The homeowner who fatally shot a 20-year-old University of South Carolina student who tried to enter the wrong home on the street he lived on Saturday morning will not face charges because the incident was deemed “a justifiable homicide” under state law, Columbia police announced Wednesday.
Police said the identity of the homeowner who fired the gunshot that killed Nicholas Donofrio shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday will not be released because the police department and the Fifth Circuit Solicitor’s Office determined his actions were justified under the state’s controversial “castle doctrine” law, which holds that people can act in self-defense towards “intruders and attackers without fear of prosecution or civil action for acting in defense of themselves and others.”
Donofrio repeatedly knocked, banged and kicked on the front door “while manipulating the door handle” while trying to enter the home.
Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door “and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob”
Yeah, that’s more than just trying to walk into the wrong house when you’re blackout drunk, so I can see why they would consider it justified. But that’s the word of the police, so we’ll see if a different story comes out later.
We’ll only ever hear one side of this story because the other witness is dead.
What would the other side of the story be? That he was breaking into his own house, but that the gun was fired from someone that had already broken into his own house and was wrongfully residing there? The facts are pretty basic here.
Yikes. This is terrifying.
I feel bad for the owner who had to make a split second decision on what to do.
Because not much difference between rowdy drunk kid and a mentally deranged person. And making the wrong choice could mean your whole family is in danger.
20 years old is an grown man, not a kid.
Hard to imagine I’d not do the same thing if that happened to my house with my family home.
Ouch. Yep, that’s justifiable homicide
Not in my state. No deadly threat, no clear intent to commit a felony. Breaking in is not enough for precisely this reason: the person entering may have a mistaken claim of right.
Breaking and entering isn’t a felony in your state???, huh…
Only if done with criminal intent. You know, you’re allowed to break into your own house.
If you think it’s your house and it’s not, your mistaken claim of right negates the intent. You might assume your lock broke or something and your only intent is to get inside and take your drunk ass to sleep.
This is scenario where you wake up and find a trespasser asleep on your couch, you can’t just murder them, even if you can see evidence that they broke the window to get in.
There is no duty to retreat in the home, but deadly force is still only authorized to counter deadly force.
In places authorizing deadly force to repel a felonious entry, the intent to commit crimes once inside supplies the justification for force. You cannot know the intention from the mere fact that they are breaking in. That’s why you can’t blindly fire through the door at someone trying to break your door in.
If the person ignores commands to stop, ignores warnings, threatens you, says something like “this is a robbery,” or has a weapon, that’s a different story; there, it’s reasonable to infer their criminal intent.
What you’re saying flies in the face of mens rea. The person who’s state of mind is examined here is the homeowner. If they perceive their life is in danger they’re allowed to use force. In your state there may be a duty to retreat but even there there are exigent circumstances.
Good luck convincing a jury this guy knew the person who had just smashed his window and was trying to unlock the door from the outside wasn’t quite literally breaking and entering.
Nope. I’ve stated the rule correctly. Again, breaking and entering without more is insufficient justification for deadly force. Castle doctrine is inapplicable to mere breaking and entering. There has be something else, warnings or commands to stop that get ignored, something.
In my examples the homeowner has no basis to conclude that there is any threat.
The test is both subjective and objective. Otherwise, insane people could murder anyone that knocked on their door and claim they were in fear for their life.
By the way, there is no jury instruction on self-defense unless there’s an offer of proof that the homeowner knew of facts upon which a reasonable person could conclude that deadly force was authorized. Someone breaking your window, without more, is not a threat of deadly force against you, even if you are incredibly fragile and emotional.
Obviously you’re wrong about castle doctrine because this guy isn’t being charged.
What if this guy throws an empty beer bottle through the window and it strikes an occupant or uses the wood splitting axe on the front lawn to smash the door frame? Does the nature of the entry matter at all? Not trying to argue with you, just trying to understand. I had a similar conversation down this line of thought with a friend who is a cop in a state without castle. I left that conversation somewhat bewildered by how much an intruder can get away with in proximity to my person before I am legally able to use or even brandish a weapon on them.
Beer bottle, no. No deadly threat. Person is still outside.
If they have an axe in their hand they have a weapon, you can infer their intent to do crimes once inside. No question as to reasonableness of fear for safety. I’d still warn a bunch of times and command them to stop, and I’d only shoot if it was clear they were coming inside.
The thing to remember is that it’s all evaluated from the standpoint of self defense of your person, not property. Deadly force is never authorized to protect mere property.
I guess where I have the hardest part with this is around the “infer” — I personally feel it’s a bit too much to ask an occupant to attempt to read an unfolding situation clearly, accurately, and quickly enough when things are going down in real-time. “Someone is forcing entry into my dwelling, but do they intend to harm me or simply watch Netflix with me?”
I guess I just disagree with the law, but then again my mind always goes to the most unsettling scenarios and probably not those that are statistically most likely. For instance, when you wrote elsewhere about waking up and finding an intruder in your home asleep on your couch, my mind immediately went to: “Ok, but what if I wake up and find an intruder fully alert, not touching anything, but standing in the doorway of my daughter’s bedroom and staring at her as she sleeps?” The amount of time and the element of surprise that I would lose to correctly deduce this person’s intentions (assuming they wouldn’t try to deceive me, which is a whole ‘nother rabbit hole) could mean the difference between life and death/injury, given how easy and quick it is to kill someone with a concealed weapon. And though I suppose the same could be said of anywhere outside my home, too, I have to believe that I am statistically in more danger from someone who has forced entry into my home than someone just passing by me at the supermarket.
By the way, I fully recognize that what you’re saying is the correct interpretation of the law and tracks with what my LEO friend told me. I just don’t like, haha!
Cheers!
Okay, well, it’s justifiable homicide in South Carolina
It doesn’t say if the people in the home ever told him to stop. Did he know there were people in there? If he did, why did he break the window?
He thought he was locked out of his home I’m sure.
Oh shit something very similar to this happened to my mom once. She’s an older woman who lives alone and terrified of everything. Yes, she owns a gun.
One night ~ 2-3 am a man knocked on her door and demanded to be let in. She’s terrified, grabs the gun. He moved around to different doors, knocking and banging and yelling to be let in. He started shaking the door handles. My mom called 911 and was hiding in a bathroom. They asked her to just wait, police were on the way.
Finally she goes out, sees the guy at a window, and pointed the gun at him…but the gun has a laser pointer when you squeeze the handle. So she screamed back that the red dot on his chest was about to be where she was going to shoot him.
He ran off. Police show up, say they found the kid - 20 - drunkenly stumbling around the neighborhood. The bar had just closed and he thought he was at his friend’s house. A week later he sent her a $20 gift card to a local restaurant with a note that said “Thank you for not shooting me.”
The cops said if she had shot him, she would have been legally within her rights.
Agree or disagree with any or all of this, I’m sorry for the family of the person who was killed. It’s just a terrible situation all around.
Relevant:
According to previously unreported details that police released about the incident Wednesday, Donofrio repeatedly knocked, banged and kicked on the front door “while manipulating the door handle” while trying to enter the home.
A female resident of the home called 911 as Donofrio kicked the door, while a male resident went to retrieve a firearm elsewhere in the home, the news release states. The homeowner owned the gun legally, “for the purpose of personal and home protection,” according to police.
While the woman was on the phone with police, Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door “and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob,” at which point the male resident fired the shot through the broken window that struck Donofrio in his upper body, according to police.
Under those circumstances, I don’t blame the homeowner for using a gun to defend himself and the other female resident. This guy was literally breaking into their home. If it had been me, I would have been terrified and very thankful to have a gun on hand for defense. I’m sure a lot of people here will protest to the shooting, but I would urge them to really think about what they would have done in such a situation. I don’t know what Donofrio’s reasons were for trying to break into the home, but they hardly matter; the fact is, he did try, and the residents of the home had every reason to think they were in danger. If we had multi-shot stun guns that could reliably incapacitate an intruder, I’d say he should have used that rather than a lethal weapon, but current stun guns aren’t that reliable and only fire once before needing to be reloaded. That a life was lost is sad, but I agree that no criminal charges should be filed in this instance. However, I’m not saying that I entirely agree with the Castle doctrine on which this is based, as I’m not intimately familiar with it, but the general notion of being able to use lethal force to defend oneself against a home intruder I do agree with on principle.
I do not agree with the castle doctrine. It’s too easily used to justify lethal force when retreat is an option, however self-defense is a valid justification and from the description given I think that’s completely plausible. An unknown person breaking the glass and potentially armed could be a threat. It sucks that a guy who possibly did nothing wrong has to defend himself in an investigation, but we should have a high bar on lethal actions for civilians and cops (the standard should be higher for cops).
I actually don’t hate castle doctrine tbh, which is commonly confused with the more controversial “stand your ground.” I frankly do not see “a duty to retreat” from one’s own occupied dwelling in the event of an intruder, in my opinion that duty dissipates the second forcible entry has been made to my home.
The common thing I hear is “they usually just want your TV,” but A) The best way to steal a TV is to push a cart, trust me, especially if you still have a 24hr walmart, and B) if you have to rob people of their TV who are also probably living paycheck to paycheck, at least have the common decency to not do so while they’re home and scare the shit out of them. For all they know you could be a rapist or a murderer even if just out of opportunity or “no witnesses,” even by accident with poor gun safety from robbers. Tbh it’s hard for me to agree that some poor family should have to flee their own home or hide in a closet if someone else decides to enter it unlawfully.
I said “option” to retreat not “duty” which is an important distinction I think. And there’s also the option of other reasonable force. I don’t think killing to protect my TV is reasonable, but fighting back possibly even causing injury might be. If I lived in a place where the intruder wasn’t likely to be armed, I’d probably whack his hand with broom handle, and I wouldn’t even feel bad if I broke his wrist because some use of force to keep a stranger from entering my house is warranted. When it comes to lethal force though the standard should be higher, which is why I prefer the self-defense/defense of others test. Did the guy have good reason to think the person breaking in was an imminent danger, that he might be armed and therefore escalation to firing a gun was reasonable? I don’t pretend to know, but I think that’s the test that should be used. That test should take into account that it was his house being broken in to, and that there was another person present he might have wanted to protect, because that definitely affects your perception of danger. We don’t need a set of principles that say you automatically get a pass when it’s your house, I think it’s better to look at each case individually.
I said “option” to retreat not “duty” which is an important distinction I think.
Right, but the castle doctrine specifically is a set of principles which when incorporated into the laws lessens the “duty” to retreat inside one’s own home, which is why I said “duty.” Castle doctrine then actually gives one the “option” because while you’d have no “duty to retreat,” you still “could if you wanted,” while with the inverse the “option” to “not retreat” is taken from you.
And there’s also the option of other reasonable force.
I think it’s a reasonable assumption that if they break into my house while I’m in it, they’re at least willing to harm me to accomplish whatever goal they had and the goal becomes inconsequential, and therefore it is reasonable to defend myself to the fullest extent necessary. In the time it takes to play the “Hello sir yes it’s dark and 3am and you just woke me up but do you have a weapon of any kind or are we about to engage in a bout of fisticuffs” game I could be stabbed, I’m not taking that chance frankly.
If I lived in a place where the intruder wasn’t likely to be armed, I’d probably whack his hand with broom handle, and I wouldn’t even feel bad if I broke his wrist because some use of force to keep a stranger from entering my house is warranted.
And you’re welcome to so, but I personally would rather not incur undue risk, I’d rather have the option to defend the safest-for-me way I can, which happens to be a firearm. With castle doctrine we’re both happy, you can broom-whack and I can stay safe, options.
When it comes to lethal force though the standard should be higher, which is why I prefer the self-defense/defense of others test.
That’s what I mean, imo if you’ve entered my occupied dwelling “for the TV bro I promise,” me responding with deadly force is self defense. It isn’t about the tv, contrary to what he or detractors of castle doctrine will tell you, it’s about the fact that if he couldn’t wait until I get to work or just steal one from walmart he’s clearly willing to do me harm, he could very well be armed, and we’re in a private secluded location where nobody could hear me scream, yeah “so anyway I started blasting.”
I think that set of principles is right, someone breaking into your house while you’re inside it is a bigger threat than it’s naysayers would have you believe.
An unknown person breaking the glass and potentially armed could be a threat.
That’s a valid statement.
It also demonstrates a wider problem: gun proliferation is so incredibly high that the default assumption is always going to be “that person might have a gun,” and this will always prompt a much lowered threshold to use one’s own gun in return.
Exactly this. I am from Central Europe and if someone tried to break into my home, I wouldnt assume by
Renaultdefault that they have a weapon. Because burglars here aren’t armed.Do Renaults often figure into your thinking? ;)
Oh shit
No disagreement. I’m a commie pinko by American standards, which is to say slightly left by European standards. I support gun regulation but it won’t solve the proliferation until we face up to this weird fetishization of guns we have.
I can’t tell, did they announce at all or just fired the moment he broke the window??
Surely this could have been avoided by asking questions first…. What the fuck
Idk man, I’m liberal as hell and even I have problems with that line of logic. Man’s smashing up their house, putting myself in the invadees shoes I’d be worried about warning the home invader(s) and making them use their weapons.
I’m not saying I think everything is fine and dandy in this situation, mfs are using guns way to much in America. But since the occupants had a gun for self defense AND their home was being broken into, I find it hard to blame them for defending themselves.
Same, progressive who believes people have the right to defend their house once someone is clearly trying to force their way in.
I’m uncomfortable with that loophole only because of you’ll recall, several years back a black lady knocked on a stranger’s for because her car broke down in front of that house and got ventilated without discussion.
That’s wack as shit, and I have to wonder how police would determine a frame-up if that particular trashbag had broken the window to make it seem like the lady was breaking in.
Only solution that comes to mind is a ring-like device which only records to local storage.
Absolutely, I think there should be certain objective things that have to happen before “fearing for your life” is a valid defence.
Someone breaking your window after trying to enter forcefully through your door is where I start thinking it’s okay to use a deadly weapon to defend yourself.
Someone knocking on your door (regardless of the time of day) is not a reasonable situation to fear for your life, at least to the extent where you attack the person.
I’m uncomfortable with that loophole only because of you’ll recall, several years back a black lady knocked on a stranger’s for because her car broke down in front of that house and got ventilated without discussion.
I don’t know the specific case you’re talking about, but that isn’t actually the law, that is a failure of our justice system, the shooter could have gotten convicted for that (based off your description I should add, if I’m missing details that would exhonerate the homeowner, like an outside gate already having been breached, then that’s another matter). In my area, you are required to have signs of forced entry before you can defend yourself in this manner, and if someone shot through the door my DA would certainly try the case, but then the jury can decide if “guilty or not guilty,” and that’s how you end up with both false convictions and “false releases” like the one you mentioned. Unfortunately however I’m unaware of a more fair system than the one we have, but I’m open to ideas.
Could have been avoided? Maybe. But at some point the onus is on the person breaking into your house to…idk, not do that? Like there’s a spectrum between what you can do, what you should do and what you have to do and asking some questions first is certainly something you can do. Maybe even something you should do, but protecting your family from someone who is breaking into your house is something you have to do. This isn’t Ralph Yarl who got popped twice for standing on the porch, or those girls who were still in the car and backing out of someone’s driveway when they got clipped. Dude tried to break into the house by kicking the door in, that didn’t work, so he tried a different way of breaking into the house which would have worked had he been left to it.
I’m usually pretty firmly against preemptive violence as self defense but this seems rather cut and dry to me. I would have done the exact same thing the homeowner did here, and I think that it’s doubly good that the homeowner wasn’t charged.
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I mean I’m not in the camp of thinking the homeowners were necessarily in the wrong, but have you seriously never heard of someone breaking their own window to get back into their own property when they were locked out? Also, yea it is possible to communicate with a blackout drunk person, or at least try to warn them.
I dont know the whole situation, but if they didn’t make any effort to communicate or warn the guy before they shot him, I do think that’s cold hearted. If they did try to communicate and were ignored, then I think they didn’t do anything wrong.
Legally speaking they are obviously in the clear. I just dont know if this was acceptable from a moral perspective to me without knowing the full details yet.
I’m upvoting you simply because I think you’re debating in good faith and even though I don’t agree with you, I think you’re adding something real to the conversation.
While I do think the situation would likely have ended better if the homeowner had tried to engage the invader in reasonable conversation before pulling the trigger, I don’t think he should be legally required to do so. Remember: it was the home invader’s actions that caused this whole situation. People keep winging about the homeowner’s responsibility to take action to *protect *the invader of his home, but no one is acknowledging that the invader could have prevented all of this by simply not invading the home. People who behave this way have problems, but they’re virtually always not the people they are harming with their actions. They need help, surely, but they also need to be isolated from the general population and punished for the harm they do to others.
And for those who chime in to object to the fact that I said people should be punished for their crimes, just know that I’m all for prison reforms that make prisons safer and help people begin new lives after they’ve served their time, but that I ABSOLUTELY FUCKING DEMAND they serve their fucking time. I have no use for people that can’t wrap their pathetic brains around the notion that crime and punishment are inextricably linked. It’s not about vengeance. The entire reason we have a justice system is so that we can punish criminals in a more objective, humane way than victims can with their tendency towards revenge rather than justice.
I completely agree with you that there should be no legal requirement to warn an intruder before utilizing self defense. I just feel that its nuanced, and in this particular case, if I was the homeowner I would be screaming my head off warning the intruder that they are about to die in not such a polite way. I just would feel morally obligated to do everything I could to divert the situation, and I would hope most others would do the same before making the decision to end a life.
Wow you’re telling me the tidal wave of liberal shitposting on Reddit was wrong about this and they should have waited for the actual facts? I don’t believe it!!
The guy at the door was not an immediate threat to life or limb, save his own. Firing a gun was not justified without threat, IMO. But I guess in the USA you can murder people to save your property (not your life).
Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door “and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob,”
How much more “immediate” do you need? A complete stranger is trying to break into your home to do god knows what is the epitome of a clear and immediate danger to me.
What would you have done? Opened the door and welcomed them in?
So declare your firearm and say fuck off or I will shoot, don’t just shoot. As a gun owner myself I would NEVER fire without trying to give verbal commands. I couldn’t see anywhere in the article any reference to discussion between the door window breaking and firing.
What the hell??
Easy enough to say when you’re not in that situation with your nerves running high.
Opening the door may have saved everyone in this case.
Did they try to communicate with the person? Look through the widow to see whether the person is armed? Flee? Get a non lethal weapon like a bat, knife, pepper spray? Hide? There was time for the home owner to go get a gun before the window broke. I assume, since this is USA, that it was already loaded (😂) so I’m sure it didn’t take too long, but did they try ANY of those things? Unlikely, and that’s unfortunate.
Get a non lethal weapon like a bat (lethal), knife (lethal), pepper spray (oh shit you actually got one)?
You ever use a bat or knife to kill a person? Way harder than squeezing a trigger, friend.
Which is why if you attack someone with those (and don’t kill them, if you do it’s just murder) you get charged with assault with a deadly weapon, friend? See how that plays out for you in court.
Though you are right even if you were far off base from my point, it is easier to defend yourself with a gun than a bat or a knife.
Again, you’re wrong. It’s easier to kill people with a gun than a bat or a knife. My point is that this case shouldn’t be a situation calling for the castle doctrine (based on the text) because other avenues for dealing with the situation existed and were possible. In that case, I’d rather be charged with assault than murder.
I love not living in america
It’s glorious.
The U.S. spends a tremendous amount of its energy on paranoia, checks and balances, and being remarkably resistant to large-scale changes of the status quo, particularly with respect to rights attendant to private property.
In the current period of bullet trains, wind farms, and unisex bathrooms, it is incredibly inconvenient, even dangerous in its own right. It looks like an operating system bug, but only because it is holding up a feature that the real owners of America don’t like advertised.
There is a reason the dollar is still the global reserve currency- because the entire system was set up to make private property despot-and-revolution-resistant, and the smart money knows it.
The world is heading into a major demographic shift that is going to hit everybody’s social model like a brick through a plate glass window- too many pensioners and not enough taxpayers, and no one has built the roomba that cooks and cleans for grandma yet. We will get to watch a preview in China and Russia quite soon. The pitchforks are going to come out again, and politicians will blow with the wind.
But if you own land/stuff in America, you will still own land/stuff in America.
I’m not saying it is right, or just. It is simply some useful perspective on what such an awkward, irritating, distributed, recursive system might have been designed for, because it certainly wasn’t designed for speed.
The term “storm canvas” comes to mind, and with it a reminder to keep an eye to windward.
There won’t be any previews in Russia.
This is such a non sequitur argument lol
The U.S. spends a tremendous amount of its energy on paranoia, checks and balances, and being remarkably resistant to large-scale changes of the status quo, particularly with respect to rights attendant to private property.
I don’t know one single government that is in favor of upending property rights, the exception being newborn Communist nations. Those same communist nations, after the Vanguard die out, stop changes to property rights. The US isn’t different from other nations. Even China (today) is resistant to changes to the property rights structure.
In the current period of bullet trains, wind farms, and unisex bathrooms, it is incredibly inconvenient, even dangerous in its own right. It looks like an operating system bug, but only because it is holding up a feature that the real owners of America don’t like advertised.
What does this mean? Like, what is the point here? The US is currently reinventing their electrical grid, reshoring manufacturing, and is investing record amounts of money in itself to do so. The US carbon emissions have already peaked and they are slowly declining every year.
There is a reason the dollar is still the global reserve currency- because the entire system was set up to make private property despot-and-revolution-resistant, and the smart money knows it.
Again, totally random argument you just tossed in here. The US dollar is the reserve currency because every other currency is not as appealing. Case in point: we increase the interest rate as global inflation sets in and all other nations’ currencies immediately depreciate against the dollar. China has to have currency exchange controls because people would so prefer to hold USD.
The world is heading into a major demographic shift that is going to hit everybody’s social model like a brick through a plate glass window- too many pensioners and not enough taxpayers, and no one has built the roomba that cooks and cleans for grandma yet. We will get to watch a preview in China and Russia quite soon. The pitchforks are going to come out again, and politicians will blow with the wind.
Where do you come up with this stuff? This is some straight up fox news replacement BS. The US is 15% immigrants and is one of the only developed nations to have a relatively healthy population pyramid. If anything, this argument you’ve made is actually PRO America, ANTI rest of the world.
But if you own land/stuff in America, you will still own land/stuff in America. I’m not saying it is right, or just. It is simply some useful perspective on what such an awkward, irritating, distributed, recursive system might have been designed for, because it certainly wasn’t designed for speed.
The CCP owns all Chinese property and no one can take it from them. The German government cannot expropriate property. Filipinos, Malaysians, Columbians, Egyptians, Norwegians, South Koreans… they are entitled to property rights.
Property rights are not uniquely American and it’s weird you think property rights are what makes America uniquely bad.
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Just for curiosity’s sake, if it was the middle of the night and someone started pounding on your front door and yelling, then tried to kick your door in, then broke your window, reached in and started trying to unlock your door from the inside, what’s the civilized non-American response to that?
You engage them in conversion, explain to them simply they are at the wrong house, and keep pushing that point
Source: I had this situation happen to me at uni, explained to the side he had the wrong house, showed him the house number, and he calmly left.
Cool, cool. Now, what if the intruder isn’t a drunk college kid but someone looking to do you harm? You open the door, he pushes inside because he already knew that he wanted to do harm to the people inaide this house number, and then what?
Not everyone is a drunk kid.
Phone the police, and then shout back asking what he wanted.
What’s the average police response time in your area? Is it less than 30 seconds? Because that’s how long it would be until dude is physically in your home.
wow, you’re so afraid of people
Well, maybe they handle mental illness better where you are (seriously, I bet they do). But here, we let them walk around untill they kill someone. So that is who you are protecting yourself from. And there are a lot of them just waiting to snap.
my husband is mentally ill and you have no idea how offensive you are.
There are all sorts of mentally ill people. I am referring to the ones who get arrested for violence and released over and over… not all mentally ill people.
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- Talk to the person
- Call the police and tell the person the police is coming
- Block the person from coming in
- If he comes in anyway use tools like baseball bat, hammer or kitchen knife to defend yourself
You can bang on a reinforced steel door all you want until the police comes.
Amd we love not having you, too many imigrants already. If its so bad, why people keep trying to get in?
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But there’s one thing in which America is homogenous - school and mass shootings.
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We love not having you
We hate having these garbage laws to protect rooty tooty point and shooty more than our actual citizens
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Personal accountability. Don’t enter a mental state where you can’t identify your own house.
Should I just allow someone to kick my door in?
“banged and kicked on the door” ≠ “kick door in”
He was drunk and frustrated. He was likely kicking the base of the door trying to be loud enough to wake a roommate to open the door since he couldn’t get his key to work and was confused. Castle doctrine should not have applied here as he was likely not an obvious threat. The shooter could probably have talked with him through the door or, heaven forbid, actually opened the door and talked with him to figure out what was going on and helped the obviously inebriated young man home.
Castle doctrine is intended for when someone is making an obvious threat with deadly intent. The way it is being implemented here you can shoot a proselytizing baptist dead on your porch because they were there to attack your soul.
heaven forbid, actually opened the door and talked with him to figure out what was going on
Problem is, if he is trying to hurt you, you’ve just given him access to do so easily so that you can “make sure” he actually wanted to hurt you. And maybe you have the privelege to do dangerous shit like that, maybe you’re 7’8" 300lbs and have adamantium bones, but some of us do not. Some of us are 5’6" 150lbs soaking wet, some of us are women, some of us are handicapable, not all of us are as priveleged as you to be able to fight off 1-5 guys with unknown weapons (even just knives) singlehandedly so they can brag about it, personally I’m incapable of doing that and I don’t want to put myself in harms way simply because the guy breaking into my house might have the wrong house or might want to rape and murder me in quiet seclusion.
Where the fuck were his friends? Sounds like he was blackout drunk. No one was sober enough to look out for him?
Folks, if you friend gets this smashed, don’t let them wander off by themselves. All manner of bad could happen. Simply falling in a bad enough spot may be enough. People have been known to drown in their own vomit.
If we did a better job of looking out for each other, it wouldn’t come to these shitty situations in the first place.
Regardless of how drunk you are, you should not get shot for a silly mistake which endangered no one. Gun laws and this obsession of defending private property in ALL cases is simply stupid. Losing your life because you got drunk is stupid
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Well technically, calling 911 on a break in is just outsourcing the shooting, so imo he can’t even call the men with guns to use the guns he doesn’t think should be used.
Responsibility here would be being charged with murder and serving time
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You make a good example of how many stand your ground proponent’s don’t understand proportional response.
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At least charged with murder and let a jury hear the particulars.
I agree
Exactly-- no one wants to take responsibility for themselves anymore, and then has the nerve to complain when they are justifiably executed on the spot. Maybe you won’t have that last beer next time
“justifiably executed”. Jesus Christ man how psychotic are you?? Terrifying
You wanna know what’s REALLY justifiable, buddy? Not reading the obvious sarcasm in phrases like “executed on the spot” because the US gun culture is deranged
Perfect.
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I don’t think I could ever get drunk enough to break a fucking window, that’s insane. I don’t understand people’s excuses for degenerate criminal behavior while drunk, I’d pass the fuck out before I got to this point.
I’ve been that drunk. I didn’t manage to kill myself or induce anyone else to kill me, but it’s really just sheer good fortune that it worked out that way.
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No wonder Americans are so infatuated with the second amendment!
Good - one less idiot walking the earth.
While the woman was on the phone with police, Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door “and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob,” at which point the male resident fired the shot through the broken window that struck Donofrio in his upper body, according to police.
He wasn’t “trying to enter” he was literally breaking into the home.
I would’ve let off more than one shot at that point.
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for all the non-Americans, here are the things you don’t understand about why we say it was justified.
Mental illness is rampant here. The high productivity expectations have a serious toll on people. There aren’t enough doctors to be even close to handle the scope of it. Many doctors offices are getting bought up by large companies who can and do pick the most lucrative clients.
Our justice system releases mentally ill people who are clearly dangerous because they haven’t committed a big enough crime YET.
And people don’t look out for one another much anymore. Combined with a misguided sense of independence, drunks are left to do things that friends in other countries would put a stop to.
This is why we fear random people, this is why drunk people manage to get into circumstances uncommon elsewhere. This is why we say the shooting was justified. We all think about how badly it could have gone if he didn’t shoot, and it wasn’t just a drunk guy at the wrong house.
Mental illness is rampant here.
All the more reason why you guys shouldn’t have so many guns.
true, but that ship has sailed.
If enough people want it changed, it can be changed, right?
have you seen American politics? Having the majority vote doesn’t even win the presidency. And all these anti abortion laws recently… all the polls show a majority don’t want them. The government works for business, not the people. If enough corporations want it to change, then it can be changed.
We can agree that it’s not going to change soon, yeah
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In this case dude tried to kick the door in, then he broke a window, reached in and started trying to unlock the door. What would you have done?
What would you have done?
Not shot someone.
That’s an easy position to take when the house he’s breaking into doesn’t contain your children.
Again, my first response is never going to be shooting someone, ever.
In Canada, where I live, that would be a crime.
Bud you are full of shit.
I hate saying that because you have the marathon symbol and I love old school bungie with a passion, but if someone tries to kick your door down and break your window, if you are not scared for your life then you are just as drunk as he is.
At no point would I think “I should murder this guy.”
In fact I have had three break-ins, and I managed to not kill anyone each time.
Nor did I say you should murder the guy.
When you have someone unresponsive breaking into your house, you have no idea what their intentions are.
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Guns are a lethal weapon, there are no safe places to shoot someone outside of a video game.
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usa_anthem_kazoo_earrape.mp3playing in the background. This shit is abnormal in the rest of the world.deleted by creator
Kid accidentally enter wrong home this was Not Justified. Mother fuckers the law needs to be repealed and done over then.
Shooting someone just for entering or knocking on your door isn’t an excuse to shoot to kill someone. Should at least give person a warning.
I hope that homeowner never finds peace again and better be glad it wasn’t my kid.
He didn’t just accidentally enter the wrong home, he was forcibly breaking into the home when he was shot. Even breaking a window to open the door from the inside.
Tragic as he was likely just intoxicated and confused, but understandable that the homeowner would use force to defend himself
While the woman was on the phone with police, Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door “and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob,” at which point the male resident fired the shot through the broken window that struck Donofrio in his upper body, according to police
Glad breaking and entering is now considered worth a death sentence.
This wasn’t a punishment or sentence.
He was literally breaking through the door to enter the house.
What was the home owner supposed to do? Hope he became non-violent once he got in? Challenge him to a game of chess? Declare a set of non-lethal rules and duke it out?
The homeowner has a right to not be attacked in his own home ffs
Idk. Maybe yell, “Hey. Fuck off” and call the police? If it is a drunk person, they probably embarrassingly realize it’s the wrong house. Or if they keep trying to get in after, then shoot?
Also the home owner wasn’t attacked. His window was.
You may want to read the article - they did call the police. Unfortunately it takes less time for someone to violently smash through a door than for the cops to arrive.
Interesting that you summize that they were apparently silent as this guy smashed their door
And, would you really play the odds that someone violently entering your house would suddenly have a moment of clarity when they entered? He was messed up enough to think shattering his own window was a viable option to get into his house.
Keep moving the goalposts!
You have to judge it from the perspective if the person living there. They hear someone banging on their door, trying to get into the house, breaking the window and forcing their way in. They had absolutely no reason to believe this was a simple misunderstanding, and every reason to believe their life was in danger.
Go read the article before you comment.
Hey doofus did you even read the article? He was breaking into the home. Maybe read the fucking article before spouting bullshit, next time.
Bro banged on the door and broke a window to try to get in. He was literally forcefully entering a locked house, he didn’t just wander into an unlocked door by mistake.
No telling what the kid was trying to do or would have done if he got in. Home owners have to assume the person trying to kick in the door and breaking a window is there to do harm. Justified self defense to anyone with two brain cells to rub together.
By all accounts he thought he was entering his own home, thought he was breaking his own windows, etc. Seems to me like a little more dialog and this kid’s still alive and a broken window is the worst part of the event. With castle doctrine laws the way they are mistakes and misunderstandings are much more likely to become fatal.
Not by all accounts. Specifically not by the accounts of the people who were inside the home that was getting broken into at 2am.
In none of the accounts do they mention trying to speak with him before shooting. Just call 911 and wait with gun pointed towards door.
Which is what they did, until the intruder broke into the home through the window.
You have a source on that? I’ve yet to see a reference to them attempting to communicate with anyone but 911.
As many sources that you have that say they didn’t.
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