Garland Business owner's son kills suspected copper thief

Garland police say 43-year-old Edward Preston Hickey died early Thursday.

Click to expand...

If I were a wagering man, I'd bet he won't try that again very soon.

I guess he was going after the AC unit.
I read about someone getting electrocuted trying to steel one around here. Good.

Here in Nashville there was a run of copper thieving. They do thousands of dollars in damage to an AC unit for fifty dollars worth of copper. I'm surprised there wern't several shootings over this.

Here lately, the thugs have been stealing catalytic converters off cars/trucks. Our delivery truck was tried. They cut both ends free, but there was a bolted bracket holding in the middle and they couldn't get it.

Mark.

Texas? Was it at night? It only says "early in the morning."

To us "midnight mayors," "early in the morning" could mean 11AM.

My understanding is you can only use deadly force to protect property at nighttime in Texas.

I further understand that this concept of using deadly force only at night is more-or-less Old Testament Biblically based.

I googled "a thief in the night" but only came up with some stuff from Revelations.

Help?

(Without turning this into a religion thread.)

I don’t know what’s happened to the Dallas area. This seems to happen all the time. It looks like thieves would figure this out and go somewhere else. Good luck northern brothers and sisters. Hang in there.

Why would time of day matter?

There's a Powerpoint making the email rounds that shows what happened to a thief who tried to steal some wiring at an electrical substation. He cut into a 13,000 volt line with a pair of ordinary wire cutters. The results were not pretty.

I love the irony of this!

Some scumbag trying to steal copper ends up dying of lead poisoning.

Meanwhile, up in Chicago . . .

Jeff

You said it!

Police don't intend to file charges, but the case will be referred to a grand jury.

Click to expand...

Laws aside, is it moral to shoot someone over copper?

This was not the first time they'd been hit. After you've had your multi-thousand dollar commercial air conditioner ripped apart a few times by someone looking for a few bucks worth of copper, it starts to get old. In another, unrelated news story, I heard one business owner indicate that it cost him over $6,000 to get his unit working again after copper thieves hit him.

Click to expand...

I think I would have a hard time sleeping at night if I'd been the shooter. Then again, I've never had to shoot some one in copper-defense so I can't be sure how I'd feel afterward.

I just don't know about this one.

Copper and robbers.

Laws aside, is it moral to shoot someone over copper?

Click to expand...

Yes.

OK. If your head isn't clear as to why, try this:

If somebody attempted to enslave you, you'd have every right to kill them. They're thieves: they're stealing your future labor.

Explain please how stealing your past labor is any different than stealing your future labor.

Society benefits when a copper thief dies. Period.

Laws aside, is it moral to shoot someone over copper?

Click to expand...

If It's your copper or you are a business owner that works with copper be it Plumbing or electrical or anything else, Then my answer would be definitly "YES!" Shoot the bastard.
A Close friend's Electrical construction business almost went under due to theft of material from his contracted job sites. They would rip out eveything that was just installed, So now your replacing the material and paying your employee to do the same job twice if not three times. At one point he even hired a security company to put a man on site all night, the guard they sent decided to fill his trunk with copper from the site he was sent to protect. Here in Las Vegas their even stealing the wiring from the working street lights and along the freeways.

My understanding is you can only use deadly force to protect property at nighttime in Texas.

I further understand that this concept of using deadly force only at night is more-or-less Old Testament Biblically based.

I googled "a thief in the night" but only came up with some stuff from Revelations.

Help?

Click to expand...

230RN: See Exodus 22:2-3, KJV:

"If a thief be found breaking up, and be smitten that he die, [there shall] no blood [be shed] for him.

"If the sun be risen upon him, [there shall be] blood [shed] for him; [for] he should make full restitution; if he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft."

Speculating here, perhaps the logic was that if the sun was up, he could be identified and made to return (or if necessary, repay) the theft. The surrounding verses deal with restitution. In the dark, he could get away. Another view is that at night it would be more difficult to determine if someone was merely thieving, or intent on causing harm.

So we have now a death penalty for stealing? No need for any fear for your safety, or any credible threat to your life? How about you draw down on the guy and at least try to hold him for the police? If he makes any move toward you, THEN shoot him and go sleep like a baby.
Sure he's a scumbag, but unless there is more to it than what is reported, I wouldn't want this one on my conscience, no matter WHAT the law allows me to do.

So we have now a death penalty for stealing?

Click to expand...

Nope. It's been around for a long time.

Oana:

Exodus 22:2-3, KJV:

"If a thief be found breaking up, and be smitten that he die, [there shall] no blood [be shed] for him.

"If the sun be risen upon him, [there shall be] blood [shed] for him; [for] he should make full restitution; if he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft."

Click to expand...

Jim March:

If somebody attempted to enslave you, you'd have every right to kill them. They're thieves: they're stealing your future labor.

Explain please how stealing your past labor is any different than stealing your future labor.

Click to expand...

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Texas? Was it at night? It only says "early in the morning."

Click to expand...

The incident with Joe Horn occurred in the middle of the afternoon. 2 p.m. if I recall.

Yes, thieves are despicable, and with few exceptions, I hold them in very low esteem.

However, I won't shoot a thief unless he enters my home, or puts me in fear of physical harm while engaging in his chosen profession. If I catch him in the act and he surrenders...or he turns to run...he may go, regardless of what the law allows me to do. I can't bring myself to kill someone over inanimate objects.

YMMV

Sure he's a scumbag, but unless there is more to it than what is reported, I wouldn't want this one on my conscience, no matter WHAT the law allows me to do.

Click to expand...

The this is one of the "unintended consequences" of our liberal judicial system. It's not worth putting someone in jail for stealing, so we end up killing them instead. Since the judicial system refuses to do their job, individuals have to do it however they can. If you're identified as a "soft" target, they'll steal everything you've got. At what point to you fight back to save everything you've worked for?

There's some kind of different "mentality" with scrappers and copper thieves. Their thought process seems to be like the miners in Kali in the mid 1800's. I was just walking along and found this nugget and now it's mine.

Go to a scrap yard for a while and see the stuff that's brought in. There was a BIG rash of thefts of bronze cemetery urns here a while back. Something like 300 of 400 urns were stolen from one cemetery. They got something like $10 each for scrap, but cost over $300 to replace.

My son-in-law took some aluminum cans in last week. Some guys brought in complete new rolls of chain link fence. Yeah, people always throw out new rolls of fence. Somebody lost hundreds of dollars so the scrapper could get $5.

There was just a thing on the local news this AM about a guy that got arrested for a series of break-ins in Granger, IN. This was something like this 30th arrest in 12 years.

A copper thief in my city, ripped off a copper gas line...The house blew up!
Luckily, no one lived there...Too bad the thief wasn't there!

1991Tuner said:

I can't bring myself to kill someone over inanimate objects.

Click to expand...

Those "inanimate objects" took your effort and time to acquire - things that can never be replaced. Time is the physical measure of life itself.

Jim March is correct. Theft is equal to slavery, it is an initiation of force. If I am in the right and the criminal is in the wrong, I will defend my property with any means necessary. The criminal is not of zero value; he is of negative value and as such, my property is worth infinitely much more than him since it stems from the time, effort and thinking of a moral person.

There is no "inherent" value in human life that is independant from morality. A morally bankrupt criminal does not get to claim a superior value over the life, liberty and property of a just person, no matter the degree.

redneck2 said:

There was just a thing on the local news this AM about a guy that got arrested for a series of break-ins in Granger, IN. This was something like this 30th arrest in 12 years.

Click to expand...

I don't care what the charges are, as long as they're legitimate, if you get arrested 30 times for anything you should be put down like a rabid dog.

A man who reportedly carried tools that could be used to steal copper is dead after a Garland business owner's son

Click to expand...

So this guy was not stealing anything at the time of the shooting? It seems that he was only trespassing and got killed for it. The son was on the roof "lying in wait" for a thief to come by so he could shoot him. Why couldn't the son just call 911? Sorry but I think the son used very poor judgment and should see the inside of a jail cell. His life was not in danger and nothing was being stolen. He killed some poor slob for climbing on the roof.

The shot heard 'round the Flatirons

Well, at least I know what I would do: not shoot.

The scene was in Boulder CO, at 6th and Cascade, right under the Flatirons, about 1 AM.

It was back in 1965, well before there were too many legal complications. I confronted a young gentleman bent over the ignition switch in my car. I did all this here now "confronting" with my M1917 Colt loaded with very heavy .45AR* loads, pointed directly at him through the open passenger window.

I hollered "freeze" and he didn't, but raised up to look at me with a walkie-talkie in his hand, which I thought was a gun.

He almost bought it right then and there, but jumped out of my car and ran down 6th Avenue, clicking and clacking in his cowboy boots.

At the time I had been using the M1917 on running jack rabbits up on the Grasslands, and was pretty good with it on running shots.

I remember cooly calculating when he would be crossing in front of a big rock down the street as a backstop, right under a streetlight, asssessing how much lead on the target I should use, and dragging the sights along in front of him.

I suddenly thought, "Hey, wait a minute. He's only trying to steal my car," and dropped the gun to my side and fired into the lawn.

BOOM! The shot echoed off the Flatirons and his stride suddenly changed from click-clack-click-clack to clicketyclackclickclackclickclack.

I had to laugh like heck after the incident was over and I had calmed down. I may have saved him from a future career as a car thief. I decided maybe it wasn't a good idea to leave my car windows open anymore, and locked the car up after that.

So now I know I would not shoot at a mere thief unless my life were directly threatened.

And somewhere in the lawn at 6th and Cascade in Boulder, there's a 255 grain .45 slug buried about 10-12 inches under the grass.

-----------
( * The load was about 12 grains of 2400 behind a 255 grain .45 Colt slug in a .45AR balloon head case, which load I picked up from one of the contemporary gun writers. Boy, was that some heckofa load! I always regetted trading that M1917 for something else,)

The fact is, whether he was trespassing or stealing, he was BREAKING THE LAW! HE WAS A CRIMINAL! Since when is it up to the law abiding to protect the bad guy and determine at what point he can defend himself and his property? These guys were stealing his life. Good enough for me. If you guys don't feel justified in shooting, fine, no one is telling you you have to, but don't sit on your high horse and judge the person who was in the situation. Remember that it is 10% of the criminals committing 90% of the crime. And they don't jst stick to stealing copper. If these 10% are eliminated, we'd have a 90% reduction in crime...ALL KINDS OF CRIME!!! If you don't want to risk getting killed by an armed civilian, DON'T COMMIT CRIMES!

There was the felon in Florida who killed a child and three police officers. He had been convicted of over 50, that's right, fifty crimes, ranging from petty theft to assault to felon in possession. His TOTAL jail time for ALL those convictions was 27 months! That is just over two weeks per conviction. If the justice system had done it's part, that child and those three police officers would not have to have paid the price. The judges that let him go should have been charged with accessory after the fact.
Some people just need killing.