This story describes an incident where a 44 year old mother was driving and had a near miss with another driver in Vegas. There was an argument and she drove home. The driver of the other car shot at her while she was in her house. Her adult son shot back at the car when it was fleeing. There was a lot more to this story. I hope you will read the article to get the full picture. But the mother came off as a very innocent victim and the one thing I don’t know is who fired the first shot? Was it her son? Or the driver of the other car?
Regardless, I’ve seen this plot in more than one movie. The police and the prosecutors are all very sorry and very sympathetic but the son gets charged with murder or manslaughter and takes a plea and spends several years in prison with some hard criminals. Why? Because the car was leaving the scene. He could have called the police instead of “taking the law into his own hands” (that is what the police and DA’s call it - not me).
IMO, they should let it go to trial. What jury would convict this guy of anything for shooting at someone who had just shot his mother who wound up dying after she was driving to give her daughter driving lessons in a school parking lot? I mean, isn’t that the prescribed place to give your child driving lessons? You may say that giving her daughter driving lessons has nothing to do with this case. But if it goes to a jury trial, I would suspect it will have a good deal to do with it. Still, so much will depend on who fired the first shot. Who was it?
I don’t know. It’s just my opinion. Shouldn’t they go for a jury trial?
I think the name of one of the movies was Felon (2008)
But I just want to say the following line from the news story is so terribly ambiguous.
What a terribly ambiguous statement from the story …
“The suspect vehicle appeared outside the home, and someone inside fired multiple shots, one of which struck Meyers, investigators said.”
“someone inside” … WTH? does that mean inside the house? or inside the vehicle?
You would think a news reporter would present that line in such a way to make it clear. It seems to be to be a very important element. Who fired the first shot? OK. It was someone inside. But … inside what?
Gosh! For once I wish this was The Pit because I would love to open up and curse and swear at this news reporter for not making that clear. They could have said they weren’t sure about it if they weren’t sure.
OK. I’m over that now. There is no need to move this to The Pit.
But this story really gets my goat. I just can’t believe it was written in such a poor way.
OK. If you take a few minutes to analyze this, it becomes clear that since it says one of the shots fired struck Myers (who was the mother), then it must have been fired from inside the vehicle. I think. Maybe?
In that case it makes the other driver very guilty - at least IMO. Any jury will fry him, I think.
This actually happened to my father. A robber came in to his establishment and robbed him at gunpoint.
My father followed him out into the street and shot at the guy’s car.
My father got reprimanded harshly by the police, but charges were never filed.
One advantage: this happened in a pretty lonely area of the back country. If it had been in a built-up city, the police might have taken it more seriously. Also, my father’s shots seem to have missed. If he’d actually hit the car, or, worse, hit the robber or his accomplice, that, too, might have led to charges.
And…it’s entirely possible that a D.A. would be reluctant, because most juries would be pretty damn sympathetic. The guy shot your mom, and you shot back: few jurors would really want to punish you for it. Most of 'em would be sympathetic. If some bastard shot at my mom, and I had a gun in my hand…the only question is whether to shoot twice, or empty the magazine.
They haven’t even apprehended the shooter in the car. The most they can charge the son with is some kind of negligent discharge of a weapon. They don’t even know if he hit anything.
Not according to that article.
Woman in car #1 gets into an argument when there was a near collision with car #2.
Car #1 drives home.
Car #2 arrives at the residence and someone inside the vehicle fires at car #1.
Woman in car #1 is hit in the head and later dies.
Car #2 flees.
Son and husband of the dead woman shoot at car #2 and possibly hits it once.
No mention of charges against the son or husband.
Suspect unknown and still at large.
Cursing is allowed. If you were to use naughty words about someone off board it wouldn’t necessarily be Pit worthy. Unless your whole thread was nothing more than a rant.
However, in this case you are wrong. In context it was very clear the shots came from the car that pulled up and not the house. I had no problem following it.
I have to agree with Charlie Wayne on that part. I mentally hiccuped on that sentence, too. It was (IMHO) poorly and ambiguously written. Clearly, it’s meant to refer to the individuals inside the vehicle, but it could have been written better.
Seems clear to me. It was one sentence. The subject of the sentence is “the suspect vehicle.” The location of the vehicle was “outside the home.” I had no problem understanding that the shots came from the vehicle. Especially in the context of the entire article.
But regardless, there is certainly no mention of any charges for the son. So there is no reason to answer the question, “Should he take a plea?” Unless there is another article with more information.
ETA did a quick glance of several articles after a simple google search. No mention of charges for the son.
I guess I should have qualified my question by saying, "**If ** the son hit someone in the car (specifically the man who shot and killed his mom), **and **the son is charged with some crime for doing that, should he take a plea or should he go for a jury trial? I fullly agree with Ranger Jeff who said, "it’s unlikely any jury would convict them (him).
I think it’s unlikely any jury would ever convict the son for several reasons. One of which is the physical description of the men in the car. One of them was described as having a “spiked” hair cut. I think that means that he looked like a punk rocker and had a mohawk style haircut with spikes. Of course, his lawyer would probably not wanted him to appear that way in court. But maybe the defense could show the jury pictures from the day of the incident?
If I was on the jury, I couldn’t help but make the assumption that these fellows were druggees and were high on some kind of Methasomething drugs). I know it’s not right to do that and not fair either. But I just could never help but make that assumption. If not for being high on drugs, how would they shoot and kill his mom just because she almost had a traffic accident with them and then quarreled about it?
In any event, if the son shot the man who killed his mom, how could any jury in this world send him to prison after his mother came home and asked her son to help her? Given the men in the car shot first (which seems to be the case), even if the son shot them while they were leaving the scene, it seems to me he could very reasonably claim self-defense because they could have easily shot again. In addition, he could claim there was something seriously wrong with these men (given their physical descriptions and their actions i.e. shooting his mother) and so he could claim self-defense insofar as that extends to third parties. I mean they could have easily shot and caused harm to other people in the neighborhood and if he shot them and caused them to stop in their tracks (so to speak), I would think his lawyer could make a very good claim that he was protection other people in the neighborhood.
But all of that may well be unnecessary since if someone shoots and kills your mother, it is just very reasonable for you to shoot back at them and even more reasonable for you to drop the dumbass scumbags in their tracks. At least that is the opinion I would like to express here.
P.S. I wanted to slightly change Ranger Jeff’s statement. When he said, "it’s unlikely any jury would convict them’. I wanted to change “them” to “him” and format “them” using strike through because I think that is the message that he meant to convey. But I couldn’t find any way to do that. I was certain I once saw a “strike through” option. Is there none in the advanced editor’s options? By “advanced editor” I mean the editor that appears when you click on “Go Advanced”.
I’d just like to add that if I could have changed Ranger Jeff’s statement, I would have made it clear that I couldn’t know what he meant. But assumed he meant that the jury would not convict the one person who killed the lady and would not deal with all of the people in the car.
I don’t think so. I didn’t read anything to that effect.
I guess I was pretty steamed up after reading this story and wasn’t being as coherent as I would have liked. So, maybe I meant to say the person in the movies was charged - not the son in this actual incident.
However, I would fully expect the police will apprehend these guys. Or maybe even the citizens of Vegas will do that. After all, I would think many of those citizens would feel just as steamed as I did and would call the police if they had any information or knew who these guys were.
After all, how clever could they be and how likely could they avoid detection? One of them was described as having a “spiked” type of haircut. That reminds me of "punk rockers from the 70s and 80s. Not too many of them on the streets of Vegas.
The law is a dinasour, and will squash anyone it steps on. But… it can still be self defence even if you shoot him in the back while he is running away.
As we see occasionally in very odd-looking decisions.
“in the back” and “running away” are evidence, but not definitions, and “self defence” can include a wider range of considerations than what the victom is doing at the moment of impact.
Judging by cases around here, I’d say that perhaps you have a better chance of getting off for shooting him than for hitting him with a bat. A homicide is considered seriously by all levels of the system. Battery is just another magistrates court case.
The police already know the son fired at the car. If they had any inclination to charge him with something they would have. Hitting or not hitting anyone in the car would just make any charge more severe. As has been shown before (O.J.) Nevada has a bit of a different outlook with some of their laws and I’m certainly not an expert. He may have been charged in some states and not in others.
As a hypothetical jury member, I’d be pretty sympathetic to the person who fires back after being fired upon, regardless of whether there seemed to be a retreat underway.
If someone is “running away”, how do we know they’re running away forever, or just running to some cover to turn around and shoot at you again? They’ve already demonstrated that they’re willing to shoot at you and they’re still armed.
If it goes to a jury trial, the outcome will be very much influenced by the arguments made by the attorneys to the judge (with the jury not present), regarding what evidence, testimony, and arguments will be allowed, and by the judge’s decisions on those questions. The jury will only see and hear what the judge allows and the attorneys will only be allowed to ask or discuss what the just allows.
Jury trials are often very scripted events, with very manipulated outcomes.
In the sentence immediately before the one you want to change, I referred to the husband and son of the murdered mother. IMHO, 2 people, in this case the husband and son, equals a “them” and not a “him”.
B. There is a way to do strike throughs, but on the SD MB, quoting someone’s text and altering it (changing or striking through text) is a severe no-no. At most, I believe you can bold someone’s text in a quote but you’d have to add right after that some notation that the bolding was yours, but don’t take my word for it, ask a mod.
Oh, and please don’t smite me for Jr Modding. :eek:
I find it amusing a number of people think that “no jury would convict” the shooter and abettor. It wasn’t that long ago when a man who killed two intruders into his home was convicted for murder. Vigilantism isn’t justice.