intruder with a knife-nearly shot him

[uspJ]

"Call the police" ....

1.) City critters need to get out more and discover that large swaths of this country do not have the 3 min. response times assumed by many. Back when my BIL was a brandy new state police acadamy grad covering his first patrol territory, I used to ride shotgun with him on his night shifts (before the novelty wore off). He was the ONLY law enforcement available in his patrol area, which was 75 MILES long. And if he was already handling a call, the next available guy was a lot farther. The OP stated that he's on a farm and police aren't readilly available, yet others still chastise him for not hunkering down with a telephone in his hand.

i live 35 miles from the nearest town in my area, my area is as secluded as it gets. fire/ems and leo have actually had to have directions called in to them so that they can find some of the houses in my area. even though they will take a long time to get there they would be the first people i call. why? first off i want it on record that i called for assistance should i have to use lethal force. second, should i not have to use lethal force and the man is still there they can remove him and he is no longer my concern ( as sad as it is that a mentally ill father was left on his own by his children he is not my responsibility and is still a threat.) and lastly if he is no longer on my property i can give his last known direction and let them go looking for a mentally ill man with a knife in the dark.

2.) Believe it or not, there are still people who's ethics do not lead them to conclude that they are entitled to abdicate responsibiltiy for what goes down inside their domain, and many rural states have laws that reflect that.

if he is not in my home and i remain inside my family and i are safe as long as he is outside, if he comes in he dies or i die trying to keep him out. my home and my property are my domain, if he is on my property i call the police for the reasons sighted above, if he enters my home by force (the only way he will come in.) i will use force.

if he leaves after i have spoken to the police, i would call my neighbors and give them a heads up on the situation. there is no need for me to run outside and face a man who poses more of a threat outside when i'm inside safely locked in my home. if i were to go out there and be killed i would no longer be able to protect my family, if i were to kill the man i have to put my family through the emotional,legal and finacial turmoil that would ensue if my actions were not deemed justified.

Your survival is priority #1...

1.) IMO it is unfortunate that so many folks in our society share a personal value that, to hell with my community, my safety and that of my immediate family is the highest priority. Expediency is the measuring stick for what is right and wrong. Yet they all applaud the hero who jumps on a hand grenade to save his fellow soldiers. Thank the Lord that some people still think that it's more important to do what is right than what is safe.

you seem to contradict yourself...

you say that a persons survival is their top priority and then chastise them for acting as such.

if MY SURVIVAL IS PRIORITY #1 then why should i put my survival at risk for others if it wasn't absolutely necessary. i'm sure if i was killed leaving my house to protect my neighbors they would mourn me and think of me as a hero or good samaritan etc. etc. but i doubt they would go out of their way to help my family and provide the role that i did in my household.

 

[Atticum]

As much as I hate to "monday morning quarterback",

I think it's pretty clear you enjoy it. Not hate it.

 

[mdug59]

I think if this scenario had played out any other way the poor OP would be viewed as a villian and anti gunners would have a great story to manipulate to their advantage........again excellent self-discipline on the Op

 

[easyg]

Originally Posted by easyg View Post
As much as I hate to "monday morning quarterback",

I think it's pretty clear you enjoy it. Not hate it.

This is the "Strategies and Tactics" forum.
Aren't we here to learn and discuss such things?

I think just saying "good job" is disingenuous and somewhat harmful.
If we don't acknowledge the facts that some mistakes were made (like letting a mentally ill knife wielding person close to within 6 feet), then how is anyone going to learn from such mistakes.

If you're here just to be a cheerleader, then why bother posting at all?

 

[Gouranga]

If you're here just to be a cheerleader, then why bother posting at all?

I agree. My thought on folks posting here is to analyze what they did after the fact and respectfully discuss/debate what they did right, what they did wrong, and/or what could be done differently in such a scenario. In doing so, we all analyze a real life situation, adapt it to our own personal situation and all of us learn from it.

I would really not see anything discussed on here as abuse of the OP, and I am great full he chose to share it with us to discuss.

 

[cassandrasdaddy]

lets recap
family safe? check
decent self control in a very bad spot? mega check
what coulda been a tragedy turned into a humanitarian act? check
not a bad night all in all. no one got hurt a man got help and some of us learned something

 

[Sgt_R]

1.) City critters need to get out more and discover that large swaths of this country do not have the 3 min. response times assumed by many.

I used to work 3rd shift security for a large corporate facility in the middle of a major metro area. We didn't have a 3 minute response time there, either. Usually when we needed a 911 response for something, it took closer to 5-10 minutes for help to arrive, though on one memorable occasion, EMS was almost 30 minutes late (they got lost trying to find our address).

R

 

[stonecutter2]

Every situation is different. Sounds like you reacted the way your instincts told you, and things turned out okay for everyone. Thanks for sharing the story, take care, and God bless.

 

[KodiakBeer]

Again, if the situation had played out differently and there was a victim being butchered in his front yard, or a victim bleeding out on the side of the road, how would you live with yourselves? This your property, your porch, your yard - and you've got a screaming madman yelling at somebody out there while waving a knife around. What if you waited for that 45 minute police response, only to find out a victim was lying out there bleeding to death while you waited? My thought would be "Who is he screaming at, and what is he doing or has he done to that person?"

I live in a very rural area also, and maybe my situation is different in other ways - my wife is perfectly capable of protecting herself, or backing me up with any number of firearms. I'd deal with such a situation in my own yard, not wait for the police to show up and do a body count and start filling out forms. Yeah, I'd have dialed 911, or had the wife do so while I went out and intervened.

I have to be honest, I'm not hearing "correct defensive/tactical/legal posture, blah, blah, blah"... I'm hearing "Don't get involved". If it's in my yard, I'm getting involved.

 

[Manco]

For everyone saying CALL THE POLICE! in a rural area.
Where my parents live, at night, they have two cops that are in bed sleeping about 15 miles away.

It doesn't hurt to both CYA for legal reasons, as well as get some backup whenever they can get there. If the intruder doesn't get inside your home, then you're safe and can let the police do their jobs. If he does, then take care of him yourself of course, but in either case you're going to call the police anyway, and calling them early if possible is better than calling them later. That is, unless you plan to kill the intruder and throw his body in a ditch to hide the evidence.

Your survival is priority #1...

1.) IMO it is unfortunate that so many folks in our society share a personal value that, to hell with my community, my safety and that of my immediate family is the highest priority. Expediency is the measuring stick for what is right and wrong. Yet they all applaud the hero who jumps on a hand grenade to save his fellow soldiers. Thank the Lord that some people still think that it's more important to do what is right than what is safe.

Like I said earlier, I will defend others in need even at the (reasonable) risk of my own life, but I will also say with no shame whatsoever that my family's lives and my own are worth more to me than those of strangers. We're #1 but everybody else (except criminals) is #2--hardly nothing but not of equal importance. Anything else may be high-minded but unnatural, in my opinion. I don't expect others to sacrifice their lives for me, either.

If it's reasonable for me to do so and I can do so effectively, then I will help a stranger who is being attacked, and have done so in the past when I was a teenager, in fact (I was not armed with a gun, but just a knife). In that case, the victim was running from an assailant armed with a knife (mine was a lot larger and scary-looking, intended for home defense), and the reason that I believed her was that she was bleeding and I doubt that anybody could have been good enough of an actor to have pulled off such a convincing performance anyway if it had been a trick. I let her into my yard but not my house, relocked my gate, stood guard, and called the police on my wireless home phone. The assailant never got close and then just ran off. The young woman was not hurt seriously (just a gash on her arm), and she recovered.

I'm willing to help but not fall for a trick that plays on my sense of humanity and duty to the community--blame my cynical attitude on the sad state of society if you wish, but I don't intend to sacrifice myself for anybody except members of my own family if I have to, and that's the balance that I choose to strike in a world where I don't expect to be able to rely on anybody but myself.

 

[easyg]

Again, if the situation had played out differently and there was a victim being butchered in his front yard, or a victim bleeding out on the side of the road, how would you live with yourselves?

Oh, you wanna play "what if"....

Okay, let's say there is someone laying in the front yard bleeding to death.
You go out and confront our knife wielding man, but in this scenario he does not drop the knife and does not tell you that he has Alzheimer's disease....he just yells incoherently as he advances toward you.

Let's say it's retreat back to the house, or shoot the guy, and a decision must me made quickly.

Let's say you choose to shoot the Alzheimer's guy and you kill him.
And then tend to the guy bleeding in your front yard...
He is badly cut but you manage to keep him alive till the EMS crew arrives.

Yeah! You're the hero of the day.

But what you didn't know is that the man bleeding in the front yard had actually attacked the Alzheimer's man after he found him wandering along side the road.
The Alzheimer's man had ran toward your house in an effort to escape his attacker.
Once in your yard his attacker caught up with him but he managed to get control of his attacker's knife and stab his attacker several times.

And then, as he was heading toward your house, he succumbed to the effects of Alzheimer's and started yelling incoherently.
You came out on the porch and he, in his Alzheimer's effected mind, thought that you too were trying to attack him.
So, you shot and killed him, and then rendered aid to his attacker.


Not quite the hero after all.


My point is that rushing out to confront a situation that you know nothing about isn't always the best thing to do.
You could very easily end up making a bad situation even worse.

 

[Cosmoline]

So, you shot and killed him, and then rendered aid to his attacker.

Unfortunate, but it's a pretty far-fetched hypo. And in that scenario the fault would lie squarely with whoever let the man wander around with a knife. Or with the man himself for not getting treatment before it came to this.

 

[easyg]

Unfortunate, but it's a pretty far-fetched hypo.

No more far-fetched than some maniac hacking up someone, leaving them to die in someone's front yard, and then going up and beating on the property owner's door at 5:00 in the morning, essentially declaring "HEY, LOOK AT ME! I JUST HACKED UP SOMEONE IN YOUR FRONT YARD".

But that scenario was just to illustrate a point:
Rushing out to confront a situation that you know nothing about isn't always the best thing to do.
You could very easily end up making a bad situation even worse.

Do you disagree?



Easy

 

[mbt2001]

You did fine.

Welcome to the club.

 

[KodiakBeer]

No more far-fetched than some maniac hacking up someone, leaving them to die in someone's front yard, and then going up and beating on the property owner's door at 5:00 in the morning, essentially declaring "HEY, LOOK AT ME! I JUST HACKED UP SOMEONE IN YOUR FRONT YARD".

Yet, that's what happened - except that that the crazy man hadn't actually stabbed anyone as yet. He was only screaming about his intent to stab somebody. Should we ask for a memo detailing his prior actions and future intent?

I'm going to assume you live in an urban/suburban area with quick police response times. For many people, that's simply not the case. A night response where I live might take hours, especially in bad weather.

While waiting for the cops to wend their way to the rural location, maybe crazy guy gives up pounding on your door and walks down the road and kicks down some old ladies weaker door. How you gonna feel about that?

I live in a little cluster of homes on 4 and 5 acre lots many miles from town. There's a lot of kids around and there's a lot of grizzlies around. Last Spring, I came home to find a woman and 14(ish) year old boy standing in my driveway toting shotguns. I recognized them as neighbors from 1/4 mile or so up the road. It seems a big bear had just wandered through and the woman had harried it back into the hills with 12 gauge flares, while the boy backed her up with slugs. They'd chased the bear from their own yard for over a 1/4 mile until it fled up the mountain behind my house.

I thanked them and offered them a couple of diet cokes - we were just returning from a grocery trip. They needed them because chasing grizzlies is hard work and then there's that whole adrenaline thing... I thought their actions were downright neighborly and appropriate.

This lady could hidden in her house and called the troopers or fish and game, and they'd have shown up some time later, long after the bear was gone. If the bear had eaten a dog or child, they could have filled out the appropriate forms.

I guess there's a HUGE disconnect between urban and rural thinking. This thread exemplifies that chasm.

 

[SSN Vet]

you seem to contradict yourself...

then I wasn't clear...

my header is a quote or paraphrase of previously posted attitudes.

the body text to follow it my rebuttle

 

[MisterMike]

I, for one, am glad that we have so many experts in this forum. Now I know with absolute certainty that this was either handled perfectly by the OP . . . or that his reaction was dangerous and stupid . . . or was it something in between???

Makes my head hurt.

 

[Gouranga]

I, for one, am glad that we have so many experts in this forum. Now I know with absolute certainty that this was either handled perfectly by the OP . . . or that his reaction was dangerous and stupid . . . or was it something in between???

true dat! I would say the OP is alive, the dude beating his door is alive so all is well. The rest of the suggestions, I would just take as raw data into your own "plan", along with the OP's post, analyze and learn. Nobody, handles thing perfectly. Under stress, we really do not know how any of us would act. We can guess but really until the stuff hits the fan, we just do not know. The OP kept his wits about him during this and that IMO, is the best thing he could have done.

So what would I take from all this:

1. Sometimes the bad guy is not really a "bad guy".
2. Before stepping out your front door, be as sure as possible that you are not being setup (guys around bushes, or corner).
3. Calling police is important even if only for the CYA aspect. It shows you tried to settle things by calling for help and did not just jump up, grab the gun and yell "That SOB is gonna die!!".
4. You need to decide, are you interested in protecting your neighbors? If such a situation occurs and your home is out of immediate danger, is the safety of your neighbors important enough for you to leave the home?
5. As shockwave pointed out, it can be very useful to keep and train on a secondary (non-lethal) weapon besides a gun. Be it a staff, tazer, pepper spray, etc. If provided a situation that does not have to end in killing the bg, I think that is a plus. This situation is an example of a type of engagement that could be ended with a non-lethal weapon.

and lastly...if your family EVER treats you like this guys did, get a lawyer and get them out of your will ASAP.

 

[MisterMike]

Gouranga--
Good summary. I'm glad it ended well.

 

[Manco]

I guess there's a HUGE disconnect between urban and rural thinking. This thread exemplifies that chasm.

And maybe there are valid reasons for that on both sides.

 

[cassandrasdaddy]

ot but its a crime the way some older folks are treated. i worked in a very high dollar old folks home a while. its possible to neglect them in luxury . i had some japanese relatives visit and tour the place. they were astonished "all these people? they don't have family?"

 

[easyg]

I'm going to assume you live in an urban/suburban area with quick police response times. For many people, that's simply not the case. A night response where I live might take hours, especially in bad weather.

Response time around here is anywhere from about 20 minutes to an hour.
But so what?
As long as the guy is outside and I'm inside, and no one is screaming for help outside, it really doesn't matter how long it takes the cops to get there.
In this scenario there was really no need to rush out and confront the guy.
And by calling the police you will have established a legal record that you did try to get police assistance, which would be useful in court should any dramatic action need be taken.
And who knows, you might get lucky and a state trooper might just happen to be in the area on other business.

While waiting for the cops to wend their way to the rural location, maybe crazy guy gives up pounding on your door and walks down the road and kicks down some old ladies weaker door. How you gonna feel about that?

Well I sure wouldn't feel happy, but I wouldn't feel guilty either.
Sometimes bad things happen to good people....that's life.
I gave up on trying to "save the world" years ago.
There's an old saying: with age comes wisdom.
It's true.

 

[easyg]

I, for one, am glad that we have so many experts in this forum. Now I know with absolute certainty that this was either handled perfectly by the OP . . . or that his reaction was dangerous and stupid . . . or was it something in between???

I never claimed to be an "expert"....I'm not.
And I'm not bashing Greywolf444.
I'm not calling him stupid or crazy.
I just think that he took some unnecessary risks and made a few mistakes....

Not calling 911 first.
Going outside.
Letting the knife wielding man get within 6 feet of him.

Some folks here disagree and don't seem to think that calling 911 would be helpful (even in court should it go to that).

And some folks here disagree and think that he was right in leaving the protection of his home.

Does anyone disagree that he should not have let the knife guy get to within 6 feet of him?

 

[LemmyCaution]

I agree that the OP made some tactical errors. However, by acting on his good judgement in the moment, everyone survived the incident, and hopefully the old man will get some help. But I can't help noticing the polarization of the responses here. The two camps fall to 'be alert, use your judgement in the moment, and have compassion for your fellow man' and 'Kitty Genovese's neighbors.'

Which makes me lament the increased immigration of urban and suburban folk to the rural area where I live.

Greywolf444- Please rehash the small mistakes you made- call 911. Install lighting. If you go out, have a means of retreat and a way to put something between you and a possible assailant.

But please don't lose the humanity and compassion you displayed in this incident. I'd be happy and proud to have you as a neighbor.

 

[cassandrasdaddy]

i'd be glad to have you be my 79 year old dads neighbor....