What I read when I went (briefly, just now) looking for it was that the hostages had escaped "without a shot being fired" -- which was true; shots weren't fired until after they'd escaped.
The question then is how culpable, if at all, the police were for the following death. It sounds like there was an hour more of standoff after the hostages escaped and that they tried to convince him to surrender, but he was insisting on what amounted to suicide by police. That said, without danger to life and limb, I don't know why it was incumbent on the police to do a forced entry, rather than wait him out, use putatively non-lethal means to try to force him out like tear gas, etc. Obviously, they -did- need to take him into custody; he'd just threatend people's lives and only been stopped by their escape, but it sounds like there were some suboptimal choices (that said, not an expert on that kind of standoff).
(no subject)
The question then is how culpable, if at all, the police were for the following death. It sounds like there was an hour more of standoff after the hostages escaped and that they tried to convince him to surrender, but he was insisting on what amounted to suicide by police. That said, without danger to life and limb, I don't know why it was incumbent on the police to do a forced entry, rather than wait him out, use putatively non-lethal means to try to force him out like tear gas, etc. Obviously, they -did- need to take him into custody; he'd just threatend people's lives and only been stopped by their escape, but it sounds like there were some suboptimal choices (that said, not an expert on that kind of standoff).