Why should the insurance company have to pay for this and not the kids’ parents?
I deal mostly with juvenile cases and I can tell you from experience the statement did not ring false with me.
The kids absolutely should be there, helping with repairs until they are done (parents should be there too, since the kids can’t possibly help out enough to compensate for the damage they did).
If the kids’ parents were to spin this whole thing right, the kids might even come out of it with a new skill or two, and maybe some appreciation for their own ability to build instead of destroy.
Sounds a bit like the plot of Gran Torino.
Because that’s what insurance is for. They were paid to protect the homeowner’s interest.
There’s a good chance the owner wouldn’t want the little bastards and their idiot parents around “helping” with repairs.
Yeah, and that’s how insurance works - the insurance company can then go after the individual kids’ parents for what they had to pay out.
I had something similar happen, just to a much lesser degree. I witnessed 7 unsupervised neighborhood kids vandalize an ornamental landscape near 11:00 one night and when I didn’t recognize them and they wouldn’t give their names held on to the shirt of one until the constable could arrive. His mother denied her kids had anything to do with it and threatened to have me charged with injury to a child. A friend of hers told me later it was because she was so embarassed the police had been called. Still, filing a false police report? Slander? The entire neighborhood supported my action and thanked me for taking a stand but these same kids and their friends started vandalizing my shrubs and bushes, driving through my circular and kicking holes in them. When I called or went to the home the parents to report their kids had been been caugh red-handed, they either demanded “videotape evidence” or said it wasn’t their kids but their friends. 16 times this has happened in the last 14 months. Never has a parent cooperated or reprimanded their child. It’s never their precious angel.
Now I know the vast majority of kids and parents in the neighborhood would not act this way. But goddammit if the ones that do aren’t an aggravating, loathsome pain in the ass and, as mentioned, worst of all is the message it sends to those kids.
Um, because that’s how insurance works? Although if it makes you feel any better, the parents will still end up paying in the form of increased future premiums.
Not to interrupt with inconvenient facts, but this happened in one of the most conservative parts of New York State. Wayne County hasn’t voted Democrat since 1964 and it gave the world Spiritualism and Mormonism (you’re welcome). It’s too bad this guy was arrested, though, and here’s hoping nothing comes of it.
Virtually every word in the thread title is inaccurate. He didn’t own the home, and wasn’t charged for “protecting the home from vandals.” He was finished protecting the home. He was charged for threatening them with a weapon in order to force them into a closet.
These kids and their parents are absolutely wrong and should be required to repair the damage they caused. That being said, this guy was also in the wrong. Holding 8 and 10 year old kids in a closet under threat of bashing their head in with a hammer is unacceptable. He couldn’t just stand in the doorway of the room and refuse to let them pass? He didn’t have a camera or a smartphone he could use to take their pictures to identify them if they did leave? Absolutely he should have taken away their hammers. Absolutely he should have done what he could to guarantee the kids were held responsible for the damage by the police. But holding them in a closet and threatening to kill them if they tried to leave is beyond acceptable.
Four kids with hammers? That might not have gone well.
I find it quite unlikely the kids are telling the truth about that. It’s clear he corralled them into the closet, but not that he threatened to hit them.
I would have been tempted to let them try something, then defend myself as need be.
According to the article it seems he had been doing exactly that.
Of course he should have disarmed them, which he apparently did before shoving them into a closet, but after that just holding them so that the police could get there should have involved standing in the doorway and taking a couple of pictures and a video clip on his smartphone.
Does this mean I can’t hold a burglar/home-invader at gunpoint until the cops show up? Afterall, at that point I’m threatening him with the gun.
If so, nevermind that part.
If he has one and had it with him. Since he told his wife to call the police while he went over, I don’t know if that’s the case. I wondered if he would be charged with something related to imprisonment but I don’t really object to locking them in the closet. And while you can’t go threatening to kill or cripple people, he did just stumble upon them while they were destroying the house he’d spent all this time working on. You can only expect so much verbal restraint in that situation.
Heck, I hope he threatened to rip their nuts off, shove em down their throats till they choked to death, then bury their bodies in the local swamp.
Seriously. Kids do tens of thousands of dollars in damage and some harsh words aimed in their general direction is a serious crime?
I don’t care if he actually threatened to kill the little bastards. You catch somebody doing a crime, tough noogies for the criminal no matter what their age.
De-clawed.
Circumcised.
Regards,
Shodan