If you’re a policeman and you pick up a guy walking up the side of the highway, then chances are you’re probably going to be ready for something dodgy to happen because nobody walks down the side of the highway. You’re probably not going to expect things to get as out of hand as they did in this video though, or anywhere near as quickly.

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The video shows a weird drifter, who was apparently looking for a taxi on the side of the highway, completely flip from being relatively normal into a knife-wielding psychopath in a matter of seconds. Although the cop shoots him straight away in the abdomen, the guy keeps walking around with the knife begging the cop to kill him over and over again, and he shows remarkable restraint – especially considering the gun culture in America and general attitude of cops shooting people first and asking questions later – not to comply to his wishes.

In the end after a long and tense standoff, a taser unit arrives and tases him, but I’m literally amazed that nobody shot him and ended it right there and then:

Geez. Never wanna be in that situation with a weirdo like that, no way. The cop – a guy called Joshua Hilling – was commended for his actions and didn’t face charges for the one shot he fired off at the drifter.

It turns out that the drifter was a guy called Pablo Javier Aleman who had actually murdered his roommate and was on the run from the law, which is probably why he gave a fake name and was so adamant that he wanted the cops to shoot him. Chances are had had the same knife he used in the killing too. He was taken to hospital for surgery after he got tasered and is currently under arrest.

The story here though is that the cop didn’t just fill him full of lead. It’s kinda sad that American cops probably act like this every day doing their jobs, but because of assholes like this they just get a reputation as a trigger happy bunch of idiots who like nothing more than killing innocent people. Its important to remember that they’re not all like that.