Thanks as always to Pirate’s Cove, Bacon Time and The Other McCain for the Rule Five links, and to our blogger pals over at The Daley Gator for the shout-out! And thanks also to Robert Stacy McCain’s link-compiler Wombat-socho, for this amusing response to our last Rule Five Friday post on why socialism sucks:
Moving right along: I love a happy ending. Excerpt:
This is the moment a homeowner pulled his gun on two teens who tried to rob him in his own front yard.
The suspects had allegedly been terrorizing the Tulsa, Oklahoma, with a spate of robberies on Wednesday, when they approached the victim.
Surveillance footage, shot from a doorbell camera, showed the man, who is not named, responding by casually pulling a gun out of his pocket and aiming it at the two robbers who fled to their car.
Police caught up with the getaway car as the suspects were fleeing the scene, and there was a brief chase before the teens crashed.
Andrew Payton, 20, and a 17-year-old were arrested at the scene of the crash but their 15-year-old accomplice fled.
But here’s where things went south:
The teen was running through a neighbor’s backyard when he opened fire on him. The juvenile is not seriously injured.
Zachariah Cook claimed that the boy was running at him when he shot him, then refused to speak any more to the cops.
He has been arrested on a complaint of shooting with intent to kill. Police said there is a chance the homeowner used justified force, and the judge may decide to drop the charge.
I have a funny feeling the judge won’t dismiss the charge. If the kid was running at Mr. Cook aggressively, yelling and gesturing, then, maybe. But if he was just jumping fences and cutting through yards as he fled, and the Cook just happened to be in his path, well, then that’s a bad shoot.
I hate to second-guess anyone in this kind of a situation. It’s impossible for us to know how things played out and what Mr. Cook may have been confronted with. But given what we know now, it smells a bit.
The good news, though, is that a gang of punks is off the street – and maybe, just maybe, having an older gent pull a gun on them will result in them re-thinking some of their life choices.
I’m not too optimistic about that last part.
