That two news helicopters collided over Phoneix on Friday while covering a high-speed police chase is somehow both tragic and unsurprising. According to witnesses interviewed so far, one TV station's helicopter was more or less stationary in mid-air when the other one ran into it. Both crashed, both had a pilot and a cameraman and all four were killed.

Still, the ending of this CNN story is somewhat surprising:

Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris said the chase began after police received a report of a stolen vehicle and began pursuing a suspect, who abandoned that vehicle and allegedly stole a truck. The truck was being chased at the time of the chopper collision.

The suspect, identified Saturday as Christopher Jones, later bailed out of the truck and barricaded himself in a house, where he was captured, police said.

Jones was arraigned Saturday on four counts of aggravated assault, two counts of theft of means of transportation and one count of resisting arrest. His bond was set at $1 million after a prosecutor told the judge Jones may flee.

"He put the entire community in danger. ... Everyone on the street was a possible victim," the prosecutor said.

Jones said in the hearing he blacked out in the house, and when he came to, police used tear gas and a Taser on him.

"I don't know how all this happened. I really don't," he told the judge.

Harris said Friday that Jones could face charges related to the four deaths.

This, of course, would be the famous legal theory of "Damn, we have to blame someone!"

I mean, come on. There is at least something of a causal relationship when someone leading the police on a high-speed chase is charged with any deaths that the police may have caused during the chase by pursuing him at high speed, but even that's fairly tenuous. But there's a decent argument that the police have to chase such suspects to protect the public safety.

There's nothing that makes news stations scramble helicopters into the air to videotape or broadcast that pursuit. The police didn't make them do it, and the suspect certainly did not. There is no legal basis of which I'm aware for the argument that if someone with whom you have no relationship decides to do something based on your actions, and that decision results in a bad ending, that it's somehow your fault.

Where would you draw this line of responsibility? If you rob a convenience store, and the police presence at the store after the incident keeps a diabetic from purchasing an apple and eating it, are you somehow responsible for that person's medical problems or their effects? If the excitement of watching a high-speed chase on TV gives you a fatal heart attack, did the suspect being chased kill you? If you bet all your money on the Super Bowl and lose, can you sue the Chicago Bears?

I have a very, very difficult time understanding how you can be held responsible for bad things that happened to other people when you did not have any control over their actions. If this chase had killed someone in a car on the ground, the suspect could be charged with that. If the police chasing him killed someone, he could be charged with causing that. But it's really hard to see how he's responsible for the collision of two non-police helicopters half a mile or more away from him just because they happened to be watching him and didn't see each other.

This is dangerously close to some legal doctrine that says "if you do something bad, you're responsible for everything else bad that happened in a one-mile radius from you," and that's simply unsupportable.