Surveillance video shows the shooter, described as a 23-year-old woman, retrieving a rifle from the trunk of her car and pointing it toward the ground near a man armed with an umbrella and a pocket knife.
Then it shows the man swinging at the woman as she steps back and fires the weapon.
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Moral of the story: don’t hit people. They may be armed. Or, in this case, they are quite visibly armed.
Assuming it gets that far, the following actions aren’t going to do her any favors when trying to convince a jury of the rightness of her actions: taking a picture of the victim with her camera phone as he lay bleeding out, continuing to finish pumping her gas, driving off before the cops got there. That said, considering the victim’s brother owned the car wash across the street, that she had just left, I can see why she might have felt threatened had she chosen to stay. If she wasn’t going to stay at the scene, it would be a good idea if she’d have called police immediately after the shooting and driven to the nearest police station.
It’s unclear from the story if she’d even called the cops. Some of the commenters are indicating that she didn’t. No one knows anything at this point. If she hadn’t, then not doing so is a poor choice. It may result in her being arrested, charged, and jailed, where if she had called them first, she may have been able to have been questioned and released while the police investigate. Saves on bail. OTOH, if she had outstanding warrants, she’s going to jail anyway, whether she calls the cops or not. I do not know, and am not a lawyer, but isn’t it a crime in many jurisdictions to not call the police after a shooting like this when you’re the shooter?
Because it bears repeating, here’s Massad Ayoob’s, a well-known consultant on self-defense matters and legal issues that arise from them, Five Things to say and do after being involved in a shooting (Scroll to post #2.) :
Of course, if you leave the scene, there’s no guarantee the evidence, or the witnesses, will still be hanging around… A longer version of this advice, and his opinion on some of the differences between defense attorneys’ usual clients, and someone involved in a justifiable shooting, may be found here. I found the differences very interesting between his advice, and the famous advice from criminal defense attorney and law professor James Duane to “Never Talk To The Police.”
Crazy. Who decides to backhand a woman carrying a rifle, who may have already already discharged a warning shot into the ground? (Claimed by a commenter at the Houston Chronicle’s comments to the article on the story.) While he’s carrying a knife? Oh, and holding the rifle in that position, with the guy right next to you, is an excellent way to get that rifle taken from you.
(I’m not saying that there’s anything factual about my assertion that the assailant with a knife was on bath salts. However, keeping on after someone pulls a gun on you sounds like a totally zombie thing to do!)