Chivalry suggests the female was in danger. Blind side isn’t a matter of angles it is whether he saw him coming and launching is the result which is the shooter went flying. The fact that you identify yourself as a street fighter suggests you would not be a fair arbiter. Own what created the physical situation… the resulting shooting is what is debatable.
Good news for you is I value your opinion. Bad news is mine is of equal value and I am a potential juror. Perhaps a tone that respects s my observations is justified as opposed to declarative statements.
The shooter was harassing the victim’s girlfriend, who was in the car. She may have called the victim in the store, we don’t know for sure - that will probably come out in the trial. The victim left the store and approached the shooter, who continued facing the girlfriend. We don’t know if this was because he was unaware of the victim until he was shoved, or if he refused to acknowledge the victim. It is quite possible the victim called out to him, and shoved him precisely because he refused to acknowledge him - that may also be why the girlfriend left her vehicle. If the shooter was entitled to be fearful because this man shoved him, then the girlfriend was entitled to be fearful of his harassment - whether she was wrong to have parked where she did or not. I don’t know whether it will come out at trail or not, but it appears that the shooter has a habit of harassing others when he feels he has the upper hand. When he doesn’t have the upper hand, he draws the gun. Maybe part of his state of mind was that he believed he deserved to be beaten to a pulp for the way he was treating her.
Agreed. Lots of bad decisions that day (and no doubt for years leading up to it), and I think it’s possible to feel simultaneously anger as well as great sympathy for each of the people involved. We are all in many ways a result of the “accidents of our births.”
I could imagine an alternate universe in which Drejka walked up to the car and says, “Hey, you’re parked in a handicapped spot and there are a few spots right there, how about moving the car?”
And Britany Jacobs responds, smiling, “Hey, I’m sorry, you’re right. We were rushing with all the kids in the car, give me a second and I’ll call my boyfriend and we’ll move it, no problem but you probably know how it is with kids…”
That’s how it would have happened in the neighborhood I live in now! Civility begins in the home, regardless of where you happen to be living.
Why would I not value your opinion @Nocreativity1 ? I do, and I am glad you share it. It’s okay with me if we disagree on what happened.
What helped me survive in those street fights is that most people advertise a punch for what seems like 5 seconds before they actually throw one. I trained in Karate and Tae Kwon Do for twenty years to recognize the signs. Those signs are not in the video.
It is my willingness to step between a man and a woman who was being yelled at that started some of those fights. I still consider that chivalrous. Maybe that’s why I take this shooting so personally.
“I have gotten into lots of fights” and “Chivalry” for hitting someone. In civilized society people don’t escalate to violence, they avoid it. If violence is wrong the deceased clearly made the first physical contact.
If your response is that I am not being realistic and “not in my neighborhood we thug it out”, then no tears. Then violence is right. If so the deceased shouldn’t have just shown up with just his fists for a gun fight.
Which is it. Is violence wrong or is violence a way of life?
As I have previously said I think violence is wrong and both parties should have sought to avoid or deescalate it.
Magnetron I enjoy our civil, opinionated and passionate back and forth. No disrespect intended of course.
These are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Someone may see violence as wrong, but be in an environment where violence is a way of life and difficult to avoid (e.g. in an area where there is a civil war or a very high violent crime rate).
UCBalumnus great point civil war = mini mart parking lot.
I am sure the deceased had other alternatives. Get in car, drive away from crazy man. Teach 5 year old son that he is blessed not to live in a civil war zone.
IMO, no reason to discharge the weapon once the guy had the gun pulled on him and started to back off. The shooter could have easily de-escalated the situation, got back in his car and left. That is the problem with carrying around a loaded firearm. You get upset and with emotions running hot, you angrily discharge the weapon. It also puts the general public in danger as the bullet could have exited the victim’s body and/or missed the victim altogether sending a round into the store. Seems like the wild wild west or vigilante justice to me.
There are various levels of violence - pushing, shoving, punching… in this case, as in the case in NYC someone was shoved. In NYC that shove resulted in the victim hitting his head. The issue in that case wasn’t so much the fact that he was shoved - there was no intention to do that much hard - but that the person left the scene after it was clear the victim was seriously hurt. In this case, the person who was shoved escalated from a shoving match to a shootout.
Hopefully the jurors will get a much better “picture” of what actually happened that day, based on testimony of everybody that was present - the facts of what happened, as well as the state of mind of everyone involved. McGlockton exited the store, and walked toward the car, he did not appear to be rushing at anyone. He shoved, but did not punch Drejka - was that an attempt to place himself between Drejka and his girlfriend? Was his next step a similar attempt? Was he perhaps too aggressive in he attempt to push this “fool” out of his way.
Lots of second guessing after the fact. Too bad that Drejka didn’t have 20 years of martial arts training or he might have recognized the signs that McGlockton wasn’t really serious.
I’m struck that people still seem to think that Drejka was somehow menacing the girlfriend or threatening her. Why would she voluntarily exit the car, then?
There is a whole video tape somewhere. I don’t think we’ll see any particularly threatening behavior from Drejka in the two or three minutes he must have been interacting with the girlfriend. Had he slammed the car, or tried to reach in, or do something else particularly threatening, it would have leaked already.
McGlockton saw an opportunity to pounce on a smaller, older man, and he instinctively didn’t identify the man as analogous to the dangerous kids he must have grown up with. Unlike one of the posters above, I got into very few fights in the crappy place I grew up, aside from minor schoolyard scuffles or typical guy things with friends and people you generally knew. You wouldn’t have survived intact much past mid adolescence if you put your hands on strangers. McGlockton’s “Spidey sense” was not engaged, which convinces me that he saw the older and smaller Drejka as an easy victim with which he could advertise his machismo. All mammals engage in some form of “preening” after all.
I strongly suspect that Drejka was less than civil in his initial encounter with the girlfriend, and that, feeling “disrespected,” she in turn went from 0-60 in about 3 seconds flat. Just an opinion of course and based wholly on speculation and nothing that I might have seen oh maybe 500 times.
Does the shooter have to testify at his trial in order to establish that he had a reasonable belief he was in danger of being killed or suffering serious bodily harm? I would have thought yes; how else could that be established? But the willingness of so many Floridians to assume not only that he had that belief, but that it was correct, makes me wonder whether a judge could let a jury make that determination without hearing from the shooter.
If the shooter has to testify, then probably the prosecution gets to question him about all the other times he waved his gun around and threatened to shoot people who were parking where he thought they shouldn’t or driving in a way he disliked. And they probably get to question him about his attitude towards people of color, and they get to put on rebuttal witnesses if he says he doesn’t have any problems with them. If the shooter has to testify, then maybe the jury has to deal with what an inappropriate sicko he seems to be. If he doesn’t have to testify, then maybe someone can sell them the heroic fantasies being suggested here.
McGlockton wasn’t there for the initial confrontation, so he doesn’t know if Drejka was manacing or not - he was reacting to what he heard second hand in the store. He clearly knew that someone was bothering her. So yes, maybe he was throwing his weight around a bit, just as Drejka was. Both were preening and posturing. One did so with his bare hands, the other did so with a gun - and it should have only been necessary to display, rather than shoot the gun.
I’m inclined to believe Drejka is guilty - that there is even some level of premeditation involved, but if chosen to be part of the jury, I would follow the law, which is why I suspect he won’t be found guilty. If I were a resident of Florida, I would be working diligently to overturn SYG, because I believe it is applied unevenly, and discounts the value of life. The principle of self-defense should be adequate.
No, @JHS, the shooter does not have to testify. Reasonable belief can be inferred through testimony of others as well as other forms of evidence. To force someone to testify in order to mount a defense would destroy the absolute right a criminal defendant has under the 5th amendment (as incorporated into state criminal trials through the 14th) to remain silent.
The prosecution has the entire burden here to make the case, and the defendant can assert any affirmative defense available through counsel. I don’t think we’ll see Drejka on the stand, and likely not even the girlfriend (though I’m not entirely sure here whether she could be compelled as a fact witness - I don’t pretend to be a criminal lawyer). These are not intelligent people, and would be easily stymied by the prosecution or defense counsel imo. Witness preparation would be an absolute bear!
Other people can testify about the shooter’s frame of mind. The police officers, psychologists, witnesses at the store.
If there hadn’t been a shooting, but just the shoving by McGlockton, would that have been justified as SYG? Probably. He would have claimed he was defending his girlfriend even though he hadn’t heard any of the discussion and just (assuming) that she texted him that she was being confronted. What if the shoving had resulted in a broken bone or other injury?
He wouldn’t have felt the need to use a gun, everyone would still be alive, and the world would be a slightly better place. They also teach threat assessment in gun classes. He just didn’t care.
The only guy from my hometown I can think of who would have maybe pulled the trigger in that situation was about 5’3", drove a truck with really big tires and carried guns with him. The guns made him super mouthy. He would circle parking lots looking for people and yell and bluster and threaten all the time from the safety of his truck. That was his weekend entertainment. It was a small enough town we knew to avoid the truck.
This is important: the defendant need not be correct in his belief that he was in danger of death or great bodily harm. His belief - at that moment and taking into account the totality of the circumstances - is what is key.
The classic example is where a person reaches into a pocket, and the defendant reasonably believes that person is going for a weapon. Defendant shoots. Turns out that there was no weapon in fact, and so the defendant was not correct. Nevertheless, so long as the belief was reasonable, again at that moment and under the totality of the circumstances, the defendant walks.
Here, Drejka was blindsided, and knocked off his feet. Psychologists will be called to speak to the shock that that engenders, which can cloud perception and lead to biochemical changes (e.g., fight or flight response). A (presumably) aggressive woman is approaching within a few feet. McGlockton continues to take a step or two forward. And then he appears - at least reasonably to my mind under the totality of the circumstances to a man who cannot easily escape - to reach into his pocket or waistband. That might be the clincher.
A person is under no obligation to wait to be actually attacked. The woman in the road rage video I posted above could have shot the two women who raised the bats prior to getting her head bashed in and nose broken. That’s just the way our system works, and imo the way it should work. The truth is, despite 300 million+ guns in the United States, very few people are killed with guns in violent encounters with strangers per year, certain under 5,000 (most of the gun deaths are suicides or intra-family issues, and a huge percentage of even that 5,000 estimate is gang-related and isolated to very small geographic areas that are easy to avoid for the vast majority of the population).
The Shooter “waved his gun around and threatened to shoot people who were parking where he thought they shouldn’t or driving in a way he disliked.”
@JHS If you have a source or link for this, please post it. So far, I’ve heard rumors the shooter was an argumentative crackpot and nasty old whatsit who would argue with people. But those are just rumors and I hadn’t even heard a rumor that he had previously waved his gun around.
For one. Everyone has reported this information, since the prosecutors included it in their criminal complaint. It was based on contemporaneous police reports, not people coming out of the woodwork after this incident. My guess is there will be some of that as well.