“The pane broke” are the official words of the DA quoted in the article. My guess they are using this wording because there is still an ongoing investigation. IMO, it should be forensically distinguishable whether the glass was knocked out, fell out, or was shot through. That said, no matter how glass “broke,” I agree with the others who said that the homeowner should have called 911 first and retreated with his gun before shooting.
Why is grabbing his gun the first thing he does when someone knocks at the door?
I believe there was a case of a person shooting, I believe, his own kid in the middle of the night in CT. If I recall correctly. It was a fatal shot. This was a while back.
Horrible.
@thumper1: That does happen, and it isn’t extremely rare, either. Imagine it is 1am, the teenage son/daughter is coming home late, trying to sneak in as to not get caught, stumbles on something (especially if they have been drinking), and dad (or mom) decides their is an intruder, freaks out, and when they hear the footsteps on the steps upstairs (or in the hallway), open the door and fire.
Without getting into whether people should be allowed to have guns or not, one of the biggest problems I think is that people get their ideas of guns from watching tv and movies, where the person defending their home always gets the bad guy (ask cops about that, and they are likely to tell you that more times than not, the person will end up facing their own gun in the hands of the criminal or worse), the gun packing citizen saves the day and so forth, people just don’t understand what it is like to be attacked, they don’t understand what it is like to face someone pointing a gun at you, and they don’t understand that when the adraneline starts flowing logic and reason go out the window. Put it this way, the military spends a lot of time and effort training their soldiers so when they face the ugliness of combat, they can handle it on autopilot, and even then 20% of all casualties are likely friendly fire.
I don’t understand why the homeowner didn’t call the police.
My daughter and two roommates lived in an off-campus apartment with its own entrance during their last two years of college. One night – and it was late at night – someone knocked on their door for a long time, while demanding that the people inside let him in. He was obviously drunk. He was also very insistent. The door did not have a glass pane, but even so, he managed to damage it. Like the teenager who died, he evidently was mixed up about the address.
One of my daughter’s roommates called the police. They came over and took care of it. End of problem (except for the damaged door).
If you own a gun, it’s very easy to use it in this type of situation.