Yes, there is an old expression that a man’s home is his castle. Then there’s the “Castle Doctrine” that allows homeowners wide latitude to use force to defend themselves and their homes against intruders. Some who don’t know better think they also have a blank check to use force, up to and including deadly force, against trespassers on the property outside their homes.
That’s not usually the case. And even in a tiny handful of jurisdictions that allow the use of force against trespassers, especially after dark, it’s seldom a wise or prudent thing to do.
A few days ago, police in Buckeye, Arizona, investigated a shooting. A homeowner called police after shooting a trespasser in his back yard. The Buckeye PD posted this on their Book of Face:
Just before 2:30 this morning, Buckeye police received a call of shots fired at a home near 237th Ave and Mohave St. When officers arrived, a man was seen walking out of the home with his hands up. Officers detained him. They searched the home where they found a man in the back yard bleeding from a gunshot wound to the chest. He was transported to the hospital.
Investigators gathered statements from those on scene. The homeowner told investigators he and his family were asleep when they heard the doorbell. He says he grabbed a handgun and looked out the front window but didn’t see anyone there. Then, the homeowner says, he heard noise coming from the back of the house so he went to the back door, opened it and confronted an unknown man. The homeowner says the man ignored commands to leave and walked towards the homeowner. The homeowner fired a single shot, hitting the man in the chest.
The gunshot victim is a man in his early 20s. At last check, he was in critical condition. The homeowner is a man in his 30s. The investigation is ongoing.
Let’s break this down. Mr. Homeowner sees a guy in his early 20s in his back yard. Instead of calling the police to report a prowler and patiently watching the trespasser, the homeowner opens the back door, gun in hand, and confronts the unwelcome visitor.
After ignoring commands to leave, the bad guy walks towards the homeowner. The story leaves out anything else that might have caused the homeowner alarm. Was the prowler meek and mild, or was he shouting threats and harsh words at the homeowner? Did he have any weapons?
If mitigating circumstances like threatening behavior from the backyard trespasser existed, one would expect those would merit a mention in the news release.
How could the average person better handle this situation?
A wise and prudent man would call 911 and report a prowler.
Admittedly, most of us among the sheepdog clan have a little bit of terrier in them. We don’t want the bad guy to get away. We don’t want the bad guy to take our stuff. But instead of engaging in a confrontation, why not just wait discretely for the police? How about possibly recording the prowler’s actions for prosecutors to later use against him or her if police make an arrest?
Opening the back door creates an opportunity for things to go poorly by exposing the homeowner to danger, up to and including getting shot and killed. After all, what if the prowler pulls a gun? Suddenly you’ve found yourself in a gun battle which you might not win. Is it worth risking a colostomy bag or other debilitating injury from a gunshot wound to confront a criminal in your back yard? The wise and prudent man says that’s a hard no. Let the cops do that. They get paid the big bucks to do that and have training, tactics and body armor to protect them.
Or, such as this case, the homeowner fires at an apparently otherwise unarmed backyard prowler. The Supreme Court has weighed in that you shouldn’t use deadly force over property crimes.
From noted legal expert Eugene Volokh:
[1.] In all states, you can use deadly force to defend yourself against death, serious bodily injury (which can include broken bones and perhaps even lost teeth), rape, or kidnapping, so long as (a) your fear is reasonable and (b) the danger is imminent (requirements that also apply to the doctrines I discuss below). For instance, you should be able to use deadly force against someone who is trying to burn down your home, since that threatens you with death or serious bodily harm. You should be able to do the same against someone who is trying to burn down your business, though with possible limitations involving the duty to retreat in the minority of states that recognize such a duty.
But in nearly all states, you can’t generally use deadly force merely to defend your property. (Texas appears to be an exception, allowing use of deadly force when there’s no other way to protect or recapture property even in situations involving simple theft or criminal mischief, though only at night, Tex. Penal Code § 9.42; see, e.g., McFadden v. State (Tex. Ct. App. 2018).) That’s where we get the conventional formulation that you can’t use deadly force just to defend property.
[2.] This conventional formulation, though, omits an important limitation: In basically all states, you can use nondeadly force to defend your property—and if the thief or vandal responds by threatening you with death or great bodily harm, you can then protect yourself with deadly force. So in practice, you can use deadly force to protect property after all, if you’re willing to use nondeadly force first and expose yourself to increased risk.
Even if it was merely a property crime that escalated into a self-defense claim after a trespasser produces a weapon, the fact remains that the homeowner escalated it into a deadly force encounter.
Meanwhile, some states like Illinois have old law on the books that allows good citizens to use deadly force to prevent forcible felonies. Forcible felonies in the Land of Lincoln include burglaries. Even if that’s on the books, how will it look to a jury panel composed of a cross-section of the community (including those who don’t like guns or the idea of self-defense) that you shot young Mongo over stealing your Craftsman lawnmower from the backyard shed or your Bose sound system from your car?
The moral of the Buckeye, Arizona, case: Call the cops and let them sort out the prowler call. Don’t risk your own health and safety, and that of your family to confront an a-hole in your back yard. Don’t risk all of the bad things that follow the use of deadly force over things in your backyard shed. It’s just not worth it.
Feared for his life … nothing to see here folks
It works for peeple at the boarder.
This advice is worth every cent you paid for it.
This article is advancing an application of risk management that is worth discussing.
Specifically, this article questions:
1) Whether or not a prosecutor or jury would consider a homeowner’s use of force to be legal versus criminal, regardless of what actually happened or was actually legally justified or not justified. (Remember, a prosecutor or jury may not get an accurate description of what happened.)
2) Whether or not the benefit of confronting a trespasser / prowler all by yourself outweighs the potential loss of property or injury to yourself if police fail to arrive on time to arrest the trespasser / prowler.
Those are valid considerations. And the fact that so many of the commenters on this forum categorically dismiss those considerations justifies this article.
Good points uncommon.
Uncommon, As to point #1, the homeowner went to see what was going on his property arming himself. When he opened the door according to the article, he told the intruder to leave. The intruder then moves toward him. Any reasonable person would consider this action on the part of the intruder to be a threat.
As to Point #2, while you think you might have a point, that the homeowner went to check out what was going on. You seem to be doing the “what if” argument. What turned out to be a prowler could have been a racoon making the noise or a opossum ( no pun intended ). There are those who say he should have called police. Maybe so, but he did not and was not under any legal obligation to do so.
Walter E Beverly III,
You are still missing the point. Sure, a homeowner has every legal right to go outside and check on a noise. Sure, a homeowner has every legal right to tell a trespasser to leave. Sure, a homeowner has every legal right to defend him/herself from an attacker. And, as the article mentions, a homeowner does NOT have a legal right to apply deadly force to a simple trespasser (in most jurisdictions).
The significant risk is this:
A prosecutor and jury may conclude that the homeowner was angry about a simple trespasser and shot him/her which is a crime. Or a prosecutor and jury may conclude that the trespasser turned into a violent attacker and the homeowner was legally justified to use deadly force in righteous self-defense. And there is no way to ensure either outcome unless the homeowner has video of the event because it is anyone’s guess what evidence is on scene, what evidence police collect, and how the jury views the event.
Remember, a prosecutor and jury do not know what really happened. They only know information that police provide about the event, which could be anything but accurate or complete for various reasons. And an inaccurate or incomplete picture could lead to a trial and a jury to return a guilty verdict.
And yet somehow, I still feel like I’m owed a refund. The entire article is premised on the notion that if the home owner had good reasons for his actions, the POLICE would have said so on their Facebook post. Mr. Boch has clearly never had any interactions with our criminal justice system. No matter how justified the shooting, the police are never going to publicly say anything more exonerating than, “the investigation is ongoing,” until the case is closed.
If somebody rings your doorbell at night, tries to break in or steal things and then attacks you in a place where you have every right to be and he had none, it’s a good shoot.
A person investigating if you are home, stealing or breaking things and then approaching you in a threatening manner is NOT the same as a harmless child running through your garden.
Max Mueller,
All of your points are accurate and true.
And you seem to be missing the two monumentally important considerations that I listed above.
Let’s say, for sake of discussion, that you would be legally justified to use deadly force and would face no criminal nor civil trial for doing so. Is it wise to open your door, step outside at night in the dark, and investigate the noise in your back yard? Note that you have no idea how many prowlers there are, where they are, how violent they are willing to be, nor how much ability they have to injure/maim/kill you (ability in terms of strength/speed as well as weaponry). Do you still think it is wise to go outside all by yourself? My personal opinion is that it is foolish.
And the premise of my previous paragraph–that you would face no criminal nor civil trial for applying deadly force–is anything but given.
These are the main points of Mr. Boch’s article.
So cops get away with shooting people for reaching in pockets but you defend life & property and you get in trouble. What a joke.
Bad guy in your property illegally.
Bad guy comes at homeowner.
Bad gets just desert.
Any cop, judge or DA that says this is wrong should lose their job.
Any President against your safety and well being needs to be removed from office.
We need more police like the sheriff in FL.
If crap like this goes to trial, it is your duty to find the homeowner innocent.
why shirking jury duty is idiotic. I want to be judged by my gun owning, freedom loving peers. Not some basement dweller with nothing better to do with its life.
Why assume he is anything but a home owner protecting his home
The author of this article provides absolute zero evidence that this was a simple property crime. Or did you not the part where the criminal tried his front door and then advanced on the home owner?
All of this commentary seems to presuppose a ‘duty to retreat’. Let’s be clear, I have no duty to retreat in my home, on my property, or even on public property. I have a RIGHT to be where I am, unless, and until, I have broken a law and/or infringed upon some other person’s rights.
Further, the castle doctrine does no apply only inside of the walls of your home. It applies equally to the curtilage – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtilage That includes driveway, walkways, yards, and outbuildings, but does not include any fields or pastures beyond.
If I feel threatened anywhere within my home or curtilage, I am perfectly justified in defending myself.
The prowler was told to leave, and instead he approached the homeowner, within that curtilage. Homeowner should be entirely in the clear here.
Also – the prowler wasn’t armed? Does that mean the prowler was confined to a wheelchair, having no arms or feet? Countless people have been killed by attackers wielding nothing more than their hands and feet. If the prowler was in a wheelchair, and had no legs, no arms, then we can agree that the prowler was unarmed.
Why do we continue to discuss self defense using terms that the anti-gun industry dictates?
John is trying to play it safe since this is a public forum and he doesn’t want or need attention from the police for inciting violence or encouraging the breaking of whatever laws apply to his readers. That said, John doesn’t live out in the woods of MS by himself a half mile or more from the nearest habitation, as I do. And therefore he can’t speak to every individuals options and legalities. That’s up to the individual reader to figure out for themselves. This all falls under the heading of ‘Situational Awareness’.
Where I live your vehicle is covered under castle doctrine. Out and about and get into a skirmish you are covered by CD.
If he wanted to “play it safe” he could have simply not written about this topic instead of producing this PoS article.
The article was probably written to help cause a discussion on this issue and let people share their oppions.
Most states define curtilage as the immediate area around your home, but not all. And the definitions vary or can be ambiguous. Have fun in court with this concept if you live in Massachusetts, for example, (or just move to a sane state.)
Women says , What can you do for me, your in a wheelchair, and have no arms or legs.
” I rang the doorbell didn’t I.”
“Women says , What can you do for me, your in a wheelchair, and have no arms or legs.”
He can knock her up, and on occasion count to one… 😉
I believe my grade schools teacher wrote this. There are people who will intentionally misinterpret or delete information in the service of “non-violence “
“Then there’s the “Castle Doctrine” that allows homeowners wide latitude to use force to defend themselves and their homes against intruders.”
Good Lord, no. It doesn’t give wide latitude. The only thing it does is relieve you of an otherwise existing duty to retreat from inside your home.
That’s it.
I understand the ignorance of this concept if you’re not into firearms. I do not understand it from our side.
Good god where is TTAG finding these “journalists.” It’s clearly a justifiable shoot, move along folks.
As mentioned by someone else above, John Boch may be playing it “safe” in his writings during this transition phase of TTAG to new ownership.
The rest of the world knows you can confront a trespasser on your property if you wish, and use deadly force if that trespasser moves toward you in a manner that causes you to fear for your safety.
I paid a whopping $45 for my plug in electric lawnmower. If you steal it I’ll have to get another mower. Even in Cook county you get to defend your home & hearth🙄
I have a nice lawnmower.
If someone stole my lawnmower, I would find it returned a few days later. It is a b!tch to start but runs well when started.
I have a gardener. I suppose he has a lawnmower.
You started the real discussion here.
If the man who was shot survives we may get a very different story of what actually happened. And the Homeowner could get charged with homicide and even if not still be sued by the victim for millions.
Case in point. In my area a young man was driving home from work and stopped at a stop sign. Across the street was a large white house with a damaged yard that someone had ridden a car over deliberately. The Homeowner mistook the young man as the one who had damaged his property because his car was the same color as the car that had damaged his property. So the Homeowner rushed the car and opened the door and started to choke the young man who pulled out a .45 and blew him away. Case of self-defense, yes, but that was irrelevant because the Home Owners wife sued the young man for “loss of companionship” and an anti-gun judge awarded her a king’s ransom in damages.
The moral of the story is you can sometimes legally kill someone and still go bankrupt over the almost certain lawsuits to follow against you.
Another case in point. A man awoke in the middle of the night to see a large man coming in through the window. He shot and killed the man but got into a firestorm of news media coverage because he blew away a small town high school football player which of course was considered a living god and not an adult. The lawsuit that followed bankrupted the man who had to pay a high priced lawyer a king’s ransom even though he was eventually declared innocent.
Another case from my area. At a gun show a punk kid ( I went to school with the kids sister) stole a revolver at a large downtown gun show (which was then outlawed forever). The kid and his friends went joy riding and smashing mail boxes. To them this was great entertainment until one hot head maniacal home owner started chasing them in his car and managed to corner them when they foolishly went down a dead end street. The Home owner bent on tearing their heads off was then shot and crippled for life by the kid with stolen handgun and it was all over a mailbox that back in those days cost less than $10.
In reality if the handgun had not been stolen and the Kid had been an adult the homeowner would have been charged with assault even though he ended up getting shot and crippled for life. Again was a $10 mailbox worth what happened to him?
All this falls on deaf ears for the Far Right are so cheap and stingy they grasp every penny they ever made so tightly it screams for mercy and would even shoot down their own mother like a dog in the street to save a penny. The greed monger Far Right regard money as worth more than their lives so they are willing to get into unnecessary gun battles and risk being crippled or killed.
As one can see these incidents are exactly why European nations have outlawed open and concealed carry and using a firearm to kill people over property or in some cases even self defense, depending on which European country we are speaking of.
You also do not have the road rage murders in Europe either as carrying a loaded gun in a car is also illegal. Sane firearms laws only seem to exist in places like Europe and Japan.
But then again why bother to reveal what it is like to live in civilized countries as the Far Right in the U.S. would not and could not even fathom what it would be like to live in a civilized country. Their sick paranoia causes them to regard life as cheap and expendable even when it comes to seeing their own children get killed in the home from unloaded guns laying around which kill children in accidents and suicides. For the Far Right “losses can never be too high” even when sacrificing their own children on the altar of zero gun control.
Their wives lives don’t matter much either. One hot head said that killing his wife was not his fault because he overdosed on eating too many Hostess Twinkies. It was called the “Twinkie Defense” and since his wife was actually a man a homophobic jury ruled that he was not competent to be tried for murder. The jury’s thinking was “So what if one queer blew another queer away”. It’s all a warped type of American justice that says “It does not matter if you kill someone if they are considered a “persona non-grata” which is a privilege often extended to whites or cops killing blacks or gays, or homeless people begging for food on the streets.
Small wonder with all the mass killings in Capitalvania where life is considered cheap and expendable that most well to do Europeans or Japanese are too frightened to even come to the U.S. for a vacation anymore. One of my European Friends once told me that “If he had been alive and in the Battle of the Marne during WWI he would have been far safer than coming to the U.S. these days on vacation. After we both had a good laugh I told him “Many a truth is said in jest”.
So now you’re back to trying to get folks to allow themselves to be murdered to avoid costly lawsuits. You are the worst propagandist, ever.
And that last paragraph is a complete and utter lie. You don’t have any friends.
So says the deraigned stalker and troll Jethro the Janitor who has looked into his crystal ball and made up another wild fantasy. After all if he saw it in his crystal ball it must be true he states to his fellow inmates at the Happy Home for mentally ill people.
See a shrink Jethro your meds need renewed.
Stalker and troll is an apt description of you, fascist dacian. You are anti gun and anti US but you continually haunt a pro gun site.
Who is the stalker and troll? You.
DAMIEN at least try and stay on topic. You are making yourself a meme of the irrational triggered leftist
Yeah, the Democrat staffers posting here stick out like sore thumbs. You’re so right about that last talking point paragraph. Unless he’s just a blue city prisoner…
Cherry picking again and from where? Where the sun doesn’t shine?
Boch has clearly been living too long in Illinoistan.
I ask a cop if I could shute somebody if they was stealing my bicycle. He said yes.
But this was the same cop who told me I didnt have to show up for court because it’s only preliminary trial.
To be safe a person should never leave their house or look out the windows, dont answer the door( Dave’s not here), you can make $20,000 an hour working from home, have Door Dash deliver what you need.
Nobody really needs to go see the Grand Canyon.
Stay inside your Home
Stay Safe.
I don’t have a lawn mower, but my flashlight does have a shotgun attached.
Mercy, the moderation filter is haywire.
It’s simple, if you catch them in your backyard, make damned sure no cameras are on you, then shoot them in the knee cap. Just one knee, because both knees shows intent and then lawyer up. Don’t say a f—-ing thing to the cops.
I ain’t inviting no lawyers to my barbque party.
I quit doing cocaine in 1980.
Not soon enough.
How long do possums live? Not counting the ones that try to cross roads.
2-3 years on average.
In 1980 me n Hunter had a falling out when he quit sharing his brothers wife so there went my connection.
I was like Bill Clinton at a pot party, I never inhaled and was only there for the wemon.
Golly, ??? Seems like Democrats have a lot of skeletons in their closets.
Hey dacian.
Riddle me that.
Call 911 and wait for an officer to (maybe) show up?
Wow y’all all hurt cause homeowner defended what was his. Weak weak weak
To be expected when men ain’t men and women can’t be defined
Not in my town buddy. Your probably get a medal for removing scum from the area. If you’re wandering through someone’s backyard at night there’s only three reasons I can think of: you’re drunk/high and wandering, you’re about to commit a crime or already have, or you’re sleepwalking. Option one and two, well that’s your problem. Option three is exceedingly rare.
Great…TTAG has another liberal writer.
If you are safe inside your home observe and call the police. If you are outside your home and an up to no good perp comes your way and won’t stop at the sight of a firearm you shoot to kill. The last thing you want is for the perp to get your firearm and use it against you.
Why is it okay for the government to kill you when you trespass on government property? Or you attempt to steal government property.
But it’s not okay for a private citizen, to kill someone who trespass on their private property. Or attempts to steal their private property.
Exactly. Steal a lawnmower from the White House shed and see what happens.
FRIGN PROWLER ,, BUM
I live 5 miles away from this shoot. All houses in that subdivision have walled back yards and lockable gates. Anyone in your back yard there advancing on you means to do you harm.
Interesting. You meant he went out there to check but in all probability didn’t expect to find anyone because there were other passive security measures that would have been meant to keep them out?
Walls and a locked gate would certainly bolster his claim that this person intended no good, as you have to actively bypass them.
“If mitigating circumstances like threatening behavior from the backyard trespasser existed, one would expect those would merit a mention in the news release.”
It might merit a mention and not get one.
Homeowner biggest mistake….talking too much to the JBT’s.
2nd attempt to post
If the man who was shot survives we may get a very different story of what actually happened. And the Homeowner could get charged with homicide and even if not still be sued by the victim for millions.
Case in point. In my area a young man was driving home from work and stopped at a stop sign. Across the street was a large white house with a damaged yard that someone had ridden a car over deliberately. The Homeowner mistook the young man as the one who had damaged his property because his car was the same color as the car that had damaged his property. So the Homeowner rushed the car and opened the door and started to choke the young man who pulled out a .45 and blew him away. Case of self-defense, yes, but that was irrelevant because the Home Owners wife sued the young man for “loss of companionship” and an anti-gun judge awarded her a king’s ransom in damages.
The moral of the story is you can sometimes legally kill someone and still go bankrupt over the almost certain lawsuits to follow against you.
Another case in point. A man awoke in the middle of the night to see a large man coming in through the window. He shot and killed the man but got into a firestorm of news media coverage because he blew away a small town high school football player which of course was considered a living god and not an adult. The lawsuit that followed bankrupted the man who had to pay a high priced lawyer a king’s ransom even though he was eventually declared innocent.
Another case from my area. At a gun show a punk kid ( I went to school with the kids sister) stole a revolver at a large downtown gun show (which was then outlawed forever). The kid and his friends went joy riding and smashing mail boxes. To them this was great entertainment until one hot head maniacal home owner started chasing them in his car and managed to corner them when they foolishly went down a dead end street. The Home owner bent on tearing their heads off was then shot and crippled for life by the kid with stolen handgun and it was all over a mailbox that back in those days cost less than $10.
In reality if the handgun had not been stolen and the Kid had been an adult the homeowner would have been charged with assault even though he ended up getting shot and crippled for life. Again was a $10 mailbox worth what happened to him?
All this falls on deaf ears for the Far Right are so cheap and stingy they grasp every penny they ever made so tightly it screams for mercy and would even shoot down their own mother like a dog in the street to save a penny. The greed monger Far Right regard money as worth more than their lives so they are willing to get into unnecessary gun battles and risk being crippled or killed.
As one can see these incidents are exactly why European nations have outlawed open and concealed carry and using a firearm to kill people over property or in some cases even self defense, depending on which European country we are speaking of.
You also do not have the road rage murders in Europe either as carrying a loaded gun in a car is also illegal. Sane firearms laws only seem to exist in places like Europe and Japan.
But then again why bother to reveal what it is like to live in civilized countries as the Far Right in the U.S. would not and could not even fathom what it would be like to live in a civilized country. Their sick paranoia causes them to regard life as cheap and expendable even when it comes to seeing their own children get killed in the home from unloaded guns laying around which kill children in accidents and suicides. For the Far Right “losses can never be too high” even when sacrificing their own children on the altar of zero gun control.
Their wives lives don’t matter much either. One hot head said that killing his wife was not his fault because he overdosed on eating too many Hostess Twinkies. It was called the “Twinkie Defense” and since his wife was actually a man a homophobic jury ruled that he was not competent to be tried for murder. The jury’s thinking was “So what if one queer blew another queer away”. It’s all a warped type of American justice that says “It does not matter if you kill someone if they are considered a “persona non-grata” which is a privilege often extended to whites or cops killing blacks or gays, or homeless people begging for food on the streets.
Small wonder with all the mass killings in Capitalvania where life is considered cheap and expendable that most well to do Europeans or Japanese are too frightened to even come to the U.S. for a vacation anymore. One of my European Friends once told me that “If he had been alive and in the Battle of the Marne during WWI he would have been far safer than coming to the U.S. these days on vacation. After we both had a good laugh I told him “Many a truth is said in jest”.
Second reply. Same as the first.
He got moderated?
I hope he retyped that diatribe letter-by-letter.
Don’t attempt this in Mn., where AG Ellison, whom wants you to not be able to obtain Lake City ammo that you subsidized, tells DAs under him to not charge gang banger felons, jumped in as lead prosecutor in the Chauvin trial, and is just generally an asshole. His advice to citizens having their cars jacked at gunpoint?… nicely exit the vehicle and watch them drive off, since we have both a duty to retreat and not escalate, same as at your place of residence. He will also be instrumental in aiding the Dem Trifecta here in passing additional anti-gun laws this session. Oh, as a bonus, he’s Muslim, so he also thinks he should get us involved in the Gaza conflict.
…. five more months, then I’m free.
To Dacien
First I don’t believe you read the same article we did nor do I believe you live in the same world. Did you not read how the suspect tried the front door first? I nor any normal tourst ever wander about trying doors at random. Maricopa County is well known for the use of 6 foot block walls which again normal people dont climb at random and of course normal people don’t charge homeowners n confronted.
What color is the sky in the world you live? It is blue in Arizona
How does someone ringing the front doorbell translate to “the suspect tried the front door first”? Ringing the doorbell isn’t “trying the front door.” Law-abiding people ring the doorbell. Burglars don’t ring the doorbell — they pick the lock. It might have been just another case of someone having the wrong address for a party. Ever get the wrong address for a party? My wife and I got the wrong address for a wedding once. After we showed up at the wedding reception for the wrong couple, it wasn’t until several minutes of friendly conversation with the other guests about how we knew the bride and groom until we finally realized we’d accidentally become “wedding crashers” at the wrong wedding (the correct wedding was on the same street, just a block away!)
It reminds me of a similar case in Texas where a Japanese tourist was invited to a party by his friends. Unfortunately, he got the wrong address for the party. He rang the doorbell, and nobody answered right away. As the tourist was walking away from the house, the homeowner opened the front door and yelled, “Hey!” or something like that. The Japanese tourist, who didn’t speak much English, thought he did have the right house for the party and started walking back towards the house, thinking the man was inviting him in. The man shot him dead. But this being Texas, the killer wasn’t charged with murder, and in fact got away with murder with no punishment.
This set off a huge international incident, with Japan advising their citizens to avoid travel to the United States (or at least to avoid Texas).
Try reading another article. https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/suspect-shot-after-trespassing-into-buckeye-homeowners-backyard-police-say.
I partially corect my statement. He rings a doorbell in the very early hours of the day. (Not normal) He either hides from the homeowner or chooses to climb the fence while he is distracted (also suspicious) and indisputably advances on the home owner The difference between charging a homeowner at 2:00.a his backyard in the middle of January and finding the wrong house on Halloween is immense
The man could have been drunk or on drugs and disoriented. Simply walking toward the homeowner under no circumstances gives the homeowner the right to gun him down. The homeowner could easily just have shut the door as the man displayed no weapon nor did he even have a weapon.
I think there may be a lot more to this story and if the gunned down man lives we may hear a very, very different story from him. If so, Mr. Homeowner is going to end up not only paying the mans huge medical bills but be sued for millions and maybe even be indicted for attempted murder.
Just another day in Capitalvania where hot heads or paranoids shoot first and ask questions later.
With all the SS/antifa terrorists running around in Capitalvania we cannot afford to take chances. We must be ready to shoot. The fascists are dangerous.
So meth heads and drunks get a pass for threatening criminal conduct? Absolutely not
prowler, a poor profession. May end up dead
21 foot rule!!! ask the consabulary?
All we are born with is our labor and we spend our life exchanging that labor for property.
We abolished the taking of one’s labor without consent with the 13th amendment.
The taking of property without consent is no different than the taking of labor without consent. It is morally right to defend your property with force – up to and including lethal force.
If you insist on calling 911 and waiting for the police to arrive and take matters inhand you must have a lot of patience, because your complaint will go to the end of the list. BUT if you tell the 911 operator that you have a firearm ypu’ll get bumped right to (or close to) the top of the list You can then proceed to evaluate what danger you might be in and act accordingly.
A homeowner calls 911 and says, “Someone is breaking into my backyard shed.”
The police say, “I’m sorry, we have no units available now. We’ll get to your house in a couple hours.”
The guy calls 911 again and says, “Don’t bother coming to my house about the burglar who was breaking into my shed. I already shot him dead.”
Two minutes later, a dozen cops show up!
They find the burglar alive and well, handcuff him, and say to the homeowner, “I thought you said you shot the guy.’
The homeowner says, “I thought you said you had no units available.”
P.S.: This is a joke. I don’t recommend actually telling this lie to the police, unless you want them to arrive with guns pointed at you and then arrest you for lying to police, which is a crime even though police are allowed to lie to you.
Call 000 for an emergency in my country and you’ll be lucky if you get someone on the phone in 2 minutes minimum and lucky again if the police turn up within a few hours.
When seconds count….
Buckeye is the ass end of Maricopa county. You call the Sheriff and they may show up that evening if you are lucky.
In AZ you are allowed to use deadly force to prevent a forcible felony. Stealing a lawnmower doesn’t count. Attempting to forcibly enter an occupied building after dark certainly does however.
Sensational article, but we have very few facts.
One more risk to consider…
Your prowler may not have started at your house. CONSIDER the possibility that he started elsewhere in the neighborhood; consider that someone else may have seen him, someone more to John’s way of thinking, who already called the police about a prowler in the neighborhood; now consider that the police might be responding to your neighborhood looking for a prowler; perhaps the responding officer sees the prowler or simply notices that something seems ‘off’ so the officer investigates; now consider that the officer sees ‘a man with a gun’ — guess what is going to happen! But don’t worry, the department will apologize to your widow.
That scenario is not impossible; it’s not only possible but it has happened numerous times all across the US.