I’m rather curious how this is going to go. Is the prosecutor going to, despite public pressure, declare it a “good shoot” and decline to seek indictment? The problem here is that the private citizen, as of now unnamed, does not have the enormous protection that police enjoy against facing criminal charges. Is the prosecutor going to seek indictment but do so in a way that easily fails? Or will this go all the way to trial, Zimmerman style?
I can think of 2 ways this might have gone down :
The robber approached the CCW citizen and lifted his shirt, displaying the gun. He then made some kind of verbal threat or indication that this was a robbery and he wanted the citizen’s shoes.
The robber had his hand on the gun or even brandished it, displaying intent to shoot.
No matter what the robber’s friends say, unless it was “the CCW man planted that gun!”, it’s gotta be either #1 or #2.
I’m trying to work out if this makes a difference. If someone approaches you with a gun and states that this is a robbery, displaying the gun, is this not always an immediate, imminent threat? Even if the gun remains tucked in someone’s waistband, the fact that they displayed it and indicated it’s a robbery indicates implicitly that they are willing to kill if you do not “cooperate” and give up your property. It also means they may intend to kill you regardless.
It seems to me that fundamental principles of self defense should allow any citizen, anywhere in the nation, regardless of state, to immediately engage with lethal force a robber with a gun. No questions asked, no second chances, just a volley of bullets until the robber is dead.
True?
I tried to think of a case where it might be false. Perhaps if several well dressed men with holstered guns approached and stated “excuse me good sir, this is a robbery. Kindly hand over your possessions or else we will be forced to use our fists”, you could argue that this is not a case where the citizen being robbed can use deadly force. This seems debatable, however, fists are still deadly and you can see guns.
I would be very surprised if the shooter was charged with a crime, barring new information coming to light that contradicts the story as we know it today. His actions seem well within the law.
If the robber didn’t have the gun in his hand it seems to me there was no reason for the other guy to shoot immediately, he could have pulled his, told the robber to lie on the ground and wait for the police.
Life isn’t the movies. Guns don’t work instantly. There’s a lot of places a bullet can hit that do not disable someone. The “other guy’s” best chance of survival was probably to start shooting and not ask the robber to surrender, because that delay gives the robber a chance to draw and fire.
Agreed. A 16 year old with a gun is just as capable of drawing and firing it as an adult is. It’s reasonable to assume he had deadly intent in possessing and displaying the weapon. You can’t assume he only intended to intimidate the other men. Teenagers especially are prone to impulsive actions.
Seems pretty clearly self defense, if what is reported is accurate. They’ll make sure he was following the CCW laws, and if he did something wrong there, there could be a minor charge , but it wouldn’t affect the self defense aspect.
Yeah but the robber was with two other guys; who may or may not have been also armed. Multiple news stories say the robber pointed a gun at the guy with the shoes. The guy with the shoes fired one shot, not a “volley of bullets” as the OP suggested.
I certainly think people have a right to defend themselves from armed robbers.
Still, if it was me, and these are shoes I’m not wearing on a cold winters day, I would rather lose them then have a death on my conscience. And even then…
I’d never be able to wear them and would even have a hard time giving them to anyone as a present.
Although I’m not sure how much crime I could tolerate in my life. Right now it’s none.
But if I could get the words out I might even hand them over with a Merry Christmas if their holiday is going so bad that they have to resort to robbery.
That is as long as I think they may be satisfied with just the shoes and that will be the end of it.
Ohio has no brandishing law per se, but there is a definition of brandishing as an element to a crime, and it explicitly includes scenario #2. So yes, if someone flashes a gun during a robbery, the law considers that to be threat. How that translates to self defense remains up to a jury, but I can’t imagine anyone voting to convict in that scenario.
You imply in your OP that police are more protected against criminal charges in cases like this than are average citizens. I wonder if that’s factually true. Certainly the theme here on the SDMB, and my own personal belief, is that police should be held to a higher standard than regular citizens. That is to say, I don’t begrudge Joe Nobody for considering a flashed gun in a waistband an imminent threat, but a police officer has additional tools at his or her disposal to diffuse that situation.
And that said, I will never understand how people can have this “Life isn’t like the movies” attitude, which is essentially “Shooting people to death is hard; you can’t shoot to wound; you can’t point a gun at someone and hope that they back down” and at the same time think it’s wise to face down three potentially armed robbers over a pair of shoes. Just give up the shoes already.
Perhaps, but if the holdup man was looking to shoot he could have simply shot the guy and then taken the shoes. As it turns out it would have been less risky that way.
If they get away with it once, what makes you think they’ll stop there? They’ll say to themselves, “Hey, free shooz!” and threaten other people and rob them of their shoes and anything else valuable they have. It’s sad one of them had to get shot, but maybe his two friends have learned a valuable life lesson.
It should be (IMHO) but when it gets to the courts anything can happen. If he simply showed what looked to be a gun in his waistband and if the ordinary citizen then drew and had the drop on him and if he (robber) then raised his hands say to shoulder level and then ordinary citizen caps his ass, ordinary citizen could have some issues. To be 100% safe you need to be under immediate threat of death or severe injury with no recourse and the attacker has to show no willingness to surrender, flee or retreat.
Ninety nine times out of a hundred, bad guy armed is enough for a good shoot. But to say 100% nationwide I don’t think works. My google-fu escapes me today but I know folks (ordinary citizen types) have caught punishment for situations like this.
Once again, I am shocked at the bad reporting in our country.
If everything is as the shooter says, then it was a justified shooting. I have no problem with that.
But the first thing that popped into my head is ‘Where is the robber’s gun?’ The article only mentions that the teen allegedly showed a gun. Why is there no mention of the gun after that? The one teen is dead, the other two are in custody. No mention of a search for the other two, so they were taken into custody at the scene (unless there is even more the reporter forgot to ask about). So the cops have to have the gun, right? There is no mention in article that the police recovered the assailant’s gun.
What questions should have a reporter have asked?
What kind of gun was it? Handgun (.22, .38, .45)? Shotgun? Daisy Air Rifle?
Where did the kid get the gun? Bought it illegally?
At the very least, there should be something in the article that shows that reporter asked about it. Like ‘the police would not comment on the type of gun recovered or how it was obtained’.
The answers to these questions seem far more important and relevant than the high school the robber attended or that Nike didn’t comment.
Why is this important? I assume it was a handgun, and a real one (not Airsoft or anything like that, or they would have mentioned it). But I don’t see what difference it makes if it was a .22 or a 9mm.
Since the kid is dead, this might be difficult to find out. Even his colleagues might not know, or be reliable.
But that’s not (to me) anything of what makes the story interesting. The details that are interesting are
[ul][li]Shoes are really popular[/li][li]Somebody waits in line to get shoes[/li][li]Kids decide to rob for the shoes instead of waiting in line[/li][li]Kids show poor target selection skills[/li][li]Good guy wins, bad guy loses, we all live happily ever after. The End.[/ul][/li]The details of the make and model and caliber of the gun don’t matter. What matters is the crook had it - and so did the victim. Bang.