<p>“And it’s hard for me to imagine that an unarmed burglar would refuse to leave on command when confronted with a sword. But he did.”</p>
<p>None of us know what happened. The police can’t just take the student’s word. That’s why the police have to investigate.</p>
<p>"If this had happened out on the street or out in public somewhere, then yeah a little more investigation is necessary.:</p>
<p>So, if it looks like an open and shut case, police shouldn’t investigate? Thankfully, that’s not the way our legal system works.</p>
<p>northstar - I am not nearly as blase as you are about someone entering my premises in the middle of the night. And I live in a safe neighborhood - this med student - if he lives anywhere near the med school - lives near one of the worst and most dangerous neighborhoods on the Eastern seaboard. Two Hopkins students have recently been murdered in the night by people “off the street” with knives. I sure as heck wouldn’t be very logical if a burglar in THAT neighborhood rushed at me in the middle of the night. </p>
<p>While this must be investigated fairly, I have grave concerns about this young man’s future. </p>
<p>One only need to look at the Duke lacrosse hoax to see what kind of injustice can result when tribal affiliation rather than facts govern and control.</p>
<p>"Hours earlier, someone had broken into John Pontolillo’s home and taken two laptops and a video-game console. Now it was past midnight, and Pontolillo heard noises coming from the garage out back.</p>
<p>The Johns Hopkins University undergraduate didn’t run. He didn’t call the police. He grabbed his samurai sword.</p>
<p>With the 3- to 5-foot-long weapon in hand, Pontolillo crept toward the noise, police said. When a man inside lunged at him, police said, the confrontation was fatal.</p>
<p>The student “was backed up against a corner, and either out of fear or out of panic, he just struck the sword with force,” said city police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.</p>
<p>Pontolillo, who rents the off-campus home, nearly severed the man’s left hand, inflicting what police called a “spear laceration.”</p>
<p>Donald D. Rice of Baltimore, 49, a repeat offender who had been released from jail Saturday, died at the scene.</p>
<p>Guglielmi said the state’s attorney’s office will decide whether to charge Pontolillo, 20, of Wall, N.J."
[url=<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/15/AR2009091503930.html]washingtonpost.com[/url”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/15/AR2009091503930.html]washingtonpost.com[/url</a>]</p>
<p>I’m not blase at all about someone’s breaking into my home or garage. As I said before, if something like that happened, I’d be quietly calling police and I’d be hiding, not grabbing a weapon and approaching the intruder. As I also said before, this year in my city, a teen girl who was home sick when a burglar broke into her home quietly called police and hid. The police came and arrested the man. The burglar never realized the girl was at home.</p>
<p>The only person whom I know who has a samurai sword to protect themselves from criminals is my brother, who is mentally ill. He got that sword to protect himself after 9/11. I shuddered when he told me.</p>
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<p>Good point.</p>
<p>Northstarmom, I think you have made a number of good points. With regard to the option of “fleeing the house,” though, I take a slightly different view. In my understanding, the common law requires retreat, rather than the use of potentially deadly force against an attacker. However (again, in my understanding), a person in his own home is regarded as if he has retreated to the utmost. There is no longer a requirement of further retreat, even from room to room. Of course, fleeing the house is an option, and I admit that it’s the one I might take, if I were faced with a similar circumstance. But I don’t think that it’s right to suggest that a person “should” flee his own home. (There are usually a few centuries of experience behind the prescriptions of the common law.)</p>
<p>On the other hand, I do not support the revisions of the “castle” laws that make it possible in some states to respond with violence to an intruder who has not actually threatened the occupant himself, only the occupant’s property.</p>
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<p>I agree with Kate. This young man made a very poor decision to enter that garage, and, regardless of whether or not he’s charged, he will have to deal with the consequences of what happened for the rest of his life.</p>
<p>“To believe that one should accept the word of Skip Gates because he was a Harvard professor flies in the face of how our justice system works and should work, but that didn’t stop you then, Northstarmom, from accepting his story at face value”</p>
<p>I didn’t accept his story at face value. I did a lot of speculation just as I’m doing here.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the people who seem to think that the police should have released quickly the student in this situation are the same people who were unquestioningly supporting the police’s arrest of Gates.</p>
<p>As for me, when a person is killed by another, I think the police should do a thorough investigation even if it seems the killing was in self defense. When an 57-year-old, disabled man mouths off in his home when police are investigating a nonexistent burglary in his home, I don’t think there’s a reason to arrest the man.</p>
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<p>I haven’t read any post saying the police should not do a thorough investigation.</p>
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<p>I’m not speaking of the legal perspective. Cognitively speaking, there is a difference between the building my child is in and the building my lawn mower is in. I hope like hell that I’ve taught my child that difference as well so that he will never, ever risk his life over a thing.</p>
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<p>Do you know how easy it is to shoot someone approaching a building from inside of the building? </p>
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<p>Thank you for saying that so well.</p>
<p>If I hear a noise in my house, I’d probably go investigate. We had a mouse run into our house many years ago and I went to investigate and eventually caught it and released it outside. There might be someone there that needs help. It could be a child that wandered in and got lost. Or it could be a problem with your heating or cooling system or a water heater or a piece of equipment. Our home is in a safe area so I usually don’t take a weapon with me (not that we really have any - I suppose that I could carry a heavy book).</p>
<p>At our son’s place, the police station is across the street so it would be easier to call. We live in a very busy area with people walking around all the time. There have been armed robberies and shootings within two blocks of that place and there are a lot of gangbangers, bank robbers, sex offenders, etc. in the city and even in the neighborhood (I did check the sex offender registry and there are two of them living at our off-street parking area). I would be far more cautious about approaching someone there.</p>
<p>It takes a lot of force to sever a hand as you have to go through bones so it seems hard to imagine that it was a panic thing unless he has had training and it was a reflex response.</p>
<p>Maybe the guy was a Highlander fan.</p>
<p>"Maybe the guy was a Highlander fan. "</p>
<p>Or he just watched “Pulp Fiction.” Regardless, I’m glad the guy had the guts to take on the burglar, and I’m glad he survived. People are tired of cowering in the corner and hoping the cops will save them. Seriously…is this what we’ve come to as a society? Let’s all cower in the corner, let the bad guys have the run of the house, and hope the cops get there in time?</p>
<p>Many years ago, I came home from work early, and walked into a burglary in process. I can’t even begin to explain my actions. I opened my door and knew immediately that something was not right, but instead of running away, like a rational person should, I just walked right into the house. Such a stupid thing to do, but you aren’t thinking at times like that, you are reacting.</p>
<p>I would never in a million years have predicted that I could be so foolish, so I don’t fault this poor kid in any way. You just don’t know how it feels to be in a situation like that. And to be completely honest here, if I had had a samurai sword handy, I probably would have used it.</p>
<p>Hey Schmaltz, maybe it’s just another way to redistribute the wealth.</p>
<p>I think Northstar mom’s points are well taken, and I think the police will look into all of the testimony and circumstances as best they can ascertain.</p>
<p>The point may simply be that the student is fortunate that the guy who was in his garage had such a long record. If this were a 17 year old who had only been arrested a time or two, there would be a completely different view of what happened.</p>
<p>The actual victim’s history causes him to receive very little benefit of the doubt.</p>
<p>The student also is lucky that the guy in the garage didn’t have a gun.</p>
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<p>I assume that the kid’s story was that he was backed into a corner and the perp lunged at him. The background of the perp in that he took a cop’s gun (which is a foolhardy or desperate thing to do as any other cop or the cop you took the gun from is going to try to use deadly force against you from that point on) which is in line with the story.</p>
<p>Northstarmom posted:
"I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the people who seem to think that the police should have released quickly the student in this situation are the same people who were unquestioningly supporting the police’s arrest of Gates.</p>
<p>As for me, when a person is killed by another, I think the police should do a thorough investigation even if it seems the killing was in self defense. When an 57-year-old, disabled man mouths off in his home when police are investigating a nonexistent burglary in his home, I don’t think there’s a reason to arrest the man."</p>
<p>You sure like to “speculate,” Northstarmom, and by that, I mean, make up your own scenaio to fit what you wish happened. Fact is, I opposed Gates’s arrest and made that very clear many times. However, despite that, I do think that Gates acted in a disorderly manner and thus had some responsibility for his own arrest. </p>
<p>A “57-year-old, disabled man” is quite capable of drawing a gun or of inflicting harm on someone. It is only in your estimation that that makes him not responsible for his own poor behavior. Crowley did not search Gates and had no way of determining his harmlessness, despite his “Do you know who I am?” comment to the officer.</p>
<p>You cannot deny the benefit of the doubt to a 20 year old undergrad while extending it to Gates, who obviously knew better than to behave in the manner he did in front of a police officer. If you expect what is in your estimation “proper” behavior from the student (hide quietly and call the police), others can expect “proper” behavior from Gates.</p>
<p>It really doesn’t matter how YOU (or anyone) thought the kid SHOULD have reacted to the intruder. You weren’t there. Your same nonchalance is not shared by everyone.</p>
<p>Also, many people who are not mentally ill collect knives, swords, and other weapons. To make such a perverse accusation, that only a mentally ill person could use a samurai sword as a weapon of defense, is twisted to the extreme. The world is not composed of only your experiences. :rolleyes:</p>
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<p>And a lot of people assume the police can get there in a flash as the cops seem to do on TV. Sometimes police are busy elsewhere and cannot respond immediately to someone who calls saying I heard a strange noise in my house. They get calls like that all the time that turn out to be false alarms. It is reasonable to investigate sounds in your own home and if you are not sure whether the sound is harmless or otherwise to take a weapon with you. A lot of people collect swords. Fortunately, he had one.</p>
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<p>So what happened next??</p>
<p>And, to Northstarmom,</p>
<p>I fully support a thorough investigation of the incident that led up to the robber’s death. Why keep the kid detained though? Even with most homicides the police don’t arrest the perp without having a solid case built against him first. They could have easily gotten the kid’s statements at his apartment and let him go while they continued to investigate.</p>
<p>I imagine Pelosi is chomping at the bit to pass a law requiring ALL weapons be registered, including swords, crossbows, maces, pikes, spears, tomahawks, halberds, catapults, and vats of boiling oil.</p>