The Officer's Bullet

Police were watching a warehouse one evening when men broke in through a side door. When officers announced themselves, the burglars ran across a parking lot toward some bushes. Armed officers chased them. In the confusion one officer saw a crouched figure with a handgun and fired his shotgun. It was a fellow detective, who died. There was no evidence that two of the burglars carried any weapon. A jury convicted them of murder for the detective's death. They say they cannot be murderers when a police officer, not one of them, fired the fatal shot.