Two very different newspaper articles about the same shooting

[pax]

The article below is not available online. I hand-entered it (all typos therefore my own, but the atrocious grammar is the reporter's). This appeared on Monday August 20th in The Chronicle, a newspaper published in Lewis County, Washington.

Toledo Man Fends Off Intruder
Neighbors Call 24-Year-Old 'Hero' After He Shoots Out Tire of Fleeing Van

By Sharyn L. Decker

TOLEDO - With a telephone cradled between his ear and shoulder, and a .40 caliber Smith and Wesson pointed at the intruder, 24-year-old Hall Durrett of Toledo hoped the would-be burglar would stay put.

Instead, the stranger got up from Durrett's laundry room floor and grabbed at him.

Durrett, still hot from a break-in last year, elbowed the man he described as scrawny and scruffy. The stranger edged out the back door and Durrett followed, throwing the man to the ground, twice.

Durrett watched him get into an old white work van, and begin backing out of the Toledo area driveway, onto state Route 505.

Durrett fired three rounds. Two hit the ground and another punctured the van's tire.

Within moments, responding troopers and deputies found a suspect down the road, parked in a field and arrested him.

Joel A. Anderson, 44, of Puyallup, was taken into custody and booked into the Lewis County Jail on suspicion of first-degree-burglary.

Prepared to Shoot

Friday's evening's events at an old farmhouse outside Toledo left Durrett a hero in his neighbor's eyes, with praise from the Lewis County Sheriff's Office and a lot to think about.

He was prepared to shoot, he said, but held back.

"When he took off, I knew I couldn't shoot him in the back," Durrett said on Sunday.

Lewis County sheriff's Cmdr. Steve Aust over the weekend said Friday night's incident turned out well. There's no simple answer to when it's okay to use a firearm if an intruder shows up inside your home, he said.

"In this case, he made the right decision," Aust said. "But, you don't know how you're going to react until you're faced with it. Then you've got to make split second decisions."

Lewis County Sheriff Steve Mansfield this morning weighed in, saying he doesn't want to come across as promoting vigilantism, but this was a "thug" who Durrett certainly could have shot when he came inside Durett's home.

"From the information we've been given, this would have been a justifiable use of deadly force," Mansfield said.

'Get on the Ground'

Durrett, a third-generation steelworker and volunteer firefighter, has lived in the house right on the highway for about three years.

A year ago in February, he was hit with a morning-time burglary in which an estimated $5000 of firearms and valuables were taken from his home. Since then, the 2001 Toledo High School graduate has gone over in his mind what he would do if it occurred again.

It didn't happen like he thought it would, Durrett said.

Around 6 pm on Friday, he was getting ready to hop in the shower when he heard his dog barking, and looked out his kitchen window to see a strange van in his driveway. A man was looking into his work truck, Durrett said.

By the time he grabbed his pistol, the screen door to his enclosed back porch had opened, and then the kitchen door had opened.

A stranger poked his head in and 'knock knock,' Durrett said.

The 24-year-old man pointed his pistol at the man.

"I said it different, but I told him to get on the ground," he said.

The intruder laid down just outside the kitchen while Durrett dialed 911. But he apparently was less afraid of the pistol than getting arrested, Durrett said.

"He said he ran out of gas and didn't know what to do," Durrett said.

Durrett wasn't buying it, and wasn't going to let him get away, he said.

'A Young Hero'

When it was all over, Durrett and his landlady, Chris Sorenson, visited the new neighbors next door to ease their minds.

"We really feel like he's kind of a young hero," Sorenson said.

Sheryl and Frank Bertucci, who are also renting from Sorenson while their new house is being built on Schoolhouse Road, felt the same way after learning all the details.

Initially, the Bertuccis wondered just what kind of a neighborhood they'd moved into.

It's Friday evening, they hear gun shots next door, and then see a van flying backwards onto the highway, Sheryl Bertucci said. Then she spotted what appeared to be her neighbor outside in his boxer shorts, she said.

"We call him Wyatt Earp,'' Sheryl Bertucci said of Durrrett. "For a young kid to have the presence of mind to shoot out the tire ..."

She and her husband said they feel a bit of security now, living next door to the young man, they said.

"He did the perfect job, he did exactly the right thing," Frank Bertucci said.

When Is It OK to Shoot?

When it's okay to use a gun is probably one of the most difficult questions deputies get asked, Aust said.

Folks have a right to defend themselves in their home, but law officers don't want to give the impression that people can just start blasting away, he said.

"Bertainly if somebody's life is in jeopardy, you've got a right to defend yourself," Aust said. "And if it's with a firearm, it's with a firearm."

For Durrett, his family and other have weighed in, with some saying he ought to have just fired the gun and his mother suggesting it was better he didn't.

"She said it's a good thing you didn't kill him, cause you probably wouldn't like that feeling," Durrett said.

The 24-year-old said he always thought if he had to use his gun, he'd just do it. But Friday night, events didn't unfold exactly as he expected.

"I thought about it, I thought I'd just shoot," he said. "But I went off my game plan."

I just want to note here that I love living in this area. The Sheriff is a good guy and even our reporters are capable of writing a positive account of something like this.

Contrast this to the article written about the same incident that was published Tuesday in Longview, Washington (one county south of here). Longview's Daily News couldn't bring themselves to reprint the above article -- it was too upbeat, too positive, too ... bloodthirsty (check out my Sheriff's comments again). So this is what they wrote instead:

Suspected burglar can't escape Toledo homeowner

By Leslie Slape
Aug 21, 2007 - 07:43:23 am PDT

Hal Durrett of Toledo was getting ready to take a shower Friday afternoon when he glanced outside and saw a strange man hanging around his vehicles. A white van with a septic maintenance logo was parked in his driveway.

Fuming from the loss of heirlooms when his Toledo rental home was burglarized last year, Durrett, 24, got his 40-caliber semiautomatic pistol and went downstairs just as the stranger pushed open the screen door.

The man's story about running out of gas seemed rehearsed. Durrett ordered him to lie on the floor and kept the gun trained on him as he dialed 911.

"That's when he got gutsy," Durrett said by phone Monday afternoon.

The stranger hurled himself on Durrett and tried to wrestle the gun away as they rolled. With Durrett, an ironworker, weighing 255 pounds to the stranger's estimated 160, the match was no contest, but the guy managed to get outside. He jumped into his van and backed out onto State Route 505.

Durrett fired three shots at the tires, flattening one of them, he said.

Lewis County sheriff's deputies found the van about a quarter-mile down the road and arrested Joel Anthony Anderson, 44, of Puyallup, Wash., without incident. "There was plenty of gas," Durrett said.

Anderson was booked in lieu of $50,000 bail on suspicion of first-degree burglary. He also had two warrants from outside Lewis County.

Durrett said he often imagined what it would be like to confront a burglar, but reality was nothing like he pictured.

"The guy didn't have a hood on and a mask," he said. "He just came walking in like he knew me, like we were old pals or something."

The incident had a different outcome than the 2002 fatal shooting of burglary suspect David Cline by Oliver Hooker of Centralia, who had been burglarized 10 times before the shooting. Hooker was tried for first-degree manslaughter. Although a jury found him innocent, Hooker said the ordeal left him bitter and broken.

Durrett said he wouldn't have shot the unarmed suspect at his house Friday, although people told him he would have been within his legal rights to defend himself once the man touched him.

"He wasn't going to kill me," Durrett said. "He was just wanting to steal stuff. I'm not one of those hang 'em high type of people. But on the other hard, I don't think a guy defending his own property should be put on trial."

Durrett said the suspect is lucky his girlfriend, Tiffani Alexander, wasn't home. "Tiffani has her own shotguns," he said. "And she's got more temper."

The second article can be found online at http://www.tdn.com/articles/2007/08/22/area_news/news10.txt

Notice how, in the second article, whether or not the guy got shot is plainly just a matter of how angry the homeowner got -- "fuming from the loss of heirlooms," "she's got more temper" -- despite the clear comment from the homeowner that he wouldn't shoot someone unless his life was plainly in danger, and that it wasn't about stealing stuff.

The second writer also very skillfully confuses the issue by bringing in a controversial (and well-known in this area) homicide that happened in another town five years ago. In that case, a renter shot a burglar in the back, from a distance of 70 feet, as the burglar tried to break into the property owner's fenced yard. That guy was arrested, charged with manslaughter, and acquitted after a highly publicized and contentious trial.

Yep, I sure like where I live.

pax

 

[1982fxr]

Thanks for posting this!

It really illustrates the concept of "slant" in the way that two stories can describe the same incident, reporting basically the same facts, but yet present the outcome in two very different ways.

I know that reporters understand this, but it sure ought to be required reading in the civics education program at every school.

 

[Black Adder LXX]

Interesting post pax.

 

[Walter]

I've always been told there are two sides to every story.
This seems like it makes three sides to this story. Or
maybe four. Lessee, the homeowner, the burglar, the newspaper,
and the other newspaper, hmmm. :banghead:

Good post, Pax, a great display of just how a story can be slanted
with just the right word or phrase.

Walter

 

[Doggy Daddy]

I'm not saying I lead a particularly newsworthy life, but in the few times I've been a witness to, or been a part of an event that made the broadcast or printed news, I've been amazed at the hyperbole and misinformation that was disseminated by the reporters.

 

[MarkDido]

A man is driving through suburban Atlanta one day when he sees a 5 year old boy being attacked by a pit bull.

The man slams on the brakes, leaps out of the car, wrestles the dog off the boy and kills it with his bare hands.

A reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution happens to be driving by and witnessses this heroic act.

He stops his car, runs up to the man and says: "that is the bravest thing I have ever seen someone do! I can see the headline tomorrow morning! 'Local Braves Fan Saves Child'"

"Ummmm, actually, I'm not from Atlanta" the man says. "I'm from New York. I just happen to be here visiting my brother. By the way I'm a Yankees fan"

The next morning, the AJC headline reads "Damn Yankee Kills Beloved Family Pet"

It's all a matter of perspective

 

[TallPine]

When our infant daughter died, the newspaper made up some story about a 100 year old lady passing away

 

[Kevin108]

The link to the online article is now something about taxes.