Self Defense Shooting - Arrested. Help!

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If the state tries to make an example out of this guy, I'll be happy to donate a c-note to his defense fund in the name of liberty.

No man should be punished for defending his family. NO ONE.

This was obviously premeditated. The kid who was shot should be charged with premeditated attempted murder.
 
Sounds like a clean shoot, but I'll be the biggest help this guy has likely seen yet. SHUT THE ???? UP!!! DO NOT TALK TO ANYONE, POLICE, MEDIA, ETC!

All you tell the police is "I was in fear for my life. Contact my attorney for my statement."

Sheesh, he's already admitted to having 'illegal' carry-concealed on previous occations, and shown intent to do so this time. He really needs to SHUT UP!!!

It is not possible to lock you up for a crime you confess, if you DON'T CONFESS TO IT!
 
Simply Amazing

Not only did it happen on his own property he was outnumbered and the kid had a gun. I can't imagine him getting convicted, but he could still stand to lose a lot of money for legal defense.
 
As always I am not sure the news media has gotten tha facts right but based on what is there the man needs to get a medal. Moral and civic responsibility are sadly lacking in this day and age and need to be supported.
 
Some good news

Mr. McCullough has found some pro bono legal representation, and the city may let him out of the housing obligation that has kept him from moving.
Standing his ground endangers man's life
Despite flood of support, he says he'll move

Chip Johnson

Friday, March 4, 2005

Patrick McCullough has received a flood of supportive phone calls and e-mails since news of his standoff with a group of street toughs spread throughout the Bay Area.

But for all the good wishes from his North Oakland neighbors and strangers alike, McCullough knows that he likely will have to relent and move somewhere else.

"I really want to stay, but I can't get past the admonitions of several respected people that my and my family's lives are in danger as long as we live in our present home,'' McCullough wrote this week in an e-mail to his neighbors.

He shot and wounded a 16-year-old male two weeks ago when he was confronted by several young men outside his home. After a brief scuffle, McCullough says he fired a single shot when the youth reached for a handgun in the waistband of a friend's pants.

McCullough was arrested and released, and the Alameda County district attorney's office is considering whether to charge him in the Feb. 18 incident. An attorney for Melvin McHenry, the wounded youth, claims his client did not reach for a gun and was shot while trying to flee.

Since then, McCullough, a soft-spoken, unassuming Chicago native, has received nearly 200 e-mails and 100 phone calls of support from all over the Bay Area.

One man and his son offered to park outside McCullough's 59th Street home and "camp out'' to watch for trouble. Another e-mail described the feeling of empowerment from "Patrick McCullough fantasies,'' a reference to standing up to intimidating street thugs.

On Wednesday, Harry Stern, an attorney with the law firm of Rains, Lucia & Wilkinson offered its services pro bono to McCullough. The firm regularly represents police officers who require legal representation.

In addition, city officials are working on a deal to free McCullough from a 20-year residence obligation that was part of a first-time home-buyers program he used to buy his home a decade ago. Such a deal, which the City Council could approve within a month, can't come too soon.

Last week, a member of the street crew McCullough scuffled with warned him of possible retaliation while others have walked by his home, pointed fingers as if they were gun barrels and dropped the hammers with their thumbs.

Police have flooded the neighborhood, rousting people they believe have affiliations with the gang that controls the area's drug business.

"The publicity about this case is good for him, but at the same time a bit intriguing for suspects,'' said Lt. Lawrence Green, who oversees police patrols in North Oakland. "We think he's a marked man.''

This week, police issued an arrest warrant for a 27-year-old Oakland man who is a suspected drug dealer. The man was heard telling someone that "McCullough is going to get smoked,'' police said.

McCullough's response to the threat on his life has upset a delicate balance that has existed in the neighborhood for many years. Drug dealing has become such a common scene over the years that most residents have either ignored it or willingly turned a blind eye to the problem.

The gangs and dealers have laid claim to much of the area around Bushrod Park, which prevents many families from allowing their children to play there. In previous years, neighbors have watched city park employees walk by drug dealers as if they were part of the natural landscape, and it's no wonder.

In McCullough's neighborhood on the Berkeley-Oakland border, the gang culture spans generations and is as much a tradition as Thanksgiving or Christmas. How else do you explain street gangs that list both fathers and sons as active members?

McCullough knows that drill well. As a kid growing up in Chicago's infamous Robert Taylor Homes housing project, he was invited to join street gangs as a kid and has friends and family who did just that.

He was a good student, and his decision to enlist in the Navy removed him from that environment. But some parts of his upbringing never went away.

Those aspects of his character, as much as his adversaries, are what keep him from allowing a tough-talking teenager, or even a gun-wielding one, to bark him off his block.

And that's why for the last 10 years McCullough and his neighbor and friend Milt Simpkins have made a point of meeting in their respective front yards to chat -- and look around.

Simpkins, who is retired, lost his son Jayson to violence on the street in 1993. The young man, 26 years old at the time of his death, was in a red Camaro identical to a vehicle used in a drive-by shooting in the neighborhood some months earlier.

"When they saw that car, they just opened fire, shot my boy right in the head,'' said Simpkins.

Simpkins has no more patience to give, and has warned some of the neighborhood hoodlums to stay away.

"I've told them that if they come over here to start trouble, they're going to think it's the Fourth of July around here,'' he said.

McCullough made his stand, and has made his mark. If he moves on, which seems inevitable, it will be up to others to wage the fight for civility on 59th Street.
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