This fatal shooting happened near my home. WWYD??

[theblakester]

This happened at an apartment complex near where I live...

A man was angry over a breakup with his girlfriend. She first called police just before 9:30 Sunday night, telling them her ex-boyfriend was at her apartment complex. She later called back and told them he had left. However, the man came back, this time, with a gun and repeatedly shot the door of the apartment where his ex-girlfriend lived (w/ her family and a 2 yr old child), trying to force his way inside. A family member called police at 1 a.m. and it took them just minutes to arrive and confront the suspect. When confronted by the officers and ordered to drop the weapon, the suspect actually pointed the weapon in a menacing and threatening manner toward the officers. An officer shot the man w/ his shotgun and killed him.

The woman involved had filed a terrorist threat report against her ex-boyfriend on April 22. She said she was scared and he had been harassing her. A neighbor heard the gunshots. Thinking it was fireworks, the neighbor stepped outside and saw the man shooting so she ran back inside. She called him a "lunatic"

More details here ---> http://www.kvue.com/news/Officer-inv...121529114.html

My question is, what would you have done if you were the next door neighbor knowing that there was a family w/ children there who you knew very well. The reason that Im asking is because I live in a duplex and there is a very nice family living next door to me. I know the laws are different in in different states, and Im in Tx. Laws here allow us to protect ourselves, our families, our property, our neighbors, and our neighbors property (Joe Horn shot and killed 2 robbers in Pasadena Tx for robbing his neighbors house while they were on vacation. He didnt get charged with anything. heres that 9-1-1 call --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-63eOPywSw). Im not saying the Joe Horn incident was right or wrong. However, in this incident there was a family w/ a 2 year old baby in the home. Regardless of legality, I'm trying to figure out what I would do morally/ ethically. Grab a gun, call 9-1-1 and barricade yourself in your bed room? grab a gun, call 9-1-1, and confront the guy who is shooting up your next door neighbor's/friends front door trying to get in, risking your own life? Grab a gun, call 9-1-1, and shoot the guy??? BTW Im single w/ no kids

Scenario: You're on your couch watching TV after midnight/before bed and suddenly some crazy guy starts yellling and gunshots start goin off right outside your doorn on the front porch and theres a guy w/ a pistol shooting the front door of the family's home that lives just on the opposite side of the wall of your duplex, trying to force entry into their home. What would you do?

[Crazy88Fingers]

If I was sitting on my couch and heard random gunshots outside my door I really don't think I would poke my head out to see what's happening. Lord only knows what I would be sticking my head into. So the first choice of calling 911 and holding up the fort is probably the most likely course of action I would take.

If, however, the circumstances were different and I somehow knew that there was a lone gunman trying to break into my neighbor's home and I could safely (relatively speaking) intervene, then I would.

[TailGator]

Crazy is not so crazy in this one. No situation you face will ever be exactly like one you ever read about or planned for. Running into an unknown situation is obviously foolhardy, but on the other hand it is also commendable, in my mind, to feel a duty to one's fellow man. The only answer is to balance your desire to intervene with a rational assessment of the vulnerability of you and your family.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Laws here allow us to protect ourselves, our families, our property, our neighbors, and our neighbors property

While Texas law does allow deadly force in defense of property, it only does so in fairly limited circumstances and that shooting in defense of property often leads to legal fees that far outweigh what the property would cost to replace. Shooting in defense of your NEIGHBOR's property is even more limited. Here is the relevant law, I have highlighted some sections that can cause trouble:


Sec. 9.41. PROTECTION OF ONE'S OWN PROPERTY. (a) A person in lawful possession of land or tangible, movable property is justified in using force against another when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to prevent or terminate the other's trespass on the land or unlawful interference with the property.
(b) A person unlawfully dispossessed of land or tangible, movable property by another is justified in using force against the other when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to reenter the land or recover the property if the actor uses the force immediately or in fresh pursuit after the dispossession and:
(1) the actor reasonably believes the other had no claim of right when he dispossessed the actor; or
(2) the other accomplished the dispossession by using force, threat, or fraud against the actor.


Sec. 9.42. DEADLY FORCE TO PROTECT PROPERTY.[/url] A person is justified in using deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property:
(1) if he would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.41; and
(2) when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary:
(A) to prevent the other's imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime; or
(B) to prevent the other who is fleeing immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property; and
(3) he reasonably believes that:
(A) the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means; or
(B) the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.

Sec. 9.43. PROTECTION OF THIRD PERSON'S PROPERTY. A person is justified in using force or deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property of a third person if, under the circumstances as he reasonably believes them to be, the actor would be justified under Section 9.41 or 9.42 in using force or deadly force to protect his own land or property and:
(1) the actor reasonably believes the unlawful interference constitutes attempted or consummated theft of or criminal mischief to the tangible, movable property; or
(2) the actor reasonably believes that:
(A) the third person has requested his protection of the land or property;
(B) he has a legal duty to protect the third person's land or property; or
(C) the third person whose land or property he uses force or deadly force to protect is the actor's spouse, parent, or child, resides with the actor, or is under the actor's care.

(Joe Horn shot and killed 2 robbers in Pasadena Tx for robbing his neighbors house while they were on vacation. He didnt get charged with anything. heres that 9-1-1 call --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-63eOPywSw).

Joe Horn had to hire a lawyer, had several protests on his front lawn, and narrowly escaped being indicted because he was fortunate enough to have an undercover detective pull up in time to witness the shooting. The detective testified that the men came at Joe Horn and that they veered away at the last moment. Had that detective not been present, Joe Horn's legal situation would be much more difficult and he might have faced a trial. Also note that Joe Horn's lawyer chose to emphasize self-defense rather than claim Sec. 9.43.

I don't want to derail your thread; but I also don't want people in Texas to get the mistaken impression that shooting someone over your neighbor's property won't have a high likelihood of landing you in court.

[skoro]

What would you do?

I'd be a good witness when the cops arrive.

General rule: stay the heck out of 3rd party situations with your firearm. You don't know with any certainty what's going on. And certainty is a requirement for you to intervene with deadly force.

[catnphx]

I'd call 911 but I'd be most concerned with stray bullets so I'd seek cover. I would not go next door unless one of my family was over there.

[old bear]

I'd be a good witness when the cops arrive.

What he said, and call 911.

[TLeo]

You have a valid point about property defense, but here he is talking about defense of life from someone shooting into an occupied dwelling and likely to cause serious injury or death. His use of a firearm shows his intent is to do just that if he gets inside.
Like most "what to do" scenarios there is no real black and white, clear cut answer. Maybe one solution is call 911, to arm yourself, yell through your secured door that police are on the way and hope that stops the guy(or scares him into leaving). Then if he turns his attention to you- by all means defend yourself with the level of force required. If he should make entry into the other apartment and the neighbors life is obviously in danger you have to make a judgement to get involved or try to be a good witness for later. If you decide to involve yourself under that circumstance you have to be prepared to use the appropriate force against the guy if need be.

[theblakester]

I don't want to derail your thread; but I also don't want people in Texas to get the mistaken impression that shooting someone over your neighbor's property won't have a high likelihood of landing you in court.

Thanks that's great information! I would never shoot anyone over property, even if it was my own. I was attempting to use that rather extreme example to illustrate that I would be covered legally if i confronted a guy on my front porch yelling and shooting through my neighbors door, trying to get in. My bad. After seeing it on the news it made me think about what I would have done if I actually was the neighbor in that incident. I definitely would have armed myself and called 9-1-1 first. and I probably would have stayed in my home and yelled at the guy to leave, that the cops are on the way, and that I'm armed w/ a shotgun... and i would have yelled at a distance/angle from the door in case he didnt like what i had to say and started shooting through my door...I know there are a lot of what ifs and no situation has the same variables, but if I was the neighbor and he would have made it through the door ( i would be able to hear that pretty easily) after shooting multiple rounds and yelling at the ex g/f and family, at that point i think i would have had to go over there......... its a lot easier to say that sittin here now lookin cool on the computer than 15 feet away from a guy shooting a gun on my front porch

HAHA +1 TLEO
I was typing that ^ as you made your reply

[MrWesson]

In my state it would be legal to intervene.

I wouldn't know if the shootout was between police and a gunman inside the house or what the situation is without taking a really long look/listen at whats going on which would probably be impossible without taking fire.

Hunker down and protect my family

[Onward Allusion]

theblakester
This fatal shooting happened near my home. WWYD??

I would stay out of it physically because domestic violence issues are some of the most volatile. I've seen cases where the offender is restrained/taken down and the spouse/girlfriend gets psycho on the guy who stopped the incident.

I would arm myself, hunker down and call 911. The most I would do is yell loud enough so that the BG could hear that the cops were on their way.

[MLeake]

Based on the OP's actual living situation, I suspect he meant for his theoretical scenario to involve neighbors you actually know living alongside in the duplex, not some strangers who might be running a meth lab.

With that in mind, does it change any of the previous answers?

[catnphx]

No, it does not change my mind.

The only thing that would take me next door would be my family being in the house. I'm good friends with several of my neighbors of 9+ years and I still would find cover to protect myself from stray bullets, call 911 and have my own weapon in hand. I wouldn't even yell because that might take his weapon's attention to me.

[Buzzcook]

In the actual case calling 911 and seeking cover was the appropriate response.

What would be gained by inserting an armed neighbor into the situation? The assailant pointed his gun at the police. I suspect had a neighbor confronted the assailant that he would not simply lay down his gun or flee. In that case either the neighbor shoots the assailant or the assailant shoots the neighbor.
So we add a significant chance of adding another body to the scenario.

[Doc Intrepid]

The point is that you don't know, and can't say in a court of law, that you KNEW that the family living there was even home at the time of the incident.

You just got up off your couch while watching some show and eating Doritos.

All you KNOW at that point is that someone is trying to use a firearm to get though a door.

I agree with skoro.

Stay out of 3rd party incidents with your firearm unless someone else's life is immediately threatened, as in someone forced to kneel down while someone else prepares to shoot them in the back of the head. Unless it is that obvious, witnesses tend to make a lot of assumptions about what they think they see. Plus, you wind up in court trying to describe why you perceived deadly force was authorized, based on nothing more than your assumptions about what was going on....not what you KNEW. Because you didn't really know at all. Every 'fact' other than what is in front of your eyes is basically an assumption.

[C0untZer0]

Refreshing to see the police deploy a more effective and appropriate weapon.

Yay shotgun !

[Crazy88Fingers]

As far as I know none of my neighbors are running meth labs. I'm not very close with many of them, but that doesn't really change anything.

There just doesn't seem to be a way of knowing what's going on without potentially exposing yourself to some great danger. The neighbor in the story thought there were fireworks going off and walked out to find a gunman outside her house. Those gunshots could be from two gang-bangers in a fight, or police related, or just some nut-job on a shooting spree. You would have to figure out who is doing what, and why; all while not getting shot.

As I said in my original post, if I somehow knew what was going on and had some sort of advantage, then I would try to intervene to protect my neighbors' lives.

[Nordeste]

Once again I honestly envy your regulations. Over here we've had a man in Court due to an incident in which his house was trespassed and his family attacked by burglars. All them sustained heavy injuries during the assault. At one moment he was able to escape and reach a pistol he had in one of the bedrooms (He had what we call here a "sport" licence that only entitled him to carry his gun from his house to the range and opposite, and ONLY that, not even home defense) shot dead one of the attackers and injured the other two, who escaped and were arrested right after. The man still had to prove in Court that he had used the necessary amount of force and just the necessary, being eventually discharged from manslaughter. About protecting property, in no case you'd be allowed to use deadly force, and if you happen to use force to defend what's yours and the BG sustains injuries, you'd be paying his hospital bills.

But back to the thread's question, in my case, I don't think I'd be able to just sit down and witness. I'm actually obliged to it since I'm a cop, but even if being a regular civilian and possesing a firearm, I don't think I could live and sleep at night thinking that a baby has lost his/her mum, I could have avoided it, and I did nothing.

[Ronbert]

You never *really* know your neighbors or the wackos that they might know.

Stay down behind cover and call the police. You could get killed just trying to figure out what's going on out there.

This tends to reinforce an idea that with a restraining order for DV the victim should be issued a firearm and enough training to be able to use it. (fat chance, right?)

Other- been listening to the scanner lately and am appalled at how many times the police will have an order in the system against someone they've stopped for traffic violations and the order will not have the name of the victim!

[Dr. Strangelove]

Take cover, call 911.

As many others have posted, you put yourself in a position of huge liability when you assume you know what is going on in a situation like this. How do you know the cops aren't going to roll up right when you step out of your door and shoot you?

Domestic disputes? Ha! There's a reason cops hate them so much, and it's not what you think. They show up, suddenly the couple turns on them, rather than each other. Shoot the baddie, suddenly wife/girlfriend decides she loved him and sues your pants off. Stay out of domestic situations, and pretty much anything else that doesn't involve you directly.

[bighead46]

Well, it is a really hard call but in a lot of situations you just don't know what is going on. A case in point would be that famous photo from the VietNam War of a cop with a pistol up against the side of the head of a young, punk, commie- blowing out his brains. That photo was used as propaganda against the war - government brutality against the people-but I found out years later the punk had just killed this guy's wife and children- sort of makes a difference.
In any event-you probably won't know what is going on- hard as it may be I'd call the cops but stay out of it.

[tape]

I really don't think anyone would know what they would do if it happened to one of us, you don't know unless your there at the time, It's easy to say "I would do this or that" after the fact.

[theblakester]

Our front doors are literally 2-3 feet apart. I can often hear my neighbors through the wall, and easily see their cars in the driveway. I can tell if theyre home or not when I let my dog out to go to the bathroom. I also have a peep hole that I could look through if I wasnt sure of what was going on. That being said, if gunshots are going off right outside my door it might not be a good idea to stand in front of the door and look through the peep hole. Buuuttt, I do know the family well enough, and the lady next door reminds me of how my grandmother was when i was a little kid.
If i knew that they were home and saw him shooting through their door and if i had previous knowledge of the guy causing problems, and i had already called 9-1-1 and armed myself and yelled through the door to warn the guy, and the police hadnt shown up yet, and i could still hear the guy kicking in and shooting through the neighbors door, then I would reasonably assume that he had intentions to kill, kidnap, or seriously harm my neighbor(s), and i would probably intervene w/ my shotgun through my cracked front door w/ the finger on the trigger yelling at him to leave.. and if he started to raise the gun towards my door, i'd reasonably feel like my life was in immediate danger, and i'd probably shoot.
I dont know if i would do that if i had kids and a wife. I pray that Im never in a situation like that. I just dont think that i could not intervene if the situation got to that point. good people live next door to me.

[Brian Pfleuger]

I would have to be VERY familiar with the history/leadup to the event if I were going to do anything besides call 911 and stay out of the line of fire.

If I were, for sake of argument, going to intervene, it would be from the farthest distance (as in not point blank, 20, 30 yards would be nice, from cover) I could reasonably get, with a rifle and an attempt at a head shot if possible. If not a head shot, a 204 to the center of the back would ruin his day, for sure.

But it's highly unlikely that I would intervene directly. Even though I would feel compelled to do so, the possible ways that it could go bad for me and my family are too numerous and too likely to risk. Everything from dying in a shootout to having the "victim" turn on me for shooting her precious husband. You just never know.

[Evan Thomas]

Originally Posted by tape

I really don't think anyone would know what they would do if it happened to one of us, you don't know unless your there at the time, It's easy to say "I would do this or that" after the fact.

But this is before the fact. The value of a forum like this is that it gives us a chance to consider the possible consequences, good and bad, of various courses of action, before we're confronted with a given situation..

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread..." I'm not a fool, I hope, and I'm certainly not an angel; but perhaps the reason angels are more cautious is that they've been around a bit, have had a chance to think things through, and perhaps even discuss things among themselves -- as we're doing here.

As others have noted, cops hate responding to these incidents, because they are risky and unpredictable -- and the police are paid to respond. I wouldn't ever intervene in a situation involving domestic violence between third parties if I knew that's what it was -- and in a situation in which I didn't know what was going on (someone trying to break in a door who might be a husband/boyfriend/ex, or might be an unrelated home invader), I'd be even more reluctant -- just because I didn't know.

The chances of making things worse in such situations are just too high, IMHO. I'll call 911 (and have done so in the past when neighbors' fights seemed to be escalating past the verbal), and I'll stay alert to what's going on, but I'm not remotely qualified to intervene in such disputes, and I'm not about to start shooting at anyone when I don't know what's going on.