Shoot or be shot: A tragic choice

It didn't take long - 10 minutes - for a coroner's jury to validate the actions of a Flathead County sheriff's deputy in shooting an armed man in March.

Deputy Russ Papke was justified, the jury ruled, in shooting and killing Rian Ross. We concur: The deputy was looking "right down the barrel of a shotgun" leveled at his head from less than 2 feet away.

There really was no choice. Faced with such an immediate threat, Papke had to shoot - or be shot. He also was protecting other deputies behind him.

The jury's verdict clears Papke, a SWAT team member and 21-year law enforcement veteran.

But while that eases a legal burden for Papke, it doesn't necessarily erase the pain and trauma that follow a law officer's difficult decision to take a life.

Papke did what law officers are supposed to do in the face of a deadly threat, but the fact that it was justified doesn't make it any easier to live with afterwards.

The coroner's inquest did raise some questions about the nature of the legal inquiry into the fatal shooting.

As it was constructed, the inquest took a rather narrow look only at the shooting incident itself.

We don't contest the verdict but we wonder whether the inquest should have been broader and looked at the overall context of the SWAT team action.

Questions have been raised by the public about whether the strategy and tactics employed on that March day were sufficient:

Should the SWAT team have waited longer before entering the suspect's home? Were enough precautions taken to avoid what turned out to be a fatal confrontation?

We would hope in the future (although we don't hope for another such incident, it may well happen) the County Attorney's Office and the Sheriff's Office take a wider view in their investigations.

It was a grim weekend at Skydive Lost Prairie.

The airstrip normally known as a place for aerial fun and the adrenaline thrill of skydiving suffered a major tragedy when five people died in the crash of a skydiving plane.

A sunny Saturday outing ended in death just beyond the airstrip runway.

Now there are five families mourning.

We, too, mourn the loss of five young lives - the pilot, two skydiving instructors and two student skydivers.