In Swan Lake, New York, Edward Taibi, 45, of Queens, New York has been charged with second-degree manslaughter after firing at a deer too close to a home and killing 16-month-old Charly Skala inside the grandparents’ trailer home. It is only the latest such killing, but a relatively rare case of a hunter being criminally charged.
All states prohibit hunters from firing too close to a dwelling, often 400 to 500 yards. The New York rule is 500 yards. Taibi had fired on a deer from a deer stand and jumped down to fire another round at the escaping deer. That round hit Charly.
Accidents are obviously inevitable during hunting season, but some are clear acts of negligence and potentially criminal acts, click here. For a prior column discussing these cases, click here.
In this case, civil liability is likely to follow. Taibi is accused of violating a statutory standard of care, making this a potential negligence per se case as well as a battery case for wrongful death.
It is INSANE to send people out into “our” communities to fire weapons!!!
Rcambell,
I’m as appalled at the lack of gun safety that Mr. Taibi used as you. Nobody is a bigger advocate for gun safety then I am. I also don’t know if Mr. Taibi was hunting for the meat or for a trophy or not. If it was just for a trophy, then I agree with you that that’s not a very bad reason to kill something. If it was for meat (or even meat and a trophy), that’s where we part paths.
If you eat any meat, something died for that meat. It might have been an innocent deer, an innocent cow, an innocent turkey, chicken, fish, lobster, or if you’re into the exotic maybe an innocent woodcarver ant. No matter who actually did the killing, it was alive and then it wasn’t, so that you could eat it.
>Accidents are obviously inevitable during hunting season….
“Inevitable”? If as much carnage occured in a sport or just about any other human endeavor, we’d ban it tomorrow. Accidental killings are inevitable because people are allowed to carry and shoot guns. It wasn’t a hunting accident that killed the father of a 12 year old in AZ. It was, as always, the mere fact of gun availability.
More guns, more needless death. Mr. Taibi was stalking an innocent deer in order to murder it for no particularly good reason when he accidently killed an equally innocent 16 month old. Nothing good ever came from the association of civilians and guns and nothing ever will. How many more innocents have to die before we rid ourselves of this fascination with weapons of death and our own delusion that it somehow wrongfully represents hearty Americanism? How many more dead children or abused spouses or victims of road rage?