Bystander holds neighbor's murderer at gunpoint until police arrive

[old lady new shooter]

Just came across this article by accident. The incident happened in Mesa AZ which is one town away from me. BG drove up onto the sidewalk to intentionally run over the victim, who was thrown into the air. BG then turned around and ran over victim a second time, then proceeded to get out of the car and stomp repeatedly on his head. A neighbor of the victim had been outside with his brother, detailing his car, and when he saw what was happening he ran into his house and got his gun while his brother called 911. He fired a shot at the ground in front of BG, then aimed at him, told him he would shoot him if he tried to leave, and held him at gunpoint until police arrived.

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/m...-of-repeatedly-running-over-mesa-man-with-car

Usually in ST&T we are told it's not our job to hold a criminal. Is that the opinion in this case? The article does not mention anything about the neighbor being charged with anything. Certainly the shot fired into the ground and then pointing the gun at BG qualifies as brandishing.

Thoughts?

 

[Blue Jays]

That is certainly a very interesting real world example. Wow, that is pretty wild.
The good guy neighbor was thankfully fortunate he was restraining a compliant vehicle murderer.

Curious what he would have ultimately done if the killer calmly returned to driver's seat?
What if he put the car into gear and began slowly driving away? Can't exactly start blasting.

 

[CoalTrain49]

It's AZ. Lived in Masa in the 70's. Doesn't surprise me. I know it's changed but it looks like a citizens arrest to me. If the good citizen had actually shot his detainee then maybe. But he didn't. Depends on the state.

Citizen’s arrests are lawful in certain limited situations, such as when a private citizen personally witnesses a violent crime and then detains the perpetrator. For example, in tort law, a citizen's arrest is something that any person can do without being held liable for interfering with another person’s interests when that interference would otherwise constitute assault, battery, and false imprisonment. This means that any person can physically detain another in order to arrest them, but state statutes define the limited circumstances in which this deprivation of liberty is allowed:

 

[FL-NC]

He fired a shot at the ground in front of BG,

It is generally accepted that "warning shots" are ill-advised. However, accidental discharges can and do happen with some frequency- particularly in stressful moments, and even by trained police officers and the like. I don't know if that MAY have happened- I'm sure it might come up at some point. Sometimes, these accidents actually are beneficial in stopping violence, since the BG doesn't know it was an accident. That MAY have happened here.

Usually in ST&T we are told it's not our job to hold a criminal

That is usually the case, and it varies state-to-state, and depending upon the crime(s). I'm not a lawyer, cop, prosecutor, or candle stick maker- but it seems like an attempted vehicular homicide (x2) on a sidewalk, followed up by a third deadly assault to a defenseless person, would be a consideration to be weighed by the authorities by that person's decision to hold that attacker. In the end, I'm sure the guy with a car on top of him getting a boot party would have been grateful for the assistance, had he survived- not to mention the process of getting that guy in custody also being streamlined for the authorities. It is amazing how a normal day working on your car in front of your house or something like that can just rapidly change at such a fast pace.

 

[jmorris]

I would say the “I was going to shoot him if he attempted to flee.”, might not be the most ideal thing to do. Probably would have been better to do so before he was driven over and stomped to death.

 

[Kleanbore]

Why do it?

 

[Blue Jays]

"…Why do it?…"

We may never know why this violent and enraged motorist repeatedly struck the innocent pedestrian.
Some crimes have no reason. Occasionally we can only react afterwards.

 

[red rick]

Good job by the neighbor . I don’t think that he was playing and the offender knew it also .

 

[citizenconn]

It is amazing how a normal day working on your car in front of your house or something like that can just rapidly change at such a fast pace.

That is a true statement. Years ago when I was first married, we lived in a small apartment with a community laundry room on the 2nd floor with a huge double window. It could get quite hot in the laundry room and residents would open the windows to cool things off. Someone had also taken the screen off the window.

I was out working on my car, changing the fuel pump with my military retired uncle, when we heard this terrible screaming coming from the courtyard. We went to see what was going on and saw a group of people standing around the lifeless body of a 3-4 year old little boy. Evidently he had fallen out of the laundry room window while his mother was doing laundry.

No one was doing anything, just standing gawking, so I rushed over and checked the kid's vitals and could see he was purple and not breathing. His airway was blocked by a piece of candy he has been eating, so I cleared his airway and me and my uncle began doing cpr. I asked if anyone had called 911; no one answered so I yelled at the guy who lived next door to me to go do it and we continued cpr until the paramedics arrived and whisked him away.

After the ambulance was gone, we went back to working on the car and my uncle, who was a special forces guy in the military, was still shaking and I asked him if he was ok. He told me that years ago when we has stationed at an air base in Austin, he was working a remote shack on the base when this car came tearing up to the shack with a distraught woman with a lifeless toddler in her arms. Evidently the woman had not been paying attention and when she went looking for the toddler she found him face down in his kiddie pool. My uncle did cpr for a long time, to no avail. He told me that incident was all he could think about while we worked on this kid.

Even though the kid at the apartment fell on his head onto the concrete walkway, there was no permanent damage and he was able to come home about a week later. The middle eastern family moved out about a month later. No one ever thanked me or my uncle at all.

So, yeah, you never know what is going to happen on a normal day when you are out working on your car.

 

[Jeff White]

Usually in ST&T we are told it's not our job to hold a criminal.

That is correct. It's not the job of the private citizen.

Is that the opinion in this case?

I don't have a clue what Arizona law says about this.

Certainly the shot fired into the ground and then pointing the gun at BG qualifies as brandishing.

He was using his weapon to stop an attack on another person. I don't see that as brandishing.

"At that point, I aimed back up at him. Let him know that I was going to make sure that he didn’t get away, that I was going to shoot if he attempted to flee the area, which he was."

Here is where he gets into a huge gray zone. Fortunately the criminal didn't make him shoot him. If the criminal had attempted to flee and the citizen had shot him, you get into a Garner v. Tennessee situation where you are going to have to prove that the criminal was an immediate danger to the public and that the use of deadly force was the only way to stop him and protect the public. While there is a good chance prosecutoral discretion would have kept the citizen from criminal charges, he would have zero protection from a wrongful death suit or a suit for damages if the criminal survived. Citizens arrest laws usually give a citizen the same legal protections that their state gives peace officers when it comes to making the arrest under the circumstances spelled out in the law. However I don't know of any state that provides for legal defense in a civil action resulting from a citizens arrest. Here in Illinois a citizen only gets that protection if he/she acts when requested to by a peace officer. You need to be aware of these things before you make a decision to take action.

 

[Kleanbore]

We may never know why this violent and enraged motorist repeatedly struck the innocent pedestrian.
Some crimes have no reason. Occasionally we can only react afterwards.

My question is why detain the criminal? Would the police not have caught him?

 

[Hikingman]

The main point of the story is that he was taken into custody- almost immediately. My hat is off to the neighbor. What you or I or someone else might have done, whether inside AZ, or in another state is an endless debate.

Is the BG out on bail, yet?

 

[citizenconn]

My question is why detain the criminal? Would the police not have caught him?

Here in Houston: a) maybe not b) could take a while
I infer from the article that the criminal knew the guy he ran over, but the bystander did not necessarily know that. Here in Houston we see a lot of carjackers doing all sorts of crazy things. Same with people in their own cars. Evasion after running into things or people is very common. Lots of foot chases and high speed police chases.

It is not uncommon for criminals evading police here in the Houston area to later be apprehended in Mexico.
It's easy to play the what-if game from the comfort of a keyboard, but I can't fault the bystander for doing what he thought was right in protecting his neighbor.

 

[bdickens]

If the criminal had attempted to flee and the citizen had shot him, you get into a Garner v. Tennessee situation where you are going to have to prove that the criminal was an immediate danger to the public and that the use of deadly force was the only way to stop him and protect the public.

Maybe. Maybe the DA's attitude would be "good riddance" and let it go.

Anyway, what is the point of discussing what didn't happen instead of what did?

 

[Jeff White]

Maybe. Maybe the DA's attitude would be "good riddance" and let it go.

That's exactly what I said. In fact I said:

While there is a good chance prosecutoral discretion would have kept the citizen from criminal charges, he would have zero protection from a wrongful death suit or a suit for damages if the criminal survived.

It's entirely up to you. But don't think for a minute that the plaintiff's attorney in a civil suit won't bring up the fact that a police officer would have been barred from shooting under the USSC's Garner v. Tennessee decision and that is proof that you should pay damages for injury or wrongful death. The civil suit will come years after the incident (given the court backlogs) and the public the jury is selected from will have forgotten the incident. Don't forget the Kim Rhodes story. Mas Ayoob wrote about it a couple decades ago in his American Handgunner column. Kim was an Illinois State Trooper. She stopped a motorist on US45 for a traffic violation. As was standard procedure at the time she had the offender in the passenger seat of her squad while she wrote the citation. It turned out the offender was wanted on a warrant. Here in Illinois we use an alert system that consists of a tone broadcast over ISPERN (Illinois State Police Emergency Radio Network) that every squad car in all departments have. The tone is followed by the officer's unit number and location. Every officer in the area regardless of department begins responding to back up the officer. No other information is broadcast until the officer involved responds that the situation is secure. The offender was savvy enough to know what the "hit tone" meant and grabbed her holstered 9mm automatic. he shot her 3 times during the ensuing fight over her weapon in the crowded confines of the front seat of her squad car. Fortunately he body armor stopped all three shots. She regained control of her weapon and shot and killed her attacker. Well, she was sued by his family for wrongful death. They argued that the fight was over when she regained control of her weapon and it was not necessary for her to shoot him to effect the arrest or prevent his escape. It took three years for the case to go through the courts. I don't know what the state paid for her defense but I would imagine it was several hundred thousand dollars. I know Kim, she worked in the same ISP district my department was located.

Now the state has deeper pockets then most of us. But before any private citizen decides to jump in and make a citizens arrest he/she needs to be aware of the possible ramifications. Even if you win the civil case you may have spent a few hundred thousand dollars to win. You also can't overlook the current racial and class strife in the country. Even if you you don't have deep enough pockets to make yourself a target for an attorney, there are plenty of activists who will fund a case against you anyway to keep it in the news and make a political point. It's a sad statement about the society we live in, but unfortunately it's our current reality. To me it comes down to the choice of putting myself through that wringer or letting the criminal escape and letting the authorities capture him. Everyone who finds themselves in that situation has to make that decision for themselves. It should be an informed decision.

 

[old lady new shooter]

I would say the “I was going to shoot him if he attempted to flee.”, might not be the most ideal thing to do. Probably would have been better to do so before he was driven over and stomped to death.

He didn't have his gun on him. When he saw his neighbor flying through the air he went into his house to retrieve his gun.

 

[old lady new shooter]

We may never know why this violent and enraged motorist repeatedly struck the innocent pedestrian.

According to the article it was intentional, the murderer's former girlfriend was living with the victim.

 

[old lady new shooter]

Is the BG out on bail, yet?

This is Arizona.

 

[Kleanbore]

We've discussed the subject of detaining a suspect on more than one occasion. Some things to keep in mind:

• Should the detainee suffer any kind of physical injury or impairment during detainment, the person holding him will face potential liability. That's not in criminal codes. It's tort law.
• There is the risk of inadvertently shooting the detainee.
• Even trained officers holding suspects at gunpoint have been shoot with weapons of which they had not been aware.

Best to let law enforcement handle it.

 

[old lady new shooter]

My question is why detain the criminal? Would the police not have caught him?

Total speculation here, but being that the neighbor didn't know BG specifically TARGETED the victim, he could have worried that BG was just crazy and might go on to do the same thing to other people. Remember in the Sutherland Springs church shooting, Stephen Willeford, who was widely hailed as a hero, pursued the shooter because he was worried that he would go do the same thing in another church.

 

[old lady new shooter]

You also can't overlook the current racial and class strife in the country.

Fortunately for the neighbor in this case, he (the neighbor) is Hispanic and the murderer is white.

 

[old lady new shooter]

That's exactly what I said. In fact I said:


It's entirely up to you. But don't think for a minute that the plaintiff's attorney in a civil suit won't bring up the fact that a police officer would have been barred from shooting under the USSC's Garner v. Tennessee decision and that is proof that you should pay damages for injury or wrongful death. The civil suit will come years after the incident (given the court backlogs) and the public the jury is selected from will have forgotten the incident. Don't forget the Kim Rhodes story. Mas Ayoob wrote about it a couple decades ago in his American Handgunner column. Kim was an Illinois State Trooper. She stopped a motorist on US45 for a traffic violation. As was standard procedure at the time she had the offender in the passenger seat of her squad while she wrote the citation. It turned out the offender was wanted on a warrant. Here in Illinois we use an alert system that consists of a tone broadcast over ISPERN (Illinois State Police Emergency Radio Network) that every squad car in all departments have. The tone is followed by the officer's unit number and location. Every officer in the area regardless of department begins responding to back up the officer. No other information is broadcast until the officer involved responds that the situation is secure. The offender was savvy enough to know what the "hit tone" meant and grabbed her holstered 9mm automatic. he shot her 3 times during the ensuing fight over her weapon in the crowded confines of the front seat of her squad car. Fortunately he body armor stopped all three shots. She regained control of her weapon and shot and killed her attacker. Well, she was sued by his family for wrongful death. They argued that the fight was over when she regained control of her weapon and it was not necessary for her to shoot him to effect the arrest or prevent his escape. It took three years for the case to go through the courts. I don't know what the state paid for her defense but I would imagine it was several hundred thousand dollars. I know Kim, she worked in the same ISP district my department was located.

Now the state has deeper pockets then most of us. But before any private citizen decides to jump in and make a citizens arrest he/she needs to be aware of the possible ramifications. Even if you win the civil case you may have spent a few hundred thousand dollars to win. You also can't overlook the current racial and class strife in the country. Even if you you don't have deep enough pockets to make yourself a target for an attorney, there are plenty of activists who will fund a case against you anyway to keep it in the news and make a political point. It's a sad statement about the society we live in, but unfortunately it's our current reality. To me it comes down to the choice of putting myself through that wringer or letting the criminal escape and letting the authorities capture him. Everyone who finds themselves in that situation has to make that decision for themselves. It should be an informed decision.

I was surprised to read that SOP is for BG to be in the passenger seat, I had this idea that cop cars have bulletproof glass between the front and back seat and BG's are put in the back seat. This is probably from some tv show I watched in my very-long-departed youth, but it would seem prudent...

Separately, just curious, if a retired LEO detains a BG, is that considered a citizen's arrest and the LEO is on his or her own if litigation ensues? Or is s/he considered un-retired in such a case?

 

[Kleanbore]

he could have worried that BG was just crazy and might go on to do the same thing to other people

Worry about that possibility would not outweigh the risk for me.

 

[Jeff White]

I was surprised to read that SOP is for BG to be in the passenger seat, I had this idea that cop cars have bulletproof glass between the front and back seat and BG's are put in the back seat. This is probably from some tv show I watched in my very-long-departed youth, but it would seem prudent...

The ISP didn't have cages in their cars until several years ago. The state just wouldn't buy them. We used to transport for them if we weren't busy and they were close because we had cages. At the time the incident occurred it was SOP for the troopers to put the offender in the passenger seat.

Separately, just curious, if a retired LEO detains a BG, is that considered a citizen's arrest and the LEO is on his or her own if litigation ensues? Or is s/he considered un-retired in such a case?

No you aren't "un-retired" You're a private citizen in all aspects except for carry under HR219. That how it is here and I'm unaware of it being different anywhere.

 

[Jeff White]

I'm going to throw this out there for the sake of discussion. This situation happened in public on the street. What happens if; You're holding the murderer at gunpoint waiting for the police to arrive but the crowd that gathers decides they want street justice. What do you do?