Despite pleadings of 911 operator Texas man kills burglars exiting neighbor's house

I work for company that installs higher end alarm systems, mostly in upscale homes and a few small businesses. When I started there I worked in the central station that monitors the systems, following procedures to phone the owners and 911 dispatchers when the account calls for it. In three years, working the night shift two of them, I handled maybe 4 actual burglaries. By my own estimation we would handle 10 false alarms a night from ~5000 accounts, so doing some rough math, that's about 1 in 2000 alarms being an actual intrusion.

What disturbs me here is that most people don't know alarm systems for the home are really a joke. You end up with a mess of dispatching police to look into an insect flying through a motion sensor, a loose door and about a dozen other common things that will set off motion and magnetic sensors. Frequently the home owners have family members or neighbors that will come over to check on the house while they are away, but they don't teach them how to operate the alarm system or they forget the code to reset it, leaving a lovely siren blaring for the neighbors to hear. This is where you run into trouble and I have a feeling this is the perfect setup for false alarms + over zealous neighbors getting someone killed. You have a right to protect your home and property, but there are too many people in America that get all wound up over nothing. I live in a peaceful city and we have home owners spending $5k-$25k on security systems...it's insane (and lucrative).

Now to digress a little more...

I am a (male) high school teacher and I have a daughter. If I see a child or (worse) a pre-teen crying on the beach I change my direction and put as much distance as possible between us. It’s too dangerous even to take a picture, imagine TOUCHING them!

The sad thing is that I’m not joking; I never touch my students and I couldn’t even imagine touching one of my daughter’s little friends.

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Are we going to make a situation where people feel uncomfortable going over to a house now too? If I lived in a house, and my neighbor asked me to look after their house while they were on vacation and such, I'd have to decline. In fact I don't think I'd go near anyones house at night as a Good Samaritan investigating something suspicious. Do we really want a society where everybody is afraid to speak honestly from fear of being offensive, help a child from fear of being labeled a pedophile or help a neighbor because they may shoot you? It's just scary to think about these things and where we are going.
 
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Beerina said:
Is this a good policy, when "somebody" is "thief in the act"?
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It may or may not be, but the law simply doesn't allow you to shoot someone under these circumstances.

And in any case, the 911 dispatcher was right when he said "... ain't no property worth shooting somebody over..." More exact phrasing might have been, "You could go to prison if you shoot these guys; that property isn't worth more than your freedom."
 
BPSCG said:
It may or may not be, but the law simply doesn't allow you to shoot someone under these circumstances.
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Actually, I am pretty sure it does. After looking at the penal code again to find the part I omitted before, I noted that in this case, the suspects were burglars, not just committing theft. Therefore the "during the nighttime" does not apply. The fact that the modifier "during the nighttime" is added to both theft and criminal mischief but not burglary, robbery, etc. shows those clauses only apply to theft and criminal mischief (eg. vandalism.)

You can shoot a robber or burglar any time of day if you "reasonably believe the unlawful interference constitutes attempted or consummated theft of or criminal mischief to the tangible, movable property."

You are certainly welcome to argue the law SHOULD NOT say that, but the case law in Texas has long shown that citizens can lawfully use deadly force to protect property.
 
Biff Starbuck said:
You can shoot a robber or burglar any time of day if you "reasonably believe the unlawful interference constitutes attempted or consummated theft of or criminal mischief to the tangible, movable property."
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Could you link to the applicable parts? Thanks.
 
Beerina said:
Is this a good policy, when "somebody" is "thief in the act"?
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Laws aside for the moment...yes, I think it is a good policy. The state shouldn't be allowed to put you death for loss of property so I don't see why an individual should be able to wield that power in the heat of the moment.

If, on the other hand, you reasonably fear for your life, kill the ****.
 
technoextreme said:
Well if you really want to feel flabbergasted the same exact scenario happened in Massachusetts and the guy was found not guilty. Technically, the difference was that it was his property.
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Something similar happened in Wichita but it was the guy's boat and it was considered an extension of the home.
 
casebro said:
No update yet on the grand jury?
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On Friday, some news outlets said that the case had already gone to the grand jury. This link reports that "it could take several weeks before the case goes to a grand jury."

That link also includes a comment from the shooter's lawyer: "He told them to stop. They stopped and looked at him and became terrified. Then they jumped and he fired."
 
Ladewig said:
On Friday, some news outlets said that the case had already gone to the grand jury. This link reports that "it could take several weeks before the case goes to a grand jury."

That link also includes a comment from the shooter's lawyer: "He told them to stop. They stopped and looked at him and became terrified. Then they jumped and he fired."
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Horn needs a new lawyer. I was on his side until I read this. If that's his defense, he's screwed.

Maybe he misspoke. Here's what I think his lawyer probably meant to say:

"He told them to stop. They did not. Instead they looked at him menacingly. My client became terrified. Then they jumped at him and he fired at the ground. That's when he said 'Boom, you're dead!' to try and scare them. But since they still did not stop, he fired at each of them once more. That explains the three shots. It was self-defense all the way."
 
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madurobob said:
Wow. I wonder how the neighbor feels about two lives snuffed out for his easy-to-get-away-with stuff?

I'm generally OK with folks having shotguns for home protection, but this guy went way to far. Yet another reason I'm happy not to live in Texas (nope, this kind of thing would never happen in NC :rolleyes:)

I get the feeling he was a bit trigger happy. He could have simply confronted the bad guys in the yard and they would have dropped the stuff, pooped their pants, and fled. If he had to shoot, a leg shot would completely incapacitate. Sure, its tough to think things through in a firefight... but thats why folks shouldn't get into firefights in the first place. All he needed to do was delay them another 30 seconds.. not forever.
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This is how this neighbor would feel in the same situation: thanks, man! Let me buy you a beer and some new double-ought!

LOL...I love this sort of libbie thinking: just "delay" them. Um....criminals who know that the person pointing a gun at them has much more to risk than they do in that situation just laugh at people with guns shouting "freeze!"

I ran into JUST that situation once, years ago. I was in the alley behind our house, saw two punks breaking into my neighbor's truck..yelled at them...did they run away? Nope, came loping down the alley at me...I went inside, got a gun and came back out. Now, they are standing there screaming at me, "shoot us, M-F'er!! Go ahead!" They knew that I, a 30-something homeowner with a mortgage, car payments, etc., was not about to REALLY shoot them. And in fact, they knew that with the cops on the way, I'd better disappear that gun real fast or it would be ME facing criminal charges.

Most big cities are run by libs. And libs chaff at the very idea of citizens protecting themselves and their neighbors...it's the cops job, after all, to come and "protect" us by bagging our bodies, taking our wives and daughters to the hospital where a nurse will save them with a rape kit, and that of course stealing our belongings is the criminals "right" because he is "poor" and/or a "minority."
Tokie
 
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Tokenconservative said:
This is how this neighbor would feel in the same situation: thanks, man! Let me buy you a beer and some new double-ought!
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Me, I'll wait for the interview with the neighbor. I know my very right-leaning NC neighbors would be mighty upset about me killing burglars on their property because they are also mighty christian. I would be similarly upset with the roles reversed because death is in no way a proper penalty for burglary.

Tokenconservative said:
LOL...I love this sort of libbie thinking: just "delay" them. Um....criminals who know that the person pointing a gun at them has much more to risk than they do in that situation just laugh at people with guns shouting "freeze!"
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Not according to the lawyer's account. The perps were scared and began to flee. Only then did they get popped. This shooter is no hero, he's either a coward or holds human life in very low regard, or both. I am glad he is no neighbor of mine.

Tokenconservative said:
Most big cities are run by libs. And libs chaff at the very idea of citizens protecting themselves and their neighbors...it's the cops job, after all, to come and "protect" us by bagging our bodies, taking our wives and daughters to the hospital where a nurse will save them with a rape kit, and that of course stealing our belongings is the criminals "right" because he is "poor" and/or a "minority."
Tokie
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Right, most cops just love petty criminals and would prefer dealing with them :rolleyes:
 
Tokenconservative said:
LOL...I love this sort of libbie thinking: just "delay" them. Um....criminals who know that the person pointing a gun at them has much more to risk than they do in that situation just laugh at people with guns shouting "freeze!"
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According to Bridges, at the first sound of gunfire, fellow students Tracy Bridges and Mikael Gross, unbeknownst to each other, ran to their vehicles to fetch their personally-owned firearms.[8] Gross, a police officer with the Grifton Police Department in his home state of North Carolina, retrieved a 9 mm pistol and body armor.[9] Bridges, a county sheriff's deputy from Asheville, N.C.,[10] pulled his .357 Magnum pistol from beneath the driver's seat of his Chevy Tahoe. As Bridges later told the Richmond Times Dispatch, he was prepared to shoot to kill.[11] Bridges and Gross approached Odighizuwa from different angles, with Bridges yelling at Odighizuwa to drop his gun.[12] Odighizuwa then dropped his firearm and was subdued by several other unarmed students, including Ted Besen and Todd Ross.[13]
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Link.

I don't know what would have prevented the shooter from standing behind a pickup truck on his side of the street (this is Texas - there's always a pickup on your side of the street), firing a shot in the air to get their attention, then pointing his gun at them and yelling, "Drop it, and lie down, or next time I won't miss!" Maybe they would have run anyway, but maybe they would have done what he said, and there would be a lot less argument today about whether he was a hero or not.
 
It is surprising to me how many people feel that they do (or should!) have the right to use deadly force against property criminals. I don't know how many times I have fielded the old statement, "well, if someone's trying to break into my house, I'll just shoot 'em and drag 'em inside!" This sort of thing is engrained in the public consciousness; I wonder if anyone has actually tried it?
I have been asked by citizens if they could shoot at people committing "lawn jobs", for instance, or if they saw someone breaking into a shed or outbuilding.

Much of this is fueled by anger and frustration, of course, and is more "venting" than a serious question.
Here's a circumstance that occurred locally. An armed robber announces a stick-up, and the store owner produces a gun and fires, striking the robber. The robber flees, and the store owner chases him out to the parking lot, where the robber collapses. The store owner fires several more shots into the prostrate robber, killing him.
The store owner is indicted for the use of excessive force.

However, the case is dropped. Turns out that the store owner's daughter had been killed by an armed robber just weeks previously. The prosecutor decided that it would be impossible to empanel a jury who would convict.....
 
At what point in time, in the United States, did it become a crime, to protect yourself from crime?
 
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