(NC) Bystander shoots purse snatcher in legs

Status
Not open for further replies.
Shootcraps,

I wasn't speaking of "threats" at all. What I was addressing and what you appear to be implying (correct me if I'm wrong) is the idea that we (police or non-LEO) can no longer attempt to apprehend a known criminal simply because the act which constitutes the elements of the crime is over and the escape has begun.

That's garbage. Nowhere I'm aware of in American criminal (yet at least) or root English common law is that stated. The rule in general is that reasonable force may be used to apprehend a known felon.

I agree shooting the guy was almost certainly illegal and definitely extreme. My problem is that we're focusing on the fact he went overboard because it was a "gun," not a bat or a Jim Kirk double running jump kick.
 
carebear said:
The rule in general is that reasonable force may be used to apprehend a known felon.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. The key words there are "reasonable force". Is it reasonable to shoot an unarmed, fleeing man? No. You cannot use lethal force because by leaving, he is no longer a threat to you.

If you would like to run him down, tackle him and sit on him until Popo arrives, then be my guest. That would be reasonable force. But you cannot attempt to apprehend him by using lethal force.
 
You are making the assumption the story in the Charlotte Observer is representative of actual events. Those of us who lived in Charlotte make no such assumption. Don't condemn the white knight until other news outlets report.

Regardless of reality, the CLT Observer will combine this story (or its version of reality) with a previous story of the police getting all wadded up over open carry (which is perfectly legal, not advised but legal) in CLT. The conclusion will be to outlaw open carry in Uptown CLT and someone will propose to restrict CCH permits.
 
Waitone said:
You are making the assumption the story in the Charlotte Observer is representative of actual events. Those of us who lived in Charlotte make no such assumption. Don't condemn the white knight until other news outlets report.
Click to expand...


Someone always says this and it's really senseless. We can only debate it based on what we know. Until we get more data, THIS is what we know. If we get more facts that make things clearer, then it's quite possible we'll change our opinion.


Also, it appears that the "white knight" fled after the shooting and Popo is trying to find him. That's not good because flight usually means guilt in a lot of people's minds.
 
Yeah, purse snatching is non-violent.....

Here is one, from Charlotte as well, just earlier this month.

Woman Dragged By Purse Thief In Front Of Daughter

POSTED: 5:25 pm EDT October 11, 2005
UPDATED: 11:16 am EDT October 12, 2005

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Fan Yu Soong was loading groceries into her car at the Hunters Crossing Shopping Plaza in Ballantyne when she was attacked and dragged by purse thief Sunday night.

Soong was nearly killed in front of her 13-year-old daughter. Police said her collar bone shattered during the attack.
Click to expand...

http://www.wsoctv.com/news/5086100/detail.html

Sounds like maybe Charlotte residents decided they had had enough of this "non violent" crime.
 
Ya know what's funny about this???
On this very site we are constantly talking about all of the bad laws on the books concerning firearms, and self defense.
Many, MANY of the members here have already stated a common opinion "Better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6."
That in it's self says that most on here don't think that firearms laws are WORTH following.
Now this man did the RIGHT thing. He stopped someone from running off with someone else's property in the quickest and least likely to get himself harmed, way.
The law did not stop the snatcher from taking her purse like it was suppose to. The Law did not stop the man from fleeing. But a gun in the hands of a man that was willing to do the right thing did.
He took the high road. He didn't stand there, with the ABILITY to stop the criminal and say, "Well, he isn't HURTING her, or me, so I can't do anything about it." No he saw a crime being commited and he did what was right.
Does the criminal have the right to say that he was unjustly shot? (He was commiting a crime. Running from it dosen't change the fact that he did it, and that he still had the purse with him.) However as per our LAWS yes he does have that right. Should he? As someone that tries to follow the law and would be held accountable if I break it, I don't think he should. When you break the law you should not be able to use the legal system that you just ignored against someone that either stopped you in mid crime, or who stopped you after you commited that crime.
As for taking the LAW into your own hands. If there are no LEOs around then who else is going to do it??
And why is it just so readily accepted that people with large sums of money or groups with large sums of money can use deadly force to stop a robbery but the common person can't?? I mean if you have THAT much money then it's insured right?? But I can't insure my money, hell I'm lucky if I have enough to just pay my bills and have some left over for food. Yet I can't do anything to stop someone from taking something from me that I have spent my time and hard earned money on, but those that have the money and the means to replace just about ANYTHING that is stolen from them DO have the right??

I say help this man or get off of his back. He did what was RIGHT even if it wasn't legal.

And we call this the land of the free and the home of the brave:scrutiny:
 
I wonder if the purse had $14 or more in it.

LawDog
 
Shoot/Don't Shoot

Regardless of the stated opinions that the snatcher had it comin' to him...I stand firmly in the "This was not a shoot situation" camp. If the lady had resisted, and the snatcher had put a knife to her throat, it would have been different...but that doesn't seem to be the case. That doesn't qualify as the "Gravest Extreme" phrase coined by Massad Ayoob. Even if he had...once he took the knife away from her throat and turned to run, the situation de-escalated into a "No-Shoot."
(No...I don't put a lot of stock in his writings, but he's right on that point.)

The ending (and a leg shot has a high chance of a resulting fatality) of a human life...regardless of how scummy that human may be...is something that can't be taken lightly, and should only be done when there is *no other choice*. Otherwise, we're no better than a lynch mob, and we're proving that the CCW alarmists (who warned of gunfights and blood flowing in the streets.) were right.

If any of the would-be vigilantes on this thread should find themselves in a similar situation...and make the decision to shoot...I hope they can afford
the proverbial Philadelphia Lawyer, 'cause they're gonna need him...twice.
Once for the criminal charge and once for the civil suit. And if one of your stray shots happens to hit me or mine...and you fired at a fleeing purse-snatcher...you're gonna need him three times.

I believe fervently in the RKBA and in the right to self defense. I put a pistol on my hip every morning and whisper a little prayer that this won't be the day that I have to use the gun for its intended purpose. It appears that some whisper a prayer for just the opposite. Scary...
 
Tuner,

Respectfully,

Like "vigilante", I don't think "lynch mob" fits. A lynch mob would be made up of vigilantes and either hung him from a tree right there or gone to his home later and served up justice. This shooter wasn't apparently interested in punishing the purse snatcher, just stopping him from getting away.

The definition of both vigilante and lynch mob involve meteing out punishment outside a court of law, not getting involved in crime-fighting per se, if he was dealing out "vigilante justice" he would have chased down and executed the guy where he lay.

This guy merely justifiably (and morally, in that helping others who are being victimized is moral) intervened in a crime in progress.

The problem is that he used an illegal and unreasonable amount force to do the intervening.

My take based on all my fancy book larnin' anyway. Semantics are important. :)
 
Are the antis right?

If the posts on this thread are any indication of how people who carry firearms really feel, then I fear the current wave of lossening of CCW restrictions is not only going to come to an end, but it will start to be rolled back.

I'm quite sure that most of the police officers in Charlotte are laughing and joking about how the purse snatcher got his just due. But, let me tell you, it's just venting. I'm not so sure that it's just venting here. I'm quite convinced that many people are strapping on their side arm at the beginning of the day and going out in the world secretly hoping that they get a chance to use it. Not that that's an unusual thing, most rookie cops have a reacurring fantasy of being in the bank, off duty, when it's robbed and becoming the hero. They soon grow out of it.

I have to wonder if the sentiments expressed here are actually they way the posters would act or if it's just a way of expressing the general feeling that there is no justice in our society.

Last night at work, there was a talk show on the radio where they were discussing the Mayor of Las Vegas, NV comments about corporal punishment. Apparently the mayor said on a TV panel show that he was in favor of corporal punishment and that graffitti artists should have their thumbs cut off. The calls ran about 80% in favor of that. I have to wonder how much in favor everyone would have been when it was their kid who would lose his thumbs?

So what is it, are you venting your frustrations, or would you actually shoot down a theif who was running away and expect to get a good citizenship award?

There is another thread here where many people are ready to hang a Park Ranger for allegedly shooting a man for theft of services of a $14.00 campsite fee. I don't see how that's any different then this case. We either shoot theives or we don't...which is it?

Jeff
 
Jeff,

Are we reaching a crisis point between what have to be acknowledged to be fairly newly developed liberal (classically) humanitarian civilized values and some earlier, deeper human understanding of what is proper?

I mean, visualize a Viking raid on your village circa 1000 AD.

At root that's just theft by a gang. If you successfully (at least partly anyway) resisted and they were running away with your goats after slaying a few of your townfolk, the self-defense laws we have created and hold to today would have us let them go and wait for the police (the troops of our vassal ruler?) to catch them as they are no longer active threats to us. In reality, back then and probably today, the right thing to do would be to cut them down with arrows to retrieve your goats and end their ability to come back.

Perhaps now self-defense law in a moral sense has internally become situational, to be used only within the "law-abiding" group (don't shoot a guy over a parking dispute) but with the "barbarians", who respect no law, but whom we have allowed to rise up within our village (country) rather than them acting from outside, being outside the pale.

The perceived failure of the rule of law leads rationally to the idea that the gloves are off and we're back to the earlier rules of self-defense, "what you hold you keep."

Whether it is a media-created perception or not, we are definitely seeing barbaric criminal behaviour spread into "decent" society where it wasn't before.

(Yes, I am distinguishing incest, abuse and all the sins of family from interpersonal crime by others. I'm aware the '50's weren't the '50's. It is the interpersonal that drives the feeling of us vs. them.)
 
I don't think anyone here is strapping on their shootin irons each day hoping to play out some josey wales fantasy.

There were two times where I would have been completely justified in shooting someone.

I chose not to draw and I handled the situation in a different manner.

This does not mean I do not get vicarious pleasure from someone taking the
other road.

There needs to be a little street justice once in a while to make criminals think twice.

If I'm not mistaken there was a sharp decrease in subway muggings after Bernard Goetz shot the 4 thugs that were shaking him down.

Bloodthirsty...no frustrated yes...and happy to hear about a criminal getting
whats coming to him.
 
Carebear,
I think that the knee jerk, emotional response that many people are expressing is all media driven. The world is not now and most likely never will be a safe place, but it's not exactly A Clockwork Orange out there either. Most people can walk through their neighborhood at any time of the day with impunity. One of the best ways to avoid becoming crime victim, is not to hang around with criminal types. What do you think the crime rate would look like if you subtracted all the criminal type on criminal type crimes? What I see is that for the most part, the crimnals prey on each other. Yes, there are burglaries and thefts that happen to people who aren't on the fringes of the criminal lifestyle, but if you don't hang with the kind of people who do those things, you have a much better chance of never becoming a victim.

I'm not suggesting that the victim here did anything to bring the theft on. I'm just saying that it isn't the jungle out there that the media makes us believe it is.

Jeff
 
Jeff,

And perception is to a large degree reality. Especially when looking at visceral responses versus intellectual acceptance.

Which is where, as you suggest, the knee-jerk answer comes from.

However, while I agree we don't have droogs actually over-running society, they are in fact out there, in far greater numbers than they were even in the early part of my lifetime, and it seems that our means of controlling them have been curtailed by humanitarian impulses drawn from a philosophy that people do bad things because of upbringing or ignorance rather than the reality that there are evil men out there who will ride our better impulses right over the top of us.

Deadly force for escaping purse snatchers is probably too severe a reaction but "off scot free" because god-forbid a criminal suffer physical harm as a consequence of a deliberate choice to hurt/interfere with innocents on their part is far too gentle.

Guy commits a palpably violent crime, gets hurt as a consequence but doesn't die? No innocent people hurt? There needs to be qualifiers to how the shooter is viewed other than "reckless madman."

Hold the shooter accountable for HIS actions, which had no real negative effects to anyone but the snatcher, and punish him accordingly if caught.

Rule of law by spirit, err on the side of the non-criminal (except technically in response) actor.
 
Vikings?

Well...This ain't exactly 1000 AD, and the purse-snatcher didn't invade a sovereign country, burn a villiage to the ground, rape the women(and/or make off with a few of the young girls) murder half the others, and THEN make good his escape. The analogy is a little off the scale. Like comparing
a pair drunk rednecks cruising around the gay community looking for a target to rough up to Idi Amin.

The suspect in question may well have been a dangerous man, fully capable of much worse acts of violence...and shooting him may well have stopped
a more violent act within a week. He also may have been a homeless miscreant who saw a chance to grab some quick cash so he could eat for a couple days...and went with his impulse. We'll probably never know.

Me? I hope they catch the shooter before he migrates 60 miles further north and settles in Lexington to continue his "just crusade". He's dangerous, and I feel like he was likely itching for a reason to shoot somebody, and...having failed to get a legitimate reason...grabbed at the first chance that he saw.

Tuner------>Out!
 
Tuner,

Out of scale of course, but the basic root elements of the crime (assault, theft, escape) and the societal response; direct response by the affected to stop the successful completion (the escape) or dependence on others to respond with no personal attempt to stop the escape; are what I was after.

If it is merely a matter of scale rather than "kind" that determines the acceptable response we are back to arbitrary rules rather than a moral base to law.

Never stop an escapee or sometimes stop them; use no force or use some force (which could be likely be deadly by almost any technique or item but is somehow worse when certain objects (guns) are used than if others are. That tidbit bugs me and seems right out of a hoplophobe playbook).

I am not supporting shooting fleeing felons in the back, but I'm not certain how morally criminal it truly is. After all, if you don't snatch purses you can't be shot by onlookers. What if-ing the "he might have missed and hit an innocent" doesn't deal with the root question, it sidesteps it and like most what ifs is useless to answering real questions.

I might be taking this too abstract but that's what I do for fun. Because I'm wacky. :D
 
Last edited:
Jeff- to extrapolate this one instance and project it onto any and all CCW holders is unrealistic at best and hysterical at worst. Think about it.
I'm quite convinced that many people are strapping on their side arm at the beginning of the day and going out in the world secretly hoping that they get a chance to use it.
Click to expand...
Really. You should know better.
 
I'm quite convinced that many people are strapping on their side arm at the beginning of the day and going out in the world secretly hoping that they get a chance to use it.
Click to expand...
right :rolleyes:

bsflag.gif
 
I'm curious... If a group of kids rob someone, and the victim or a passerby shoots one of the robbers, killing him, and then the rest are arrested. They get charged with murder in the first because if they hadn't committed the crime, the victim never would ahve shot them etc. Is this not a similar situation? If the purse snatcher had never victimized the lady, he never would have been shot?
 
Cops messed up big time on this one. They should have left him in the gutter where he could die. Nope, they arrested him and got him medical care instead. I don't want cops to save lives. I don't want cops to unnecessarily take lives (like brutality or wanton shooting), but I won't mind if cops let injured crooks crawl away to die. It's rehabilitation through reincarnation.
 
So what do you think that they should have done??:mad:
They could have yelled at him, and MAYBE he would have stopped and returned the purse. "Oh, sorry mam, I made a mistake." Someone could have chased him. Yea.... he already had a head start and I doubt that he would have snatched there if anyone nearby looked like track stars.
Or then again he might have. I mean with criminal lives being worth so much these days.... I mean people are constantly telling us how their lives are worth so much... But they never say how much my life, or your life or that woman's life is worth... no it's just those poor mislead souls out there that are looking to steal from us, assault us, rape and kill us. Those are the people that really MATTER. He probably counted on the fact that no one else there wanted to hassle with court or the law enough to step in and help the lady.
And that is EXACTLY why he should have been shot. He is a criminal. In taking property from that woman who knows how it could rattle her.

This country's problem is that we lack any true pride anymore. People don't really stand for anything these days. We hide behind laws and paper sheilds and the only people that abide by those things are the other good guys. We're doubly afraid of the criminals. We fear them, and then we fear that if we do anything to try to stop the crime we may end up facing the criminal system as well. And there is somthing fundimentally wrong when good honest citizens fear the criminals and not the other way around.
If I have the choice to live as a decent civilized man, one that fears the criminals and the legal system. Or to live as a barbarian, one that sees that criminals should be VERY afraid to harm me or mine for fear of pain or death. Then by all that I hold dear I will be a barbarian until I die.:fire:
 
It's OK, not to be a victim. Really.
And I just realized that that is the real reason for this massive movement of nonviolence towards criminals.
There are so many people out there that have been victimized, and now they feel bad about it. But instead of getting up off their knees and making themselves stronger, to make themselves feel better they want every one else to be victims. Then they will feel better, because then they will know who the bad people are. There will only be victims, and the victimizers, and the police/military. But most people see police and military as victimizers already anyway, they are just on the side of the victims. So then it all evens out. So people with no pride and no real self esteem make themselves feel better by tearing every other STRONG and able person down with them. They cast laws that keep people from effectivly fighting back and when they are brought down because they didn't want to break the law, then the other victims are there to help those people cope with being a victim.
Well I'm no one's victim, I'm nobody's meat. I will not become one of the sheep. And if that leaves me considered as a wolf, then so be it. But my pride will not let me be a victim.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

B
  • Locked
Would-be purse snatcher gets surprise from victim's husband
Replies
7
Views
738
crew590
C
J
  • Locked
Charlotte man 70 shoots fleeing thief 3 times.
2
Replies
25
Views
1K
williamlayton
W
D
  • Locked
Please, don't ASK to be shot!!!
Replies
2
Views
858
sniper5
S
N
  • Locked
Robbery Suspect Fatally Shot
Replies
3
Views
515
SJG26
S
B
  • Locked
911 Call Reveals Woman's Struggle With Purse Thief
Replies
17
Views
697
dasmi
D
Back
Top