Yes, but the point is not that he was an angel, or different. It's that human lives portugaling matter. Stealing a pack of cigarillos doesn't carry the death penalty, and nor even does common assault. I mean, seriously, we in the west spend lots of time acting all het up about how in other countries there isn't a functional justice system, how they cut people's hands off for theft, whatever. How is the idea that cops have pretty much carte blanche to shoot suspects in a robbery any different?
If someone's a criminal, you try them. Maybe you put them in jail. YOU DO NOT SHOOT THEM MULTIPLE TIMES IN THE HEAD.
Also, that link takes all of the officer's later report as verbatim truth, which is questionable at best when multiple witness statements do not agree, and it's known from forensics that he didn't tell the truth about some elements of it. But even so - that's not the point. Even if this is totally legal, that's a terrifying indictment on the system as a whole. And I'm just going to add this; if a middle class white kid shoplifted then got shot in an altercation by police, we'd all be asking where he went wrong, discussing how tragic the whole thing was, etc etc. Look at some of the coverage of that guy who went nuts and shot a load of women, it was all pussyfooting around his mental health issues, and here we are with a black kid who got shot dead totally unjustly and somehow the right-wing part of the media are desperate to portray him as a thug whose life didn't matter. It's that attitude - both that the police shout be given total carte blanche in these cases and that some people's lives fundamentally matter less than others - that is frankly shameful and which permeates many layers of American media and society (not to say that Britain is anywhere near perfect on this, it's just less obvious here because our cops don't have guns and can't shoot to kill).