In RF’s original post on this tragic incident, he pointed out the weaselly “non-clarity” as to whether the un-named Plano, Texas cop in question was trained with the SureFire WeaponLight. To save you a click, Michael Alcala was accidentally shot and killed when the officer muzzled him and tried to turn on his gun-mounted light. Except he pulled the trigger instead. As ocregister.com recounts:
“I was attempting to squeeze the light mechanism when my weapon fired and the suspect fell to the ground,” the unidentified Plano, Texas, officer said in an affidavit.
Now that Alcala’s family has collected $245,000 in damages (out of a statutorily limited max of $250,000) from the city of Plano, they’re going after SureFire for an unspecified amount.
As predictably and properly instructed by their attorneys, SureFire isn’t commenting on the suit. Other than to release this:
“In 1986 SureFire introduced the first light designed specifically for mounting on handguns. This light (equipped with remote switching) was quickly adopted by SWAT teams. In 2004 SureFire introduced the current X-Series WeaponLights, intended primarily for attachment to handguns. There are well over 100,000 SureFire X-Series lights and tens of thousands of optional grip-activated “DG” and “SL” switches in use today, and our competitors have sold thousands of other pistol-mountable lights themselves. During this 25-year period this was the first reported safety-related incident involving our pistol-mounted lights and switches. These figures alone show that SureFire WeaponLights, and weapon-mounted lights are safe.”