There is a tragic case out of Chicopee, Massachusetts where a 15-year-old boy was shot after he appeared to go to the wrong house after a night of drinking. 42-year-old Jeffrey Lovell is accused of shooting through the door and killing teenager Dylan Francisco. Lowell is facing a murder charge.
It is a case reminiscent of the most notorious case involving the shooting of a Japanese student in Baton Rouge. The 16-year-old Japanese exchange student, Yoshihiro Hattori, was looking for a Halloween party and scared the wife of Rodney Peairs when he spoke a strange language and approached the house. Peairs shot him in the chest with a .44 Magnum handgun and was later cleared under a Make My Day law as mistaken defense of his home and self. We also saw a tragic such case involving the killing of a law student last year.
Francisco was trying to find a friend with another teenager after drinking a bit. The similarity of the homes in the neighborhood probably contributed to the confusion. The teenagers knocked on the door and they may have broken a pane of glass on the door.
Lovell is known to pose with various guns and has been a vocal advocate of the Second Amendment.
These cases often raise “Castle doctrine” issues where home owners are allowed to use lethal force in the cases of intruders within their domicile or home. In Massachusetts, you generally must show that you are acting in reasonable self-defense. However, there is an exception under G.L. c. 278, § 8A :
In the prosecution of a person who is an occupant of a dwelling charged with killing or injuring one who was unlawfully in said dwelling, it shall be a defense that the occupant was in his dwelling at the time of the offense and that he acted in the reasonable belief that the person unlawfully in said dwelling was about to inflict great bodily injury or death upon said occupant or upon another person lawfully in said dwelling, and that said occupant used reasonable means to defend himself or such other person lawfully in said dwelling. There shall be no duty on said occupant to retreat from such person unlawfully in said dwelling.
Thus there is no duty to retreat but you must show (1) that he or she reasonably believed that the intruder was unlawfully entering the dwelling, (2) that he or she reasonably believed that the intruder was about to inflict death or serious bodily injury upon the defendant or someone else who is lawfully in the dwelling, and (3) the defendant acted with reasonable means of self-defense or defense of another person who was lawfully present. Here Francisco did not enter the dwelling but may have broken the pane of a window in the door. There is also the question of whether it is reasonable to believe that he was facing either death of serious bodily injury. Again that pane of glass could be key to a defense. Moreover, Lowell says that he first tried to speak with the teenager but fired after the breaking of the glass.
What do you think?
Source: Washington Post
Squeek, He’s eating poutine washed down w/ Labatt’s.
Exactly how long is our current “P.C.” Society going to keep blaming tragic incidences like this on the common citizens who are being put into situations of fearing for the safety and welfare of thier families? It is without argument that current social beliefs have put the average citizens into situations that they should never have to experience.
The fact is that social decline (in the name of “social progression”) has produced far more hazards than anybody should be expected to endure. Everyday we are deluged with news stories of the poor, misunderstood people who crash and burn due to thier drunken, or even passion, for racing on streets upon which innocent people are driving (and, sometimes even killed) on, the poor innocent drunk underage drinking kid who stupidly tries to enter a house in which they don’t live, the poor child who brutalizes a store owner so he (or she…must be P.C.) can steal from the store, the poor child who violently resists arrest (to the extent of jeopardizing the officer’s life)…etc, etc, etc.
Isn’t it time that society realizes that the problem is not with the violated, the true innocent victims, the people who are simply trying to live their lives? When will society finally shoulder the responsibility for its failed social policies?
Look, I’m not a heartless, unfeeling drone. I am somebody who HAS experienced pain from losing a loved one due to thier stupidity. The fact is that until society finally realizes that it’s grand social experiment has failed and it’s time to turn back to morals and accepting responsibility for its actions, things are just going to get worse.
Pinand puller……sorry..
I missed your follow-up post where you already gave that info.
Pinandpuller
I think it was Carl Rowan you were thinking of.
Rowan was a strong advocate of strict gun control…..he shot the guy with an unregistered handgun he possessed (illegally, under D.C. law).
@Isaacbasawhatevah
What are you smoking??? Is is some of that formaldehyde pot??? Because when someone is beating your head against the concrete sidewalk, there is no moral imperative to do anything except protect your life. Before your skull fractures and you die.
That thug Trayvon Martin deserved to be shot, and I hope that one day you will meet your very own Trayvon reincarnation! I do not say this out of any animus toward you, but out of a sincere desire that you get a reality check. I suspect when it is your own personal skull that is being clobbered on the concrete, that you will experience your own personal moment of clarity. And if you are sooo stupid in that moment, that you don’t have that philosophical epiphany, then the world will not miss you much. I will send flowers to your funeral, with a sarcastic poem. Perhaps this one, that I wrote several years ago:
A Post-Trayvon Goodnight Prayer
A Short Poem by Squeeky Fromm
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
And if my liberal friends get mugged,
Please let it be a young Black thug!
So when they get a busted snout,
And all their brains are running out,
They’ll gently go to those good nights*
As Champions of Civil Rights!
Amen.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
*Dylan Thomas allusion
Why are so many people blaming the victim, and saying drinking is one of the dumbest things to do?
But killing an innocent, unarmed teenager through the front door is sane? Really?
These are some of the people who most definitely should have their guns taken away!
I bet there are more and more people in France who wish they had a gun. Back to rainbows and unicorns…
“As with the Zimmerman case this was first degree manslaughter, or using unnecessary excessive force.”
Wrong, completely wrong.
The evidence and verdict proved otherwise.
@Paul
Quoting YOU: “I really am amazed at the number of people that think the kid deserved a death sentence for doing something stupid. Yes I know, you didn’t say he deserved it but your words say the same thing to me.”
Then there is something wrong with YOU! Because you are imagining things. You just admitted it! What you do is very common with liberals and leftists. You guys have a mindset that you are civilized guardians protecting the world from ravaging hordes of conservatives. Sorry, but the world needs protecting from you guys, not us. You are the slobbering, illogical hordes who have no argument but name-calling, and no answers to any real-world problems except convoluted and unworkable platitudes. Like Loretta Lynch’s “love” answer to terrorist, and Kerry’s taking James Taylor to Paris after an attack.
You pathetic bunch of pansies are nothing but the Eloi, eating and drinking and living it up for the nonce, while the Morlocks are gathering and sharpening their knives and forks. Oh, but you are sooo cosmopolitan and worldly!
Sheeeesh!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
As with the Zimmerman case this was first degree manslaughter, or using unnecessary excessive force. There was no need to shoot through a closed door at a perceived threat. There was no need to pursue a ‘suspect’. Both of these imbeciles should never be allowed near guns. Defending and supporting this sort of decision making furthers America’s slide backwards. Their is a problem in the US with guns and violence. Burying one’s head in the dirt and quoting Wayne the Peter scripture is not the answer. It is a slow heal, an incremental attitude change, a reasoning with the understanding that the closer one goes towards the concept of blowing away a perceived threat without making an attempt at ascertaining that threat, the closer one gets to blowing away someone for what might be lurking in the back of one’s mind. When there are only two and one is killed by the other, the killer can say anything he or she wants.
issac – having someone beat your head into concrete is not a perceived threat. That is a real threat.
I had a couple guys try to break in my house. I grabbed my revolver and went to a side window, I put a shot right down at their feet & told them to leave.(I made sure the angle was right so there wouldn’t be a ricochet) Yeah I know people argue about that, but I’m not gonna wait till they actually get into the house & shoot them, & I’m not gonna try to ‘talk’ them out of messing with me on my property.
I’m also not going to call the police & have a 50% chance that they get there in time, or that even if they DO get the guys that they won’t be bailed out in a couple hours, thinking they owe me for the arrest.
The only way I would have shot them is if they had had a gun or physically tried to attack anyone. (Then their relation is after ya…)
But bottom line I never had trouble again…
“I really am amazed at the number of people that think the kid deserved a death sentence for doing something stupid. ”
Again, no one thinks that.
No one said that, except you.
Repeating your error over and over again does not make it true, it makes you seem either mendacious or invincibly ignorant.
I’m leaning toward the latter.
I have had personal acquaintance with a legal shooting through a door. A woman co-worker had divorced her husband, and gotten a restraining order against him for good reason. He used to beat her frequently, reason for the divorce. He came to her apartment drunk one night and started to kick the door down saying he was going to kill her or beat her. She got her,357 out, shot him three times through the closed door. End of him and her problem. The cops came,asked to see the order, then simply said, GOOD SHOOTING! I second that too.
Squeeky
In 1988 Carl Rowan shot a white kid who had been trespassing in his pool, with an illegal .22 revolver (in Washington DC no less.
The jury deadlocked and he was never retried.
A black man just can’t catch a break in this country.
“A polite word and a gun will get you farther than a polite word and no gun.”
Robert DeNiro “The Untouchables”
I really am amazed at the number of people that think the kid deserved a death sentence for doing something stupid. Yes I know, you didn’t say he deserved it but your words say the same thing to me. He had no intent on harming anyone (at least by the story given), he was shot at through a closed door. That in my mind is murder. You don’t shoot a gun unless you know (know) what you are shooting at. The kid made a mistake. I am going to take a guess and suggest that everyone on this post (and everyone on this earth) has made a mistake. It is just fine to get killed for a mistake? Sorry, This guy killed another human being because he was scared. Not ok in my book. He convinced himself that what he thought was a person (the door was closed, he did not know what was outside), was going to seriously harm him. Not ok in my book. Our societal paranoia is alive and well with far too many people. We will not survive as a society if this becomes accepted behavior. someone offends you? shoot them. you think someone is threatening you? shoot them. ask questions later. Not ok. by the story I’ve seen so far, this was murder.
Paul said: “You are are still advocating that the value of peoples lives that do stupid things is very small.”
Lie. No one is advocating anything except knowing how not to get shot simply by avoiding doing stupid things when drunk..
@P an P
No, I don ‘t remember that story at all. When did it happen???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky
Do you remember the name of the writer from DC who shot a kid in the ass? The kid and a girl jumped into his back yard with a six pack intending on using his swimming pool.
The kids were white and the writer black.
Eugene Robinson?
Paul
Its best to do stupid stuff at your own house.
Oh, and just for fun, remember the unarmed teenager (and probably an expiring rapper 🙂 ) named Marshall Coulter who got shot in the head in New Orleans a few years ago? He was climbing a fence around a guys home, so down goes Marshall. Anyway, some idiots just never learn:
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter