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Notes -
I have basically no 1st hand knowledge on the subject, but any time I hear from people who have actual knowledge of combat (e.g. mixed martial artists or law enforcement), it seems to me that humans are very fragile creatures where the line between merely stopping an oppositional person with force and killing them is extremely fine. I'm sure there are techniques that maximize the chances of someone surviving when holding/disabling them, but the chaotic nature of a physical altercation makes it so that there's a lot of variance and unpredictability in the outcome. So my thinking is that it's very possible that he tried his best to disable him without killing him but failed at that endeavor, for whatever reason. Whether that was due to reckless negligence is up to the courts to decide, I suppose.
Put more precisely, the line between incapacitation and killing is very fine. People can stop an action of their own volition whenever they want. It's making them stop against their will that's fraught.
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