A former police investigator says officers are fully justified for shooting dead an armed person, whether it's an imitation weapon or not. 

A man was killed yesterday - after he carried a stolen air rifle into Auckland's Sylvia Park Shopping Centre. 

Lance Burdett says the officer who killed him would've been acting on their training. 

He told Andrew Dickens the fact the man had taken the weapon out of the car signalled intent. 

Burdett says people with imitation firearms have been shot in New Zealand in the past because you cannot tell. 

Corrections says the man had been serving community detention.

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