I'm not going to get into the " What I would have done" thing. I will say that if this guy came out of his house unarmed to confront 4 punks stealing his car. he's an idiot. And he got lucky.
My apologies to KF for the upcoming sidebar, but this made me think about the cops who killed the innocent homeowner in New Mexico the other day because they were at the wrong house. Yeah the guy was innocent and yeah whoever got the address wrong needs to NEVER BE AN LEO AGAIN, but Mr. Innocent homeowner made some huge and fatal mistakes. At least 3 "Subjects" outside your house shining lights at you, obviously eliminating your ability to see, you have no idea if they are armed or what and you decide to walk out your front door, blinded and pointing a handgun in their general direction ? Stoooopid.
It reminds me of a little story. When I moved into this house 22 years ago there was a woman and her kid who already lived across the street in a ratty trailer. The woman owned a couple houses across the highway and when the kid, Tommy, got to be about 18 he was the only one living there. He was a pretty good guy, good with cars, but messed around a little with dope ( meth ) as did/do a lot of the kids around here. So a few years ago he gets this girlfriend, which we all thought was great since Tommy was obese and lonely. Turns out she was from the city. And not just the city, but the north side where she hung out with all the homies. In fact she has a son, Trent, who is a black kid and lived here with them for a year or so. That in itself is sort of an amazing story since where I live, most black people would never go, but he is a great kid and the wife and I welcomed him and helped him out as much as a person can. I feel bad his mother is such a piece of
, but that's not really part of this story.
Anyway, the girlfriend is a heroin/fentanyl addict and Tommy is supposedly helping her get clean. In reality she gets Tommy doing dope ( Fentanyl and the new Mexican meth everyone calls ice). Before any of us figure out Tommy is on ice, which is 1000 times more potent than typical meth and causes hallucinations and psychotic behavior, Tommy figures out the girlfriend is stealing. He comes over one day and asks us to come over because he thinks she's going to die and she won't let him call for help. We go over and she's in bed, totally yellow and has holes in her arms so big you can see bones. So I call 911, they take her to the hospital and she is back the next day. A few days later her and Tommy break up ( which this process actually lasts about a month) and she moves out.
So within a few weeks Tommy starts coming over claiming that she's in his ( Extremely small) trailer hiding. Then he claims it's her black, drug dealing boyfriend who is hiding. Like hiding in the refrigerator or under the couch. He once claimed that the girl had cut off her arms and legs and was hiding between the mattress and the box springs. I came over and "Cleared" his house for him a couple times. Of course we tell his mom what's been going on and Tommy ends up going to the hospital for a few days. When he comes back his mom tells us that the hospital did a drug test and he was clean, leading us all to think he had a problem with his brain or something. Eventually Tommy starts calling the police and telling them there is an intruder in his house. The cops already knew he was off because after the first time they came, we talked them into talking Tommy into going into the hospital. So when he gets out it starts again and like 3 nights in a row Tommy calls the cops and tells them there is an intruder in his house. Cops come, check it out, leave, etc.. Literally the very next evening I am sitting in my living room and I see an arm with a gun in it coming across my front window. I step back and see there are 2 cops, guns drawn moving across my lawn, perpendicularly to Tommy's trailer and one in his driveway, gun out moving tactically.
So I open my front door, both hands up and said, "Hey". The cop puts his fingers in front of his mouth in the Shhh sign and tries to motion me back inside. At which point I very loudly and aggressively say "HEY". The cop looks at me and I said, " Let me guess, the guy across the street called and said there is a black guy inside his house". The cop looks surprised and says "Yeah". So I first asked him to put his F'ing gun down and then told him he should probably check with the other 13 cops that have been to this house repeatedly in the last week and pointed out to him that coming across my lawn, unannounced with a gun in front of him is a pretty good way to get lit up. This is a rural county and while we are big by rural county standards there is no excuse for that many calls to be made at that trailer for the same BS and these cops not to know what was going on. At that point I walked out and walked up to Tommy's door and opened it and hollered for him. He came out, cops relaxed and I again pointed out to them that coming unannounced through someone's front yard, right in front of a huge picture window and crossing said window gun first, in this neighborhood was not only tactically unsound reasoning, but might also be suicidal.
Later that day the sheriff, who we know personally, came down to apologize. A few weeks later we found Tommy dead on his couch with a needle hanging out of his arm. His poor mother was crushed.
Sorry for the very long story, but the takeway is that when I came out of my house, I had both my hands up in front of me. I'm pretty sure if I had a gun in my hand I would have taken fire from 3 very inexperienced cops.
