Basically, it was a messed-up situation all the way around - Nate is a dark-skinned black guy, he was wearing black shirt & pants in a dark room, rummaging around in my stuff, and when I appeared in the doorway, he brought his hands up in the unmistakable manner of someone trying to sight a weapon...

I could hear the rummaging as I was walking toward the doorway, & until I actually laid eyes upon him, I thought that there could be two, or perhaps even three people in the room. No one was authorized to be there, & I certainly didn't expect to hear the voice (or voices) as I was walking down the hall approaching the room.
Holding the gun before me, I "sliced the pie" as I'd been taught, & it was only at the very end as I actually entered the room that I saw him - and I only had a FRACTION OF A SECOND to make a shoot/don't-shoot decision as I saw his hands coming up in the familiar isosceles shooting stance... I pulled the trigger once, & saw him drop right away.
FORTUNATELY, this was a training exercise. Nate is an instructor with the team that I was training with today, & the gun that I used was a "RAM pistol" which uses CO2 cartridges to fire .43 caliber hard-rubber balls, you can think of them as "BB guns on steroids". (I've been on the receiving end of these projectiles, & while they *definitely* sting, they're 99.999% non-lethal. (The marks that they left on me looked like someone put a cigarette out on my skin.)
After it was all done, I freaked a bit - I *KNEW* what I'd seen, but I *also* knew that what I'd seen was incomplete. I'd seen his hands come up in the classic "acquiring sight alignment" manner, but I *hadn't* actually seen a weapon. Had I been bluffed?? Had I shot an "unarmed" man???
My "coach" for the exercise (initially) wasn't much help - he asked me "Couldn't you have verbally challenged him?" My response was "I saw his hands coming up like this" (and I mimicked someone bringing a gun up) & I didn't have time to do anything but decide to shoot or not!!" I then followed up with the question that was foremost in my mind - "Did he really have a weapon, or not??!?" My coach looked me straight in the eyes & grinned - "Yeah, he had a weapon, you did good!"




