Kill

[Alex]

G3 B&W, Mac OS X v10.2.8

A non-admin user is logged in and uses TextEdit. TextEdit gets stuck.

Dock -> Force Quit: doesn't work -- TextEdit is still up.

Cmd-opt-esc, Force Quit: doesn't work -- TextEdit is removed from the 
list, but it is still up.

Terminal: Top reports 1 process stuck (presumable TextEdit). Not being 
in the sudoers file, the user can't invoke kill. I use login to log in 
as an admin user, and issue

sudo kill -9 <TextEdit_pid>

to no effect. I also try killall, but it doesn't work either.

So, we're stuck. The user can't logout, because TextEdit being active 
cancels the logout. I tried shutdown, but that simply blocked the 
machine for some 10 minutes. Eventually, I lost my patience and did a 
cold reboot.

Query: What else could I have done to get rid of the stuck process? 
Shouldn't kill -9 have nuked TextEdit, no ifs, ands, or buts?

TIA, f