The video below is an unnerving video that shows a man, Sammie Wallace, walking through a store clearly looking for a child and then snatching a two-year-old girl. The clearly deranged man then held a knife to the little girl and told the terrified mother to call police. In the end, the officer walked up and shot Wallace point blank in the head when he moved the knife to the girl’s throat and started a countdown.
The tragic scene unfolded in a Walmart in Midwest City, Oklahoma. You can see early in the tape how Wallace spots the girl in cart as the mother and her older daughter do the family shopping. Wallace is clearly not shopping for food as he pushes around an empty cart.
After snatching the girl, Wallace handed the mother a cell phone and demanded that she call a Dallas police officer. What follows is a 30 minute standoff during which the store was evacuated. Wallace reportedly talked about being the wealthiest man in the world and the Illuminati, which is wrongly identified in some publications as a “Satanic group.”
He is given a chair but kept a knife at the girl’s stomach. He then began a 60-second countdown and when he moved the knife to the girl’s throat, Captain David Huff walked up and shot the suspect point blank in the head.
His actions were ruled justified by the district attorney. It is hard to argue with that view. Any effort to wing Wallace in the leg could have resulted in the girl’s death. It was her life that was the priority. A point blank shot also allowed the officer to direct the round away from the girl.
I have to agree with the district attorney on the shooting. What do you think?
Source: Oklahoma City
One more: Infant Hostage Rescue with the help of a taser
I forgot to add: Here is another example of tasering in a hostage situation: Man has woman with a knife to her neck.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xeo3fj_german-police-taser-hostage-taker_news
Darren Smith,
I wasn’t asking why didn’t the officers wait to distract him so that a taser could be used. I stated that they distracted him to get a clear shot at his head with a gun. These officers are trained to kill, and some refuse to use a taser (my older brother, retired police officer, stated that he would never have used a taser even if they were around when he was a cop).
I do understand how tasers work. However, it seems to me that you are a tad bit late on the new tasers that law enforcement officers use: Taser X3
“The Taser X3 is designed for law enforcement officials. It features the capability to discharge three shots without reloading. The Taser X3 also has the capability to fire at multiple targets at the same time. This Taser features a warning arc that allows law enforcement officials to warn targets before they fire, opening up the potential to never have to fire the weapon at all. Further, the Taser X3 allows the user to calibrate electrical discharge as well as deliver additional electrical pulses to a target who has already been hit.”
Read more: http://www.ehow.com/list_6365865_types-tasers.html
RWL
There is a difference between the examples in the Australian article and this case. Distance and exigency. A knife being held to the throat of a kidnap victim and a countdown where he has declared he will murder the child is a lot different of a threat than what was being shown in the link you supplied.
You ask why was this suspect not distracted so that a Taser could be used. I don’t think you are aware of how a Taser is actually deployed. The taser shoots out two probes that have darts on them. These are NOT accurate as a pistol is. One taser probe is designed to drop lower than the other. The effectiveness of the Taser is a function of how far apart these probes are in. The closer to the suspect, the less they spread apart and the less effective it is. In order to get a better spread you need to be about six or so feet away. Plus, if one or more of the probes misses the taser will not work and you do NOT get a second chance unless you spend 6 to 10 seconds reloading the cartridge. In that amount of time the suspect could murder the child and/or take the knife and attack the officer. And if the taser is in the process of being reloaded when the suspect comes at you, well you are in a world of hurt and likely could die.
There was an incident in Spokane, WA several years ago where a distraught young man threatened to jump off a very tall bridge to take his life. SPD there tried to talk the man into not doing this but he because increasingly dispondent. And officer tried to light the guy up with the taser, but it FAILED to lock him up. He then ran for the side of the bridge and jumped off, dying in the Spokane River below.
Now what would have happened if the Taser failed in this case with the child kidnapping? Is it worth risking the life of this child over someone who has acted like this, hoping the Taser will work or that you can rationalize with the suspect? Whether this man was mentally derranged or going to do a suicide by cop it is one thing, but the danger to this child is so high that trying to counsel him or diagnose his condition and treat him is not the essential criteria to decide what action should have been performed. It is the threat and the act of the suspect that dictated what needed to be done.
Anyone blaming the mom smells like a troll to me. Get for real. You are full of something. I feel for your child if you watch your child’s every move. Stuff like this doesn’t happen often. And to live your life like it does is pretty unreasonable.
kids are abducted through bedroom windows. so you must sleep with them.
kids are abducted from schools, or traveling to and from schools. therefore you must walk to and from school, and remain with them throughout the school day.
kids are abducted playing outside with their friends. either dont let them have any friends, or force them to play inside, or play outside with them.
All of you crying about the moms “inattention” clearly dont have any kids. how do you propose a single parent does anything in their life? shower? nope. go to the bathroom? nope. grocery shopping? nope. if you do or have done any of these things you are a horrible parent!
Is it not amazing all of us grownups lived through our childhoods? mind boggling.
and nice use of a gun! I hope he doesnt lose a moment of sleep over this guy, no loss to society.
Darren Smith,
Oh Come on! Give me a break! All of those incidents, in the ‘Taser Used in Dangerous Situations’ article, were perfect examples where the Police believed the suspect was an ‘immediate’ threat to either himself, others, and/or the police.
I am not advocating for tasers in all situations, but I do believe that if the officers had time to distract this man (who was clearly suffering from a mental illness, IMO), so that they can get a clear shot at his head? Then, why not use a taser as in the other ‘dangerous situations’ in the article?
Just admit it (and I will say it for you): They don’t use tasers down in Okie….
@ Darren . she walked away 3-4 times with her back to the child. and her back was turned when the man took the child out of the cart. yes i have a problem with them. because whether stranger abductions are rare or not. it happens and in todays society. as a mother i take no chances anyone is going to get to my 10 yr old without killing me first. supposed he hadnt walked up to the mother and told her to call the cops? the 12 sister didnt even yell she just looked at him. HE HAD TO APPROACH the mother for her to realize her child was no longer in the cart…. now if that a-hole had decided to run out with the child. i wonder how long it would have taken the mother to realize it?
Adam Walsh was 10 ft from his mother when he was taken. and it happened that i was watching investigation fbi files and the story was about a man who jumped out of his car and grabbed a little girl right off of her lawn. she had been playing with a friend. he dragged her into the car and by the time the mother got outside he was pulling off with her child. they found the little girl about 5 hrs later raped and killed…
On July 27, 1981, Walsh’s mother, Revé, let Adam watch several older boys play video games at a Sears store in Hollywood, Florida, while she walked a few aisles away to shop for a lamp. When Revé returned to the video game section about seven minutes later, Adam and the other boys were gone
Suicide by police. Sadly the officer had no real other choice.
RWL
I can see in the examples that you provided where a Taser might have been a good idea but in this situation it is not. When there is an immediate danger to the life of another, i.e. a person having a knife at the throat of another or chanrging someone or the officer with the knife a firearm is often the only reasonable choice.
I can tell from experience where a Taser is advantageous and where it is not. I have used a Taser and it has worked but it has also failed to work. It is what it is, and it is not a panacea for every bad situation out there and it has its limits. And there might be those who say the knife should have been wrestled out of his hands. Fighting someone wielding a knife is extremely dangerous.
As to the comments the mother is at fault for allowing this to happen. That is not at all realistic. It is obvious the suspect intended to kidnap (and yes that is the legal description of what he did) the child as evidenced by his circling here several times. Nobody can be held to the level of responsibility you are expecting of the mother. Ask yourself, did you spend every second while in public looking at a child? Where was the apparent threat, not the 20/20 hindsight, but what would an average person perceive to be threatening. Unless you want to live in a paranoid society where the boogymen lurk at around every corner you have to be realistic. Keeping such a hyper-level of vigilance is not psychologically healthy for a person or even a child for that matter.
And lets be pragmatic. Is it reasonable to think a person bent on kidnapping a a child and holding a knife to that child knowing the police can come along and smoke him for doing so is going to be deterred completely by the woman just simply looking at the child?
Awesome job Captain David Huff. This officer is a hero, protect the child.
As someone said above, this could all have been prevented if this child’s mother had not been more interested in the beef than her baby. I see way too many mothers in too many stores conducting their affairs in the same way as this mom. I’d like to say to them: “If you can’t keep your child’s safety more paramount than this, leave the baby/children with a sitter”!
Also, I watch COPS every day and in too many cases, the tazed suspects, especially those drugged out of their minds, fight and are not incapacitated by the tazers. This officer was cool, calm, collected and he took advantage of the only course of action that I believe he could have. The suspect left him no choice in my opinion. I’m only happy for the Mother that it turned out well for the child–God be praised!
awesome job officer.. i have a problem with the mother constantly walking away from the cart or turning her back we’ve read to many stories of children disappearing like that.. i guarantee she wont do that ever again
Im mad that all the videos of this on the net all stop as he puts the gun to the guys head. I want to see the shot and the body drop damn it
Truley S: “he walks right up to the mom and 12-year-old while they’re standing right next to the cart and removes the child from it right in front of them, bold as brass, not a thing they can do about it.”
*
Actually no. She had stepped away and was looking at something and after he had the child he approached the mother, she didn’t appear to have noticed at all. That being said I’m not blaming the victim. What is wrong with the world when you can’t walk 4-6 feet away from a kid in a shopping cart to pick out an item of food without the kid being in danger? That’s nuts.
I’m with the suicide by cop contingent, he wanted to die.
There is not enough information in the story yet to determine if this was suicide by cop. Suicide is a complex thing, but so is mental illness.
Psychological autopsy is a legitimate area of study, and it is sometimes possible to tease out proximate causation of a person’s violent death. Suicide or mental illness….or both. There are several reasons I don’t think this is a suicide, but without more information, there is no point in going further than an educated guess. My money at the moment is untreated mental illness, but as more facts come out, I reserve the right to change my mind.
As Darren notes, in a situation like that, the kill shot has to be very precisely placed, and use of a Taser is worse than a bad idea.
I feel the poor man was asking to die. the poor baby is ok thank god. the mother and sister must have been out of their minds with fear..
thank god for the brave police man for being so commited to do his job and may god help him to cope with the remorece of killing the man
This does indeed seem like a case of suicide by cop, perhaps by someone who was extremely mentally troubled and did not know what else to do with himself. It’s horrible that he couldn’t get some kind of help and not take this kind of criminal action that was so harrowing and terrifying to innocent people. I can’t think of any way the child could have been retrieved safely other than this. The force appears sadly justified. Anything else would have been taking a chance with the child’s life and safety, I think.
As for the issue of not leaving a child alone in a shopping cart, here’s the irony. If you watch this video, you can see several occasions in which both the mom and the 12-year-old have left the child in the cart to go get something or look at something…but that’s not when this guy strikes. On the contrary, he walks right up to the mom and 12-year-old while they’re standing right next to the cart and removes the child from it right in front of them, bold as brass, not a thing they can do about it. This is not to say that one shouldn’t watch one’s child carefully in a store, but the irony is that he actually strikes when they’re very near the cart and child, right in front of them. Obviously no amount of watchful care could’ve stopped this guy. He was determined to do this, even if he had to grab the kid right out of the mother’s arms. Why? Certainly not because he wanted to abscond with a kid and kill it without getting caught; if that were the case, he wouldn’t be standing there handing a phone to the mom and telling her to call a cop. Who knows, other than that he appears to have had some serious mental problems and possibly was seeking a sure way out without having to pull the trigger himself. Perhaps the cop he wanted the mom to call was his “executioner of choice” because he knew the guy. Tragic. It’s just fortunate no other lives were lost and no one else hurt.
Darren Smith et all,
Please read and review the following article/police incidents.
Taser Use in Dangerous Situations:
http://www.police.qld.gov.au/News+and+Alerts/campaigns/taser/Dangerous+Situations.htm
After reading these stories, you might understand why I thought about the use of a taser (and there are many different types of ‘taser toys’.
Read more about the tasers at the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taser
Justified use of force.
The target area for the shot would be such to sever the brain from the root of the spinal cord and cause flaccid paralysis. This would instantly cut off the ability for the suspect to injure the child. Shooting the suspect in another part of the body, even directly to the heart, would not incapacitate the suspect quickly enough given the knife to the throat of the child. Taking out the heart might even give the suspect several seconds of fighting ability. Plus, there is the possibility he could kill the child then go after others in the immediate area.
The Taser is absolutely not the weapon to use in this incident. For one, it is not accurate enough given the child having a knife to her throat while in his cusp but more importantly it might not work and it would further enrage him. If one of the darts missed or hit something solid and it did not engage him he would be further at risk of harming her. The training is to never use a Taser in a deadly force situation and it is not appropriate here given the circumstances.