Would it not have been easier to destroy the device?
Not every drowning man wants to be saved. His actions and his words will tell you whether he wants to be saved or whether he wants you to honour his choice.
I'm not saying that you were wrong in what you did, I'm merely pointing out that you stand on the edge of a very slippery slope.
To use the Avengers as an example, were they right to intervene without seeking sanction or permission when aliens invaded Earth? Of course they were. It was an invasion that very few people here at the time were capable of handling. They had the skills, the expertise and the ability to do so.
Now, what about if a single Hydra cell started causing trouble in, say, the Democratic Republic of Congo? Would the Avengers have the right to enter that country without permission and sanction and deal with the problem? My inclination is to say no, especially if the government of the DRC believes it can handle the matter internally. Do the Avengers then have the right to run roughshod over international law and the government of the DRC just because they think the government is wrong and they are right? It's true that handling the matter internally may be messier than if the Avengers were involved but that is not the Avengers' call to make. It is the sole province of the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo to make that decision on behalf of their people.
There is a vast difference between handling large wide-scale emergency events and smaller internal matters. People with extraordinary abilities are often able to deal with both but smaller internal matters are often better left to those who know the lay of the land, so to speak, rather than having outsiders come in and potentially make matters worse.