Aftermath of a shooting (my story)

[gvf]

We hid in the street armed, hiding among the parked cars, waiting for them.

Would you have done this if you had no gun? Just your hands? Likely not, you wouldn't have wanted to put yourself in so much danger to start with by leaving your house.

Well, just because you have a tool - a gun - that can also be used offensively, doesn't change the requirements of SD : the action must be defensive. Forget the tool.

De-coupling guns from SD Law is necessary or the use of the particular tool we can carry -- its easy offensive as well as defensive capabilities and its association with police usage -- can distort the meaning of the law and who we are.

SD Law does not refer to guns. It's not for you as a CCW - its for anyone and everyone.

------------------------

SD Law and Guns do not exist together legally - and are not connected in law. You have only one allowance with a CCW: to carry a lethal weapon with a waiver from the usual Gun Law prohibiting that. Nothing else, no power, no rights, that are different from anyone else's.

CCW law does not refer to shooting people. SD Law does not refer to shooting people. SD Law's origins lie in the Middle Ages, centuries before common use of guns.

SD Law refers to the weird, unusual, once-in-many-life-times fluke emergency situation of an innocent victim, walking along in life, who suddenly finds they are about to be killed NOW and uses force that could result in lethality as a Last Possible Act to save their or another's life.

Everyone has the right. And no one has it for any other situation or for any internal mind-states they may have: personal angers, biases, righteous rages, opinions on crime or people's dress or the 2nd Amendment, nor feeling scared, happy, sad, manly, insulted - or anything else.

[bennadatto]

DiveMedic...I truly hate that you had to go through that situation. It seems that our justice system is set up in such a way that honest citizens must allow the safety of their families and themselves to be pushed to the edge of endangerment to accommodate the "rights" of law-breakers. Shame on society for allowing this to happen.

As for your handling the situation, your objective was to ensure the safety of your family and yourself...mission accomplished, good job.

[Pilot]

Hard to Monday morning quaterback, but as others have said leaving the house with a shotgun and lieing in wait for them was the wrong move. It put you in danger and invites criminal charges which is exactly what happened to you. If you had stayed in the house and they tried to gain entry, different story entirely.

[True Texan]

Divemedic,

Thanks for an extremely informative read. Truly terrifying.


I am curious; if the PD take away all your guns (I thought that they could only take the weapon used); can you demand 24/7 police protection? If they take away your method of protection they are, effectively, placing you at the mercy of your enemies. What kind of solutions to this are there?

[simonkenton]

The guy in the My Space account is 21 years old.
He was 4 years old when this happened.

[Samurai]

Oh, yes. +1 on the threads above: I do NOT mean to be a Monday Morning Quarterback, or to second-guess how divemedic handled this. There is no way of knowing how we might react to similar circumstances.

I meant only to offer an explanation as to why the courts and the cops might have decided to arrest divemedic after the incident...

But, all that aside. Divemedic, you survived. You came home that night. Good for you.

[Flippinstk]

Quote:
We hid in the street armed, hiding among the parked cars, waiting for them.

Quote:
Hard to Monday morning quaterback, but as others have said leaving the house with a shotgun and lieing in wait for them was the wrong move. It put you in danger and invites criminal charges which is exactly what happened to you. If you had stayed in the house and they tried to gain entry, different story entirely.

WOW.... I really gotto go along with Pilot on what he said... You hid in the street???? These are the kindof stories that give us a bad name.

[gvf]

: I do NOT mean to be a Monday Morning Quarterback, or to second-guess how divemedic handled this.

I second that altho my earlier post was negative on the legal aspects.

But before others pile on the law: thinking it inhibits us, it's purpose is precisely due to the confusion and anger that visits anyone in such situations.
It's SUPPOSED to inhibit life and death choices only made on those feelings.
So, it's to demand an objective eye, and that demand ultimately protects many people - including us - who could otherwise be killed because of someone's mistake, due to their anger, fear or whatever.


Second, the tests for valid SD SHOULD be extremely stringent: in a split second judgment on which lives depend: we could be wrong, killing an innocent person - we could even err in fact but have a legitimate case that it was reasonable to believe otherwise. Still, an innocent person is dead.

This is not the kind of situation - human life dependent on split-second decisions- that should be loosely treated by law.

[B.N.Real]

divemedic-the amazing part of your story is that you and your neighbors worked together to protect your family and property.

I take issue with the "I should have shot the teen with the ak part,though"

You and your neighbors showed amazing restraint in dealing with these criminals.

Make no mistake,it reads to me like these kids were not out to 'have a little fun'.they were out to kill you to send a message that they owned your neighborhood.

Had you killed that teen,the media would have undoubtedly branded you a wanton murderer and pumped out all kinds of excuses why a kid had an ak in the car that night.

You would have been jailed and also have been sued in a civil court if not assessed guilty in a criminal court for second degree if not first degree murder.

Your true story is a humbling tale of respondsible people acting respondsibly in the face of criminals that knew they have a decided advantage(being teens) with the law.

The only way to deal with these kinds of criminals is how you did it.

And,these days it never hurts for your own protection to have a video camera with a good microphone to record what happened as it happened and don't give your only copy to the police.

Amazing story and so glad to read that nobody had to die to end the threat.

[Chui]

Thanks for sharing. I, too, despise gangs. It looks like it's a multi-racial gang which for some reason makes me feel even more uneasy. Why? They "disarm" your sense of what a gang is (i.e., same race, usually).

At any rate, what you did violated the current laws in this nation. I'd not convict you if you shot hobgoblin 1, 2, 3 or 4 but that's just me. They don't have sh1t to lose and you've got everything to lose. Yep, we can critique your actions sitting in "Ann Arbor, Michigan" or "Ashville, North Carolina" but you were THERE and I empathize with you.

Now, the "police officers" weren't worth their weight in grass clippings. They were liars. I probably would not have dropped the charges but we all have financial limitations.

Good to see you made it through.

[divemedic]

I did eventually get my guns back. I still own the 870, I can't ever seem to get rid of it. I honestly think that shotgun saved my life that night.

While my actions may or may not have been illegal, I did what I did in the interest of protecting my family. It does no good to say I was not breaking the law when some gang banger shoots through the windows of my house and kills my wife or kids. The shotgun portion of the incident had nothing to do with CCW. I was not carrying concealed at the time.

We spend a lot of time on firearm boards talking about shootings- real and hypothetical. The truth is, the vast majority of self defense shootings are not so cut and dried as to be obvious "good" or "bad" shootings.

All bluster aside, I feel like I did what anyone would do- when threatened, I drew my weapon and called the cops. The cops did nothing. The gang came looking to kill me, in greater numbers this time. Again, I called the cops and the cops did nothing. When they returned a third time in even greater numbers, I was waiting for them. The alternative (the way I saw it) was to wait for them inside my home until they eventually came in great enough numbers to succeed in killing me and my family.

Regardless of what you think of my actions that night, I would invite everyone to think about what you would do in such a situation. Leave your home? and go where? Wait inside for them, and thereby give the tactical advantage to the shooters, while hoping that the 10 minute response time of the cops is good enough? Something else? For those that suggest I should have run away, do you mean that I should have left my home that night? Or do you mean that when they pulled up, rifles in hand, that I should have tried to run from men in vehicles, armed with long guns, while my wife and I tried to carry a 14 month old and a two year old child?

It is easy to talk about the law and what makes gun owners look bad, but when there are critters in front of you with guns who outnumber you by a 4 to 1 margin, and they are looking to kill you and your family, those arguments become academic. These incidents are a good example of the real world, and not some "what if" scenario where everyone knows what is right. There are ALWAYS shades of gray, and this is what we need to think about and plan for.

I knew the myspace page that I linked to was not one of the actual people there. I googled the gang name, and that page was the first hit. I used that page to illustrate that the people involved were nasty characters who mean business, not just some wannabes that run their mouths. The threat was very real.

Edited to add- I am not some Rambo wanna be that was waiting for a fight. If I had been, I would have pulled the trigger when I got the chance. My attorney even told me that I had showed more restraint than many LEOs would have. After the cops blew me off three times, I knew I was on my own.

[chris in va]

I look at it this way. If there was no 'law', ie cops/lawyers, lots of this armchair quarterbacking would get thrown out the window.

You did what you had to do to protect yourself and your family in the absence of LEO's. Bottom line.

[skydiver3346]

You know, I just read each and everyone of the responses to Divemedic's harrowing account. There were some pretty good responses and everyone gave us something to consider.

But, when you really look at this situation, none of us was there, only he was. Secondly, what would you really do if this actually happened to you personally? Your wife and/or kids are there on the street or in the house (depending on you to protect them 24/7)... Sounds like a really bad ass gang of dirt bags he was dealing with who kept coming back and back again. They called the police but obviously not much was really done about it. The proof was the gang kept returning to harass them, etc. What would each of you really do if this happened to you and your wife is scared as hell, etc.

Its easy to say just why don't you just move to another neighborhood or do this or that, etc., but until it actually happened to you, most of us just don't know EXACTLY what they would do. I sure as hell don't know for sure? I am thinking that I might do this, (I would have shot the first guy with a weapon who was a threat to myself and family). A bat is a horrilbe weapon to be struck with and could lead to permanent damage and/or death. This is Divemedic's front street, his neighborhood for Christ's sake! Don't we the citizens have any rights anymore? Do the gangs rule and we just have to take whatever they dish out. I'm sorry, but honor is something and we need to appreciate his stance. Yes, it was dangerous and could have had disasterous results, but you got to admire his standing up for his rights and protecting his family and neighbors.

Anyway, definitely gives us food for thought doesn't it? I know that it will get me to thinking about what I am going to do (ahead of time) if this or something similar was to happen to me and my family.
Thanks for lettting me vent. Good luck to everyone and I sure hope you never have to endure anything like this.

[gvf]

Wait inside for them, and thereby give the tactical advantage to the shooters, while hoping that the 10 minute response time of the cops is good enough?

You can't take SD lethal actions based on suppositions. They weren't at your home - I think you said at that time they weren't even on the street - and yes, you should have called the cops. What would happen next? I don't know - no one does. You precluded all safe conclusions by choosing to act on what COULD have been the fatal one - including that the police had come very quickly and that the car would have kept on driving.

The problem isn't the human reaction you had - I might too do the same thing, anyone might. The problem is it's not based in what the law is and what would protect others in similar situations from you acting on suppositions - and you think because it was right it was OK. Anyone can think anything is right and frequently do. You can't kill people based on that - or anything but the reality of what is transpiring NOW. Otherwise we all can be dead.

[gvf]

Wait inside for them, and thereby give the tactical advantage to the shooters, while hoping that the 10 minute response time of the cops is good enough?

You can't take SD lethal actions based on suppositions. They weren't at your home - I think you said at that time they weren't even on the street - and yes, you should have called the cops. What would happen next? I don't know - no one does. You precluded all safe conclusions by choosing to act on what COULD have been the fatal one - including that the police had come very quickly and that the car would have kept on driving.

The problem isn't the human reaction you had - I might too do the same thing, anyone might. The problem is it's not based in what the law is and what would protect others in similar situations from you acting on suppositions - and you think because it was right it was OK. Anyone can think anything is right and frequently do. You can't kill people based on that - or anything but the reality of what is transpiring NOW. Otherwise we all can be dead from all the people who are "right".

[Keltyke]

Wait inside for them, and thereby give the tactical advantage to the shooters, while hoping that the 10 minute response time of the cops is good enough?

If you wait inside, the tactical advantage is yours. They don't know where you are or what you're armed with.

If several calls ar made to 911, saying, "Man with a gun." Or, "Shots fired." Will bring every cop in 5 miles running Code 3 to get there.

Usually you canNOT "lay in wait." That makes it premeditated and/or "trap setting". As a CWP holder, you may NOT advance or attack. Your duty to the law is to DEFEND and, if possible, retreat to a safe place. Now, in SC, there is no "obligation to retreat". You may stand your ground. You also have no obligation to retreat from the boundaries of your property, which include whatever vehicle you're riding in at the time.

All that being said, it's easy to second guess the poster's actions while sitting calmly in an armchair. All you can do in the field is make the best decision you can at the time, with the information you have at the time.

[divemedic]

This is an interesting exercise. I am going to give you more information, and let's look at my tactical situation. Go to google maps. If you search for

848 Broad Meadows Blvd
Virginia Beach, VA

You will see that the address is on the corner of Broad Meadows and Newtown Road. A box comes up that allows you to click on "Street View." Click that, and click "Satellite" and you will see the neighborhood. On the street view, my house was the one directly in front of the silver Chrysler. My neighbor lived in the house with the open door. The place looks so much like I remember it, it is stunning. Little has changed.

The street view pic is amazing. That picture gives you a view of the area from roughly the spot where the car load of gang bangers was parked. I was hiding in roughly the spot between where the red Ford and the Silver Chrysler are in the picture.

According to google earth's ruler, it is 35 feet from your vantage point to my front door.

You can see there wasn't much room to keep them at arm's length.

[Selfdfenz]

Divemedic shared his experience and perspective on what I think we can all agree was a very distressing situation for him, his family and some members of his neighborhood. What I or you or anyone else think [yep,think] we would have done under identical circumstances is speculation and that’s all it will ever be. The after action critique isn't adding anything positive.
Why can’t we just leave it at kudos to him for sharing and be glad no one was injured or killed.
Best,
S-

[Creature]

I live in this neck of the woods...and things are no better now, if not worse, than they were then. In fact, gang sign is everywhere here you look here in Virginia Beach. The evening local news is not complete without at least two or three reported shootings here in Virginia Beach and in the rest of the Hampton Roads region. I cant wait to get orders out of here.

Glad you made it out okay, dm.

[Keltyke]

The after action critique isn't adding anything positive.

Actually, it is. By analyzing a person's actions, we can possibly improve on those actions the next time it happens.

For the person to continue with the only knowledge they had at the time is handcuffing him to those same actions - right or wrong.

Discussion generates alternate actions which are possibly better than the ones taken.

We always strive to improve, and we can always learn from others.

[BoilerUP]

Thank you for sharing your experience...regardless of the hindsight legality of events I'm glad nobody (you, your family, or the perps) were hurt in this incident.

No telling how many lives have been spared by the sound of an 870 slide!

Here's to hoping NONE of us are faced with these decisions...

[Tennessee Gentleman]

divemedic,

Glad you didn't shoot one of those guys. Had you done so you would most probably be in prison now or just getting out. When you left your house and "lay in wait" you cancelled out pretty much any self defense claim. Call the cops, put your family in a covered place and wait for the cavalry. Had I been on a jury that tried you for murder I would have found you guilty and locked you away. You were every lucky.

[Keltyke]

All bluster aside, I feel like I did what anyone would do- when threatened, I drew my weapon and called the cops. The cops did nothing. The gang came looking to kill me, in greater numbers this time. Again, I called the cops and the cops did nothing.

You definitely need to move, dude!

[divemedic]

Glad you didn't shoot one of those guys. Had you done so you would most probably be in prison now or just getting out. When you left your house and "lay in wait" you cancelled out pretty much any self defense claim. Call the cops, put your family in a covered place and wait for the cavalry. Had I been on a jury that tried you for murder I would have found you guilty and locked you away. You were every lucky.

That, IMO, is where our laws are seriously wrong.

1 Gangbangers out on the street after 22 arrests by their 17th birthday.
2 Underage illegally carrying weapons
3 Attack a citizen in his own front yard, not one, but three times- police do nothing (must be busy writing speeding tickets)
4 Citizen defends himself IN HIS OWN FRONT YARD FROM ARMED CRIMINAL has to worry about going to prison
5 Gangstas think prison is a joke, for them prison is a revolving door vacation
6 Other gun owners support this kind of thinking

Am I the only one who sees the problem here?

Edited to add:

This is why I love living in Florida:

(3) A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

776.08 Forcible felony.--"Forcible felony" means treason; murder; manslaughter; sexual battery; carjacking; home-invasion robbery; robbery; burglary; arson; kidnapping; aggravated assault; aggravated battery; aggravated stalking; aircraft piracy; unlawful throwing, placing, or discharging of a destructive device or bomb; and any other felony which involves the use or threat of physical force or violence against any individual.

(3) Any person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows, harasses, or cyberstalks another person, and makes a credible threat with the intent to place that person in reasonable fear of death or bodily injury of the person, or the person's child, sibling, spouse, parent, or dependent, commits the offense of aggravated stalking, a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.

[Creature]

Using the address you provided above, I can see how exposed you could be by viewing your old house using the "street view" in Google Maps. I panned around and that is not a good place to find cover if there werent any cars in the area for the Block Party to take place.