The shooter is probably lucky in this case because of the good press. I’m sure we will never hear about the civil suit filed because of " the pain and anguish" the poor teenager suffered from a joy ride. I would love to see this quote from one of the news links read into the court record. Priceless:
“The guy that got shot, he was falling out of the car and he was holding his chest. And he started shivering and shaking, and then he kind of flopped on the ground,” witness Chris Roberts said.
I fairly certain the shooter will be good to go, and will come out nicely on the civil side of things.
Not everyone has replacement insurance, not everyone can afford to lose a car. I’m not advocating risking your life for a car, but not everyone is in a position to lose the few things they have. Losing a car to some people means losing your job because you can’t afford to replace your car and that means possibly losing everything.
Slightly off topic, but infuriating and releveant. A coworker got her car stolen out of her driveway a few momths ago. She left it running while she ran inside to get something.
Kid hopped in as she was walking out and she chased him. He actually ditched the car and took off on foot.
Local PD showed up 20 mins later - didn’t even give a **** or bother to dust or even do any investigative work at all. They almost treated it as “no harm no foul”. Basically, told her she shouldn’t live in the hood. unfortunately the “kid” that ran off broke into an elderly ladies home and put her in the hospital so she wouldn’t call 911 because he feared the law was after him (they weren’t)
He was 14 years old. He spent a month in jail and now he’s back in high school with all of your kids. Some justice system.
Oh, I’m chasing someone if they take my car.
I’m not seeing the downside to pummeling someone for attempting to steal your property, legal liability notwithstanding. Once upon a time stealing a person’s horse was a killing offense, or if you got away and caught later you’d fine end involving a rope.
Don’t do dumb s**t and you won’t have problems.
On the dusting - lifting latent prints from a steering wheel or door handle of a vehicle is not always possible. A lot of the dusting that used to be done was pretty much PR. It is also fairly difficult to find a classifiable latent print under ideal circumstances, generally the object has to be touched or grabbed in a ‘non-shearing’ manner or the result will be a smudged, unclassifiable print.
Yeah, I know CSI.
But there are lazy, unimaginative police officers.
We had an officer who had a cherry 68-69 Camaro. He was a jerk and so one day when he left his car parked out front of his house somebody walked the car, they jumped up and down on the trunk, roof, and onto the hood of the vehicle. I got the report for follow-up a couple days later. There are mentions of footprints on the vehicle, but no pictures, and no measurements, despite the fact that each of our units had a 35mm SLR with plenty of color and black and white film. And this victim was an officer, you’d think a fellow officer would roll out some professional competence, nope, he was a lazy douche. I didn’t like either one of them, victim or reporting officer, but I wanted to find the damned guy(s) that did it.
Lazy, incompetents populate every area of our life.
This is Georgia, and if a car thief gets hurt badly, most of us really don’t care.
I understand. And you also have to have full coverage insurance. Many reputable companies have plans that pay off the vehicle, and will even make a down payment for a new vehicle.
Again, I completely understand people want o take action but one has to ask if the risk is worth the outcome. What would have been interesting is if this had been a legit repo order. Generally when doing repos, people don’t ask permission to take the car and have to resort to some extreme methods.
Once upon a time, if you accidentally shot someone during the horse theft, I don’t think a lawyer or magistrate would be hovering near by to get you.
Whoever screwed up a classic car like that just because they hated the owner deserves to do life. There are plenty of other ways to even up without messing with things that should be left alone. Even Hitler’s generals knew not to burn Paris no matter what the order was.
It took 4 years and 2 deployments and many weekend nights sitting at home to pay cash for the EuroCar. I’d venture to guess that my car is worth $12,000~ insurance value right now. But to me my car is still worth the mucho dinero I paid for it. I can’t afford another EuroCar right now, and if some hoodlum took off with my car I am SOL. I’m going after it. I’m not jumping on a hood, but Florida allows non lethal force to protect property. The onus is on said hoodlum if he doesn’t want to give it up.
I get the whole dusting thing. I was just miffed that it took them 20 minutes to even show up, and there was no real urgency on their part. I’m not expecting SWAT responses to things like this, but it really sucks ass for that old lady.
Oh, and whoever messed with that Camaro was a jackass.
A different video (maybe you guys have seen it, but for those who have not):
Looks like the woman jumped on the hood intentionally. I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt and believe she wasn’t thinking about her car insurance at the time and just doing the only thing she could think of. Good decision or bad decision? I don’t know, not for me to decide.
I did like how in the video they said that, “… the good Samaritan waited for police to arrive, then went upon his day.” That leads me to believe, at least initially, no charges were filed. I also noticed when he drew his pistol, his trigger finger was way up on the gun, like on the barrel hood. Very good trigger finger discipline, which would lead me to believe he has some training under his belt.
These are just a couple things I noticed. I am giving both of them the benefit of the doubt.
Then I see this article that says he won’t be charged.
http://www.11alive.com/story/news/local/smyrna/2015/04/06/carjacker-shot-smyrna-car-wash/25381707/
So, yea, could have been worse…
A thief was shot in the act, only problem I see is it appears he will make a full recovery.