much.
The status was shared by The Vanguard, the school's student newspaper. Friend Lucas Self commented, "Gil made a mistake, but it is still an officers duty to resolve a situation as peacefully as he can. I think this situation was handled wrong by the officer, but they aren't going to let any one believe that."
Morgan's response was similar. He said the shooting won't receive the same attention as the Trayvon Martin shooting or the Aurora massacre, but it got his attention because his oldest son started at a British university this year.
[My son] is, I'm sure, getting up to all the ridiculous things I got up to as a freshman. Gilbert Collar could have been my son. He could have been your son. He may have been a silly boy, a disturbed boy. We don't know. But he didn't deserve to die.
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