Bexar County deputies feel horrible about killing 6-year-old Kameron Prescott. No one meant to shoot him. No one meant to kill him. But he’s dead, nonetheless. A stray bullet entered a mobile home. Kameron was inside the mobile him, and the stray bullet entered him.

A 6-year-old boy was fatally shot when Bexar County sheriff’s deputies opened fire on a woman at a Schertz mobile home park after a lengthy manhunt Thursday.

The woman — a wanted felon and a suspect in a car theft — also was killed by the gunfire at the Pecan Grove Manufactured Home Community, located off FM 78 on the banks of Cibolo Creek.

She had been trying to break into a mobile home while the child was inside when deputies caught up to her on the front porch.

Police claimed the woman had a gun, although not at the time she was killed.

“Something in the way that the suspect presented to the deputies placed these deputies in direct fear for their lives,” Salazar explained.  “They shot several shots each at the suspect.  The suspect was shot at least several times that we know of.  She fell over and died at the scene.”

The woman was not armed at the time of the shooting, the sheriff confirmed.

However, Salazar said several deputies and witnesses saw her with a gun throughout much of the pursuit.

There will be much argument, much consideration, of the propriety of the shooting. The cops will invoke the Reasonably Scared Cop Rule. They will state over and over that she had a gun. Cops saw it. Witnesses saw it. Although she never used it, and at the time of her killing, didn’t have it, and it has yet to be found. It may never be found. That may mean it never existed, or it just couldn’t be found.

But the question of whether a 6-year-old in a mobile home park full of people, full of children, should have died is tangential to the question of whether they were justified in killing the woman. There is no claim, no argument, that Kameron Prescott did anything to cause his own death, other than to be in the wrong place when cops started shooting. And no cop will try to justify it. Rather, it will be written off as an unfortunate tragedy. Just one of those things.

Was it just “one of those things,” though?

The woman being chased, the “wanted felon” for whatever that means, was allegedly a car thief. Stealing cars is, without a doubt, a serious and wrong thing, but what it’s not is deadly. The question isn’t whether the cops should ignore a call about a car thief, or let a car thief go because chasing her, trying to capture her, might have collateral consequences. The question is how one goes about catching a person for the commission of a non-violent crime so that the price of capture isn’t far worse than the crime for which the perp is sought.

It’s hard to say where the First Rule came into play. The cops claim she had a gun, and perhaps she did, though there are some indications that suggest otherwise.

The woman was hiding in a closet inside the trailer.  She told the deputy that she had a weapon and that she would shoot him.  Salazar said she then pulled out the weapon.

The sheriff said for some reason, the deputy was not able to access his weapon.  Instead, he gave the woman space.  She eventually got out of the trailer and then fled.

Deputies then chased the woman, who was still pointing her weapon at the pursuing officers, crossing a creek and eventually making it into the Pecan Grove Mobile Home Park off of FM 78 in Schertz.

The chase went on for roughly two hours.

Why would a deputy be unable to access his weapon? There could be a reason, though none is offered. Or there was no gun seen, and they’re into post hoc rationalization to explain why he failed to react as if he had seen a gun. And then, of course, when the deputies did shoot, she was unarmed.

If they had seen a gun, or what they thought to be a gun, “roughly two hours” earlier, what made them shoot when they did, at the trailer park, toward a trailer? The argument will certainly be that they were in reasonable fear for their lives from the woman. That their fear was mistaken is irrelevant. That’s not the test.

Did it occur to the cops that they were shooting at the woman, but also at a trailer? Did they think, there might be someone inside that trailer who could be killed by our bullets? Did they think it might be a 6-year-old child, just like the one they had at home, filled with excitement about what Santa would bring them?

This is where the First Rule of Policing runs smack into the reason for having cops, for arming cops, in the first place. It’s all good until the tragedy of an unintended killing happens, and since they had no idea that there was a 6-year-old behind the mobile home wall, how could they know they would kill someone?

Except they were chasing a car thief, a burglar perhaps. The worst this woman could do was steal. The worst they could do in using deadly force to catch her was to unintentionally kill a child. The fact that they didn’t know he was there, that they were ignorant of the potential consequences when they opened fire at an unarmed but potentially-threatening woman, provides them with the shelter of ignorance.

And everyone feels terrible that Kameron Prescott is dead. But he’s still dead. And the deputies who killed him will go home for dinner with their children.