"At that moment, that was the most scared I had been in my life because I thought at any moment he would pull out a gun and just start shooting me," he said during his testimony at trial, later adding: "I didn’t have the luxury to wait and see a gun because I knew in an instant I could be dead."
Then you shouldn't be a police officer.
The dude was reaching into his waistband after he'd fallen down. How the fuck do we know he wasn't just pulling up his pants?
Also stealing something is not an action warranting deadly force. Stuff can be replaced, there's insurance, and whatever store he robbed from ain't gonna suffer. You think they're just gonna take whatever blood covered loaf of bread and put it back on the shelf?