Shoot and intentionally miss

Suppose you are a guard at a prison, watching the surrounding scene from your observation tower. You have a gun and you are instructed to shoot any escapee you witness.

One day, you indeed witness a prisoner trying to escape from the prison. Though you will be punished if you do not act as instructed, you decide not to kill the prisoner.

So you shoot but intentionally miss. Is there a word for intentionally missing with a gun?

Shoot to miss is the best I can think of.

If the notion needs to encompass both (a) intentionally aiming away from the person and (b) actually shooting, then this is about as succinct as it gets, I think.

(Aim to miss misses the fact of actually shooting, which he did in this case.)

Aim to miss:

This strikes me as pacifist hopeful thinking -- when it comes to "kill or be killed", do people really deliberately aim to miss?