( CNN ) -- The 34-year-old dental hygienist from Stamford , Connecticut , had just rammed her black luxury car through barricades and into police cruisers near the U.S. Capitol , one of Washington 's securest areas . In the car with Miriam Carey was her 1-year-old daughter . Police say Carey then sped down Pennsylvania Avenue before crashing . Two law enforcement officers were injured during the incident , and officers fatally shot her . But was the shooting of the unarmed woman justified ? Had Carey been shot a few moments earlier , such as when police had surrounded her car and she drove into them or as she sped off , it would have been justified because she had used her car as a deadly weapon , pointing it at the officers , said Mark O'Mara , a CNN legal analyst . But if the shooting occurred after the car stopped and if Carey had gotten out , as some accounts unconfirmed by CNN have suggested , that changes things , he said . `` If she did not turn on them like she was going for a gun , something to at that point say the threat is ongoing and immediate and imminent , then maybe the police should have taken a breath , waited , '' O'Mara said . Opinion : Did D.C. cops have to shoot to kill ? They would have quickly determined that she posed no threat , he said . What if police fear a terrorist bomber ? But Maki Haberfeld , chairwoman of the Department of Law , Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York , said police would have had no way of knowing whether Carey posed a threat as she got out of the car , and therefore the shooting was justified . `` We live in times of heightened alert as far as terrorist activities are concerned , '' she said . `` The fact that she was not displaying a gun does n't mean anything , because bombers do n't necessarily display anything . They have the explosives around their waist , usually . `` It 's a matter of a split-second decision that the police officer needs to take before someone explodes himself . It 's all about the larger context . They just push the button , or it could be activated from a remote location . '' CNN law enforcement analyst Mike Brooks said the police had no choice but to shoot . `` You do n't know if she has a bomb , '' he said . `` You do n't know if it 's a terrorist attack . The officers just do n't know . '' Brooks dismissed suggestions that police could have defused the situation simply by shooting out the car 's tires . `` If you are using deadly force , you are there to try to incapacitate the driver of that car -- of that weapon , '' he said . `` If they did shoot the tires out , the car can keep moving . '' And the handguns used by Capitol Police might not have done the job , according to CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes . `` These tires are synthetically wrapped , like Kevlar , like a bulletproof vest , '' he said . He noted that law enforcement officers were acutely aware that the incident was occurring near some of the nation 's most sensitive sites . `` We 're not talking about some cornfield in Nebraska , '' he said . `` We 're talking about downtown Washington , D.C. '' Fuentes said officers had to consider whether the woman had explosives in her car : `` Is she just looking for a large gathering of people that she can drive up close to them and explode a bomb ? '' Carey 's family is questioning whether shooting Miriam Carey was the only way to end the chase . `` We want to know if protocols were followed , '' family attorney Eric Sanders said on CNN 's AC360 . `` ... We are going to conduct our investigation , and we are not going to go with just what the government said . '' Rules have changed since 9/11 . After the September 11 attacks , police chiefs reconsidered whether the usual rules of using lethal force were sufficient to deal with people who might detonate a bomb when confronted by police . The U.S. Capitol Police adopted a suicide bomber policy in 2004 . Then-chief Terrance W. Gainer told The Washington Post in 2005 that Capitol officers were trained to shoot a suspected bomber who refused to stop and be searched . The Capitol Police public affairs office could not be reached Friday night to confirm whether that policy remains in place . The International Association of Chiefs of Police issued guidelines for coping with suicide bombers in 2005 , including a recommendation that officers need not wait until the threat is imminent before using deadly force . Within weeks of that report , London police officers using a similar policy shot and killed a man they had wrestled to the floor of a train because they incorrectly suspected he had a bomb . Anti-terrorism policies often allow officers to fire without warning a suspect to surrender because a warning might simply alert the bomber to detonate . Sheri H. Mecklenburg , an assistant U.S. attorney , wrote in the magazine of the international police chiefs group in 2007 that Americans are accustomed to debates about whether a suspect made an overt threat to harm someone . `` In the context of suicide bombers , however , this debate is irrelevant . Suicide bombers always pose an imminent threat of death and serious injury , whether they are moving toward or fleeing from their target , for at any time they may detonate , '' Mecklenburg wrote . CNN 's David Simpson and Brian Todd contributed to this report .
NEW : Capitol Hill adopted policy to shoot terror suspects in public . NEW : Since 9/11 , authorities have reconsidered use - of - force rules for terror suspects . CNN legal analyst : Police officers have ` ` taken a breath '' if she got out of the car unarmed , she says . Law enforcement analyst : Officers had no choice but to shoot .