From reading the article, my first reaction is that he should have called for backup as soon as he was told that her boyfriend was outside. He's lucky he didn't get jumped while he was putting her in the patrol car! As far as distance goes, that dipshit had both hands inside his jacket! It it was me he would be looking straight down a .45 caliber barrel at that point and if he looks hard enough he should be able to see the big honkin' hollowpoint! He would have NEVER gotten close enough for me to grab his arm, that's for damn sure. Early in my career I had a BIG guy come at me with a 5 foot long steel digging bar cocked back over his shoulder. Before he even got close enough to hit me with it he had a 1911 pointed dead center of his chest with the safety off and ALL the slack out of the trigger! He got just within range to hit me and stopped. If that bar had even started to move it would have been two center mass and possibly one to the head. It's scary how every little detail of that encounter still stands out so sharp in my mind after all these years.