HPD: Garden Oaks homeowner fatally shoots intruder

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

A 23-year-old man was shot to death today while trying to break inside a house in the Garden Oaks neighborhood in northwest Houston, police said.

The burglar, a Tyler man whose identity has not been released, tried to break into a house in the 300 block of Blueberry Lane near Yale around 9:30 a.m. while a resident was asleep inside the home, said Houston Police Department homicide investigator Fil Waters. The homeowner heard someone breaking glass, then raising the bedroom window, so he armed himself with a gun, Waters said.

When the burglar moved a bookcase that had been blocking the window out of the way and climbed into the bedroom, the homeowner could not see the intruder's hands, Waters said. The intruder moved toward the resident, so the resident shot him one time.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6871477.html

[kestrel91316]

1. Shooting somebody just because you can't see his hands.......

Well, I guess that would fly in TX. Not so much in CA.

I think here you have to have a good reason to fear for your life before you go shooting intruders.

I'm not saying I like it, just that that's the way it is here.

[X_Digger]

4. CA has Castle Doctrine..

"unlawful, forcible entry into one's residence by someone not a member of the household creates the presumption that the resident held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily injury should he or she use deadly force against the intruder."

"In People v. Owen, 277 Cal. Rptr. 341, 347, 226 Cal. App. 3d 996, 1005 (1991), the court stated that California Penal Code section 198.5 creates a rebuttable presumption of reasonable fear: The statute was enacted to permit residential occupants to defend themselves from intruders without fear of legal repercussions, to give “the benefit of the doubt in such cases to the resident, establishing a presumption that the very act of forcible entry entails a threat to the life and limb of the homeowner.” (Press release from the office of Sen. H. L. Richardson (the bill’s author) Oct. 1, 1984)."

http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v36-issue4/documents/9selfdefense.pdf

[kestrel91316]

5. Interesting. I think you have to be really careful, though. If you wound them they

will sue and probably win. And I think you can still be charged with unlawful discharge of a firearm.

I may be mistaken, but people just don't shoot intruders around here, and there must be a good reason why, and it's not because they can't get guns because they sure as hell can.

[X_Digger]

6. Yep, it's not "strong" castle doctrine, as case law has weakened it..

.. but it is on the books, and has been used successfully as a defense to prosecution.

[oneshooter]

8. Maybe in Cali. you would.

The Castle Doctrine in Texas is much stronger. If you kill him your case is referred to a Grand Jury. If no charges are preferred, if you go to trial and are found innocent, or not guilty then the survivors can sue, but it will be thrown out for lack of evidence. If you wound him and are found not guilty, innocent, or no charges are preferred then the same happens.

I much prefer the Texas law.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

[SteveM]

7. Not interested in the hands. It's the whole body. In my house...

If someone breaks into my house (emphasis: BREAKS IN), shoves a bookcase aside and enters, I am not interested in his/her hands. I can assume that he used them to break in, lift the window, push aside furniture, get into the house, and possibly next reach into his waist band to pull out a gun. It is advisable NOT to wait for that last possibility, be it Texas or California.

California needs to clean up its notion of self-defense; increasingly, it looks like the pro-thug policies of England.

[Tim01]

2. Sorry the home owner had to deal with a piece of shit. Good shoot.nt

[cowman]

3. The definition

of gun control is being able to hit your target

[Amber Lamps]

9. Yeah , I saw that too

Wasnt impressed .

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

10. I would certainly hope not. A man's death is nothing to be impressed with.