From the comfortable position in front of my PC screen, I am not sure whether I endorse the "sod everyone else" perspective, but I feel that there is a lot of benefit of hindsight here -- even assuming that the pilot had a choice, I doubt that he willingly and in cold blood decided to sacrifice two lives. If the plane had failed to hit anyone or the people had "merely" been injured and not killed, I assume the criticism regarding landing site would not be quite as harsh.
And given the prospect of cartwheeling (in shallow water?) and drowning (even though chances of escaping are probably better in an aircraft with doors as opposed to a canopy), I am not sure about my heroism in a similar situation which I'll hopefully never experience.