I wondered about this too.

I wondered why they didn't just disable the vehicle. They waited until it was driving away to fire. Were they worried about collateral damage from ricochet maybe? I know a vehicle is a big weapon, but they say they have training. No obvious sign of a gun, the one officer was right at the window. Shoot the tires, radiator, engine compartment. They were all around the vehicle. I don't get it.

How did they miss a child in the car?

Maybe they did see the child in the car and that's why they didn't shoot at first and waited till she exited the car. I'm sure we'll be hearing why they did not shoot the tires out, it seems like an obvious solution.

When I saw the videos it looked like the driver was hellbent to get through the barricades. For that reason I think a car bomb might have been what they had trained for.

I haven't really been following this story, so I can't comment on what may or may not have been the situation, but if the officers did see the child in the car, that's a reason right there not to shoot at the vehicle (even if they'd just be trying to shoot out the tires) ...

We can put a missile into a window a thousand miles away... but we can't take a crazy person down w/o killing them?

Nuke, you nailed that one. Shouldn't there be more questions about such things as "why did the confirmed terrorist have to be taken out with his brother-in-law and his brother-in-law's entire family? Couldn't this have been avoided?"

I don't know if that's where you were going with it, but that's what it made me think.

Well, it's a spontaneous, dynamic situation so police have to use what's on-hand (rather than, say waiting for a special tactics teams to show-up or something). I'm assuming what they had available on hand were guns, tasers, batons and pepper spray.

In this case, I've heard varying reports that the lady was still inside the car when they shot, that she was getting out of the vehicle, or that she was already completely outside it.

For someone outside of a car, obviously all of those on-hand resources can come into play, but some (especially the non-leathal remedies) require a degree of proximity to the suspect. If you haven't determined the intent of the suspect and wether or not they're armed or wearing a suicide vest or something, I'm not sure getting into range to use the non-lethal remedies is practical. It really does depend on a seconds-long assessment of the situation.

If the suspect is still inside a car, I really don't know what police would have on-hand to incapacitate that person short of a gun.

Yeah, it's hard to say without being in the situation. Will have to wait until more facts come out to see why they couldn't defuse it the first time when they had the car surrounded.

She hit the gas and sped off.

I don't get your reply. Watch the video on it. I counted and they had the car surrounded a good 10-15 seconds before she started to move again. There is a break in the video too so it was longer than what we see in the video.

Is it not mandatory now that
the Child Safety Seat be secured in the BACK SEAT?