Unarmed exchange student killed by homeowner

[Pogo]

I appreciate the kind words, Mr Possum and your implied pronouncement that I am not a "gun nut".
While true, I am not a native Alabaman, I do to a great extent, fit in well here. I've even caught myself saying "I'm fixin' ta go ta WalMart, y'all.
I was every bit as pro 2nd Amendment when I lived in Connecticut and Florida. My home in CT had a sticker on the window glass of the front door like this:

And I meant it. I wasn't afraid to say it or to tell people what I would have done if that asshole HAD broken through my front door.
Hell, Pogo, I've even sat in the dark with my .44 in a house under construction after twice having been broken into and having tools stolen.

I've told numerous people that anyone who enters my home uninvited gets dead. Now, am I a "gun nut"?

Of course not. You're a talk nut. You don't get to be a gun nut until you start shooting indiscriminately. But back to the house under construction with the tools stolen -- suppose you're sitting there and you hear a noise coming from a direction that was easily accessible to the general public -- would you have fired into the dark without knowing what the hell you were shooting at?





What exactly are you trying to imply here? Black people are less credible? I have no idea. Anyway there were TWO witnesses in the hairdresser shop; I don't remember the other one's name.



Yeah I pointed this out before.



This is exactly where we differ about the nature of Montana. People there are just not anywhere near that paranoid. And yes, that is extremely paranoid.

So, if the defense team does their job in the voir dere stage, Dede gets at worst, a hung jury and the prosecution wouldn't retry.
11:1, yeah the state will retry.
10:2, I'd say 50/50, depending on how DA's are hired/elected in Montana.
9:3, (the worst I'd expect) Nope no retrial.

So.... That's the reality of it, Pogo. Dede should have stayed the hell out of the man's garage. HE instigated his own death.

You're well over my head with the odds ratios; I'm not a gambler. I'll stay within the details of the story and what I know about Montanans, and based on that I'm going with guilty. Because trespassing has never warranted a death penalty.

I would not fire blindly, but if I identified a man sized target in the dark, Yes, I would fire.

To make the analogy true I should have said, would you fire into the dark, without warning?

This is likely what Kaarma did. A "dark" garage is pretty vague. How dark was it? Was it dark enough that Karma couldn't make out facial features? Was it so dark that he couldn't tell whether the intruder was armed or not?
Or, was it so dark that he had no idea where Deed was?

Good question. From Kaarma's description he could see nothing in there at all, and from the articles there are no street lights, so Kaarma is saying he could see nothing and just sprayed.

However, this may or may not be interesting -- Dede's companion Robby Pazmino reportedly said he heard a man's voice say "I see you there!" just before the shooting. Now, if Kaarma did say that he may or may not have been because he actually saw something; it may have been a way of saying "I'm about to blow you away". But most accounts indicate there was nothing visible to Kaarma at all -- who had just emerged from sitting in front of a TV and his pupils wouldn't have had time to adjust anyway. But none of the accounts have Kaarma saying anything like "come out with your hands up". That's certain.

If it was case #1, It was certainly light enough for Dede to see a man with a gun and put his hands up and surrender. I guess we won't know about that, other than from Kaarma.

Now you're confusing visibility looking into the garage (Kaarma) with visibility looking out of it (Dede). Two different animals. Dede, in a roofed room dark enough he was using the light of his cellphone to find his way, would have had better visibility of whatever starlight and ambient light provided of the outside-- plus he's been in the dark and his pupils are dilated. Kaarma has just rushed outside after staring at a TV screen and is possibly inebriated. He says he can't see shit, and probably can't.

If it was case #2, (the most likely) Kaarma was prudent to assume the intruder was armed and dangerous. It is always reasonable to assume that a perpetrator, in the process of committing one felony, may be prepared to commit another.

Once again, there's no bridge with which to reach that conclusion, and once again trespassing -- which is all that can be established at that moment -- is not a "felony". But you do need a bridge -- you can't just go "I bet he's got a gun" because you've been watching cop shows. You need some kind of indication. Either Kaarma had that indication and is justified, or he couldn't see shit. He says it's the latter.

If, per chance, it was case #3, how the hell did the kid get hit? Did he rush at Kaarma, causing Kaarma to shoot at a sound?
Depending on choke and barrel length, the pattern of a 12 gauge would be at most 2 feet wide within a typical garage. It's very unlikely 4 rounds fired into total darkness would kill the young man.

I'm certainly no ballistician, but here's what one commenter said about that:
>> I believe the documentation of buckshot penetrating the walls and going into the interior of the dining room is beyond reckless. That particular shot is the same diameter as a .32 caliber bullet, but spherical and there are 9 of them in each shotgun shell. So the four shotgun shells he fired would be equivalent to firing 36 bullets. Wow! << (from here)

(part of the police investigation found that shot had penetreated the back door of the house (the one Kaarma would have used if he were playing defense) and had penetrated all the way into the house. That kind of recklessness raises a question about whether Kaarma was really concerned with his family's safety. As does the fact that both of them rushed outside, leaving a 10-month old baby inside. If you really thought there was a "threat" would you be rushing outside leaving the baby alone and vulnerable?

There's too much room for reasonable doubt here, Possum. Certainly, the prosecution will likely convince a few gun haters like you to vote to convict, but I would bet on a hung jury with no retrial.
No way the prosecution gets 12 of 12. Even odds at 6:6

There you go talking odds again. You're a poker player; I'm not

There is much to be yet learned though. Last I heard the police were getting experts to analyze from the impressions whether Kaarma was standing where he said he was. No word on that yet.

And again, none of this is about guns; it's about actions. Homicide is an action. As noted before, guns don't kill people; they need a wacknut to operate them. That would be the action. "Hate guns" is a little weird; I don't remember saying that and if you followed my views on fetishism you'd know I don't put a lot of faith in the idea of emotional relationships with inanimate objects. It's more like I don't have a use for guns. The same way, f'rinstance, I don't have an interest in poker. You do, so you go with it, and more power to ya. I probably have interests you don't too.

 

[Ernie S.]

You want so much for it to be cool that a young man is dead. How old are you? How many years have you had the opportunity to live? Have you ever made any mistakes? How would it have been if you were murdered for making a mistake at 17? It's just disgusting the way you all take joy in the fact that boy is dead.

And you are stereotyping people from Montana, in the hopes they will let the murderer go free.

Why must you assume that I think any death is cool? I have managed to live for 64 years and 334 days and yes, I've made lots of mistakes. I am fortunate to have survived.
One thing I never did is sneak into someone's home in the middle of the night, not even when I was young and dumb.

I think you're a typical Liberal who thinks that someone who supports the 2nd Amendment and the right of self defense to be a cold hearted bastard that takes joy in senseless death.

Yes Dede's death was senseless, but HE instigated it, not Mr. Kaarma.

If this were actually a case of self-defense ---- there wouldn't be a story.

There wouldn't have been an arrest for "intentional homicide" either.

More from one of those "road rage" incidents:

>> It was about 4:30 p.m. and I was driving home on Prospect , and he [Kaarma] was driving in front of me going about ten miles an hour,” said the neighbor who would like to remain anonymous. ” I tried to pull out slightly so he could see me in his side mirror and he slowed even further–to about 2 miles per hour. When I tried to go around him, he suddenly turned his vehicle into me cutting me off and forcing me to the curb. He got out of his car, and started yelling at me.”
The neighbor claims that in her brief altercation with Kaarma that he “dropped at least three F-bombs” and was angry that she was driving too fast in the neighborhood.

... The neighbor says the situation escalated to the point where she was fearful Kaarma might throw a punch through the window–so she closed the window and began backing away. She said Kaarma was foaming at the mouth and seemed compromised. She also noted that he was wearing a white v-neck undershirt and pajama pants even though it was late in the day.

“I used to work in an ER, I registered drunks and drug addicts everyday and, if you ask me, I’d say that it’s obvious that he was either off his medications or high on something,” Kaarma’s neighbor said.

The night of the incident, before most of the details had leaked out about the shooting, Kaarma’s neighbor claims that she placed a call to 911, informing them of the altercation and offering a description of Kaarma. She said she placed the call after seeing the flood of emergency response vehicles on the street below her and in the general vicinity of the Kaarma residence.

“I just knew he had to be involved,” the neighbor said. “He was just so irrational earlier that day. I had to tell someone on the record. I think it points to his mental state of being on that day.” << (link)​

This was less than eight hours before the shooting. One of three similar road rage complaints against Kaarma, right there in the residential neighborhood.

I dunno, again I'm not a lawyer, I just play one on the internets, but if I were Kaarma's defense I might want to go with insanity over castle...

Cool! A woman that speeds through a residential neighborhood gets yelled at and her path blocked so she is forced to slow down thinks Mr. Kaarma was on drugs. The defense will dispense with her in short order.

 

[Pogo]

Yes we do. We also have a high number of thugs that stage home invasions and kill the occupants of the home. The fear that you may be assaulted in your own home is very real here.
As The Prophet John Lenon said, "Happiness is a Warm Gun."

You DO know that was typical Lennon sarcasm I hope... the title actually came from a U.S. gun magazine (not sure which one) that said on its cover "happiness is a warm gun". Lennon remembered, "I just thought it was a fantastic, insane thing to say. A warm gun means you just shot something!" In other words he was as incredulous that there would be such a thought on a magazine as the rest of us are that this incident happened.

I don't dispute the above at all though, we do indeed seem to have more people shot for the crime of trespassing as Noomi noted.

Let's say on the corner of Main and Not Main there are a disproportionate number of drunk driving accidents. Should our advice be to stay away from that intersection, or should it be to actually address the drunk driving problem? It's all well and good to recognize when one has a problem; to then go on doing the same thing anyway in spite of that just makes my head explode.

Or it used to, before I moved to New Orleans and had to get used to it as a regular thing...

Of course addressing the drunk driving problem makes sense, but banning booze and cars would be stupid and encroach on the rights of law abiding people.

We have a problem with people getting shot for trespassing? Hell yes we do! We suspend the driving privileges of people who are convicted of DUI, not the people they kill and maim on their way home from the bar.
What say we get tough on people who trespass, not the people who are forced to live in fear of them.

That's fine. But when we have a mosquito buzzing around we don't go after it with a bazooka.

I see from the analogy you've signed up for the Kondor Night School of Deflection, trying to make a homicide case into a Second Amendment issue...

 

[Pogo]

Why must you assume that I think any death is cool? I have managed to live for 64 years and 334 days and yes, I've made lots of mistakes. I am fortunate to have survived.
One thing I never did is sneak into someone's home in the middle of the night, not even when I was young and dumb.

I think you're a typical Liberal who thinks that someone who supports the 2nd Amendment and the right of self defense to be a cold hearted bastard that takes joy in senseless death.

Yes Dede's death was senseless, but HE instigated it, not Mr. Kaarma.

If this were actually a case of self-defense ---- there wouldn't be a story.

There wouldn't have been an arrest for "intentional homicide" either.

More from one of those "road rage" incidents:

>> It was about 4:30 p.m. and I was driving home on Prospect , and he [Kaarma] was driving in front of me going about ten miles an hour,&#8221; said the neighbor who would like to remain anonymous. &#8221; I tried to pull out slightly so he could see me in his side mirror and he slowed even further&#8211;to about 2 miles per hour. When I tried to go around him, he suddenly turned his vehicle into me cutting me off and forcing me to the curb. He got out of his car, and started yelling at me.&#8221;
The neighbor claims that in her brief altercation with Kaarma that he &#8220;dropped at least three F-bombs&#8221; and was angry that she was driving too fast in the neighborhood.

... The neighbor says the situation escalated to the point where she was fearful Kaarma might throw a punch through the window&#8211;so she closed the window and began backing away. She said Kaarma was foaming at the mouth and seemed compromised. She also noted that he was wearing a white v-neck undershirt and pajama pants even though it was late in the day.

&#8220;I used to work in an ER, I registered drunks and drug addicts everyday and, if you ask me, I&#8217;d say that it&#8217;s obvious that he was either off his medications or high on something,&#8221; Kaarma&#8217;s neighbor said.

The night of the incident, before most of the details had leaked out about the shooting, Kaarma&#8217;s neighbor claims that she placed a call to 911, informing them of the altercation and offering a description of Kaarma. She said she placed the call after seeing the flood of emergency response vehicles on the street below her and in the general vicinity of the Kaarma residence.

&#8220;I just knew he had to be involved,&#8221; the neighbor said. &#8220;He was just so irrational earlier that day. I had to tell someone on the record. I think it points to his mental state of being on that day.&#8221; << (link)​

This was less than eight hours before the shooting. One of three similar road rage complaints against Kaarma, right there in the residential neighborhood.

I dunno, again I'm not a lawyer, I just play one on the internets, but if I were Kaarma's defense I might want to go with insanity over castle...

Cool! A woman that speeds through a residential neighborhood gets yelled at and her path blocked so she is forced to slow down thinks Mr. Kaarma was on drugs. The defense will dispense with her in short order.

The defense is already talking to her. Odds that they go with insanity after that?

Yeah if only two other unrelated people hadn't reported the same behavior from the same guy huh? And this just in after careful consultations with mathematicians -- ten miles an hour in a 25 isn't "speeding". The guy did the same thing to two other people in separate incidents. These might be three of the reasons the police got a warrant to draw his blood for intoxicants.

 

[Ernie S.]

If you mean the hairdresser and her supposed witness, saying you're going to shoot intruders is not evidence of insanity.

I'm willing to bet that this neighbor woman is a gun hating Liberal. If I've learned one thing since 1992, it's that Liberals lie and expect that the Press will give them a pass.

 

[Pogo]

If you mean the hairdresser and her supposed witness, saying you're going to shoot intruders is not evidence of insanity.

I'm willing to bet that this neighbor woman is a gun hating Liberal. If I've learned one thing since 1992, it's that Liberals lie and expect that the Press will give them a pass.

No no, two separate things. The hairdressers are evidence of premeditation. That's a whole separate issue that goes to the "self-defense" defense.

The three residents who all reported the road rage (same pattern every time) would be the evidence of insanity. Nobody in the defense suggested insanity AFAIK -- I'm just saying they might find that avenue more effective given the profile.

--- Rather than go down a list of generalization fallacies, should I ask what happened in 1992?

 

[Esmeralda]

There are enough differences between the Montana case and your Minnesota example that the comparison is probably not going to hold up under a closer scrutiny...

For example, the Miinnesota shooter...

1. was sitting in a comfy-chair in his basement, waiting for the idiot-teens to come downstairs

2. shot the boy once to wound him, then walked up to him and shot him in the head, to kill him after he had been disabled

3. did the girl in much the same way when she came downstairs

4. dumped the bodies on a tarp to avoid staining his carpet

5. waited an entire day after the shooting before calling a neighbor (rather than the cops, right away)

6. stupidly made voice-recordings of the incident in his basement; the lead-up to the shootings, the shootings themselves, and the post-shooting timeframe; giving strong evidence that he enjoyed the hunt, and meting out those deaths.

That would be enough to hang Mother Theresa, never mind some dipshit in Bumphukk Minnesota.

The fellow did, indeed, try to use something akin to the Castle Defense, but...

With an event-sequence and damning evidence like that, he was 'toast' the day the trial began.

Kaarma, on the other hand, suffers from no such handicap.

Whoops... not quite true... we have the hearsay testimony of the hairdresser, and, perhaps, a few revealing verbal clues served-up by Kaarma himself, during the course of the interviews, but, nothing on the order of what that idiot-shooter in Minnesota had working against him.

I have no clue whether Kaarma is innocent or guilty of premeditated homicide of some kind or another, but the Minnesota case you're serving-up here seems like a different kind of critter.
IMHO.

-Karma set a trap to lure a possible intruder.
-Knowing someone was in his garage, he positioned himself in front of the house blocking an exit for the person in the garage.
-Without knowing who was there or what that person was doing or intended, he shot in the dark, shot to kill.
-He bragged about it before hand, bragged about his plan to set a trap and to kill an intruder.
-Two hairdressers who have no stake in this situation are going to be believed by the jury. The hairdressers are Montana people too, btw.
-The Minnesota case has a lot of similarities, including the fact the killer lived in an area where there are a lot of people who own guns, a lot of hunters, etc. A very conservative area.
-Don't depend so much on a Montana jury being extremists when it comes to guns and the Castle Doctrine. They will look for a logical reason for Kaarma to fear bodily harm or death, and there isn't one.

Bullshit, irrelevance and lies.

Standard libtard talking points.

 

[Ernie S.]

If you mean the hairdresser and her supposed witness, saying you're going to shoot intruders is not evidence of insanity.

I'm willing to bet that this neighbor woman is a gun hating Liberal. If I've learned one thing since 1992, it's that Liberals lie and expect that the Press will give them a pass.

No no, two separate things. The hairdressers are evidence of premeditation. That's a whole separate issue that goes to the "self-defense" defense.

The three residents who all reported the road rage (same pattern every time) would be the evidence of insanity. Nobody in the defense suggested insanity AFAIK -- I'm just saying they might find that avenue more effective given the profile.

--- Rather than go down a list of generalization fallacies, should I ask what happened in 1992?

I believe premeditated self defense is still self defense. I carry a firearm and will use it to defend myself, my family, my home or my business. The very act of being prepared could be construed as premeditation.

Here's a hypothetical for you where I would agree that the shooter should be convicted.
Let's say that Joe Blow had learned that his neighbor was sleeping with his wife. Joe calls neighbor and asks him to come over to help with a plumbing problem and says, "I'll be in the kitchen. Come right in." Neighbor comes over and walks in through an unlocked front door. Joe blows him away.

If the state can prove it came down like that, by all means, convict him.


BUT Dede was not invited into the garage despite maybe being enticed by an open door and a purse. He BROKE the law by entering a private occupied dwelling. Sounds more like suicide to me.

 

[Pogo]

If you mean the hairdresser and her supposed witness, saying you're going to shoot intruders is not evidence of insanity.

I'm willing to bet that this neighbor woman is a gun hating Liberal. If I've learned one thing since 1992, it's that Liberals lie and expect that the Press will give them a pass.

No no, two separate things. The hairdressers are evidence of premeditation. That's a whole separate issue that goes to the "self-defense" defense.

The three residents who all reported the road rage (same pattern every time) would be the evidence of insanity. Nobody in the defense suggested insanity AFAIK -- I'm just saying they might find that avenue more effective given the profile.

--- Rather than go down a list of generalization fallacies, should I ask what happened in 1992?

I believe premeditated self defense is still self defense. I carry a firearm and will use it to defend myself, my family, my home or my business. The very act of being prepared could be construed as premeditation.

Here's a hypothetical for you where I would agree that the shooter should be convicted.
Let's say that Joe Blow had learned that his neighbor was sleeping with his wife. Joe calls neighbor and asks him to come over to help with a plumbing problem and says, "I'll be in the kitchen. Come right in." Neighbor comes over and walks in through an unlocked front door. Joe blows him away.

If the state can prove it came down like that, by all means, convict him.


BUT Dede was not invited into the garage despite maybe being enticed by an open door and a purse. He BROKE the law by entering a private occupied dwelling. Sounds more like suicide to me.

Trying to equate "prepare" with "premeditate"? That's beneath you.
You carry a firearm and will use it to defend yourself -- fine. But number one, in order to do that you must first be attacked, and you can't set it up; an number two, you haven't gone down to a local merchant and ranted about how you've been staying up every night to try to catch the kid who took your bhong and you're going to shoot some fucking kid and capped it off with "I'm serious, you'll see this on the fucking news" --- did you?

And I agree on both counts, that in your scenario that would be murder, and that it's nothing like the instant case.

 

[Politico]

FFS 45 pages of drivel is enough from you. If they are in my house I don't give a shit whether they attack me or not. Nor am I required to.

 

[Esmeralda]

FFS 45 pages of drivel is enough from you. If they are in my house I don't give a shit whether they attack me or not. Nor am I required to.

Perfect example of someone who should not be allowed to own a gun.

 

[Politico]

Perfect example of why anyone who does not think anyone should have guns is an idiot. Please do us a favor. Turn your cheek, let the home invaders snuff your ass out and leave us alone.

 

[Esmeralda]

Perfect example of why anyone who does not think anyone should not have guns is an idiot. Please do us a favor. Turn your check, let the home invaders snuff your ass out and leave us alone.

That sounds like a threat to me. You are threatening me with death. You are suggesting I should be 'snuffed' out because I disagree with you. And you really want anyone to believe you are level headed enough to be a responsible gun owner?

 

[Meathead]

Perfect example of why anyone who does not think anyone should not have guns is an idiot. Please do us a favor. Turn your check, let the home invaders snuff your ass out and leave us alone.

That sounds like a threat to me. You are threatening me with death. You are suggesting I should be 'snuffed' out because I disagree with you. And you really want anyone to believe you are level headed enough to be a responsible gun owner?

He's likely suggesting you could be killed by being a dingbat. Martin and this Turk were pretty stupid too. It's not coincidence.

 

[JoeB131]

Do libs oppose tape victims killing rapists? I mean it's just sex right?

so you are comparing sexual assault to stealing a rake?

Two reasons why this guy is probably going to go to jail for this.

1) The kid was in the garage, and therefore no immediate threat.

2) He shot the kid twice with a shotgun. Which means either the kid was lying prone and he double tapped or the kid was running (limping) away and he shot him in the back.

 

[Meathead]

Do libs oppose tape victims killing rapists? I mean it's just sex right?

so you are comparing sexual assault to stealing a rake?

Two reasons why this guy is probably going to go to jail for this.

1) The kid was in the garage, and therefore no immediate threat.

2) He shot the kid twice with a shotgun. Which means either the kid was lying prone and he double tapped or the kid was running (limping) away and he shot him in the back.

You know how much we value your input on these matters. Zimmerman's already serving life and getting raped on a daily basis, eh?

 

[JoeB131]

Do libs oppose tape victims killing rapists? I mean it's just sex right?

so you are comparing sexual assault to stealing a rake?

Two reasons why this guy is probably going to go to jail for this.

1) The kid was in the garage, and therefore no immediate threat.

2) He shot the kid twice with a shotgun. Which means either the kid was lying prone and he double tapped or the kid was running (limping) away and he shot him in the back.

You know how much we value your input on these matters. Zimmerman's already serving life and getting raped on a daily basis, eh?

Zimmerman is living in hiding because someone will probably kill him if he shows his face in public.

 

[Kondor3]

so you are comparing sexual assault to stealing a rake?

Two reasons why this guy is probably going to go to jail for this.

1) The kid was in the garage, and therefore no immediate threat.

2) He shot the kid twice with a shotgun. Which means either the kid was lying prone and he double tapped or the kid was running (limping) away and he shot him in the back.

You know how much we value your input on these matters. Zimmerman's already serving life and getting raped on a daily basis, eh?

Zimmerman is living in hiding because someone will probably kill him if he shows his face in public.

Believable.

But who would actually follow-through and kill Zimmerman, other than some disaffected member of Martin's family?

 

[JoeB131]

You know how much we value your input on these matters. Zimmerman's already serving life and getting raped on a daily basis, eh?

Zimmerman is living in hiding because someone will probably kill him if he shows his face in public.

Believable.

But who would actually follow-through and kill Zimmerman, other than some disaffected member of Martin's family?

The last time he was seen in public was at a Florida beach, when someone shouted out "There's George Zimmerman- there's a bounty on him!" and the guy ran away like a chicken-shit.

He'll be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his miserable life.

 

[Kondor3]

Zimmerman is living in hiding because someone will probably kill him if he shows his face in public.

Believable.

But who would actually follow-through and kill Zimmerman, other than some disaffected member of Martin's family?

The last time he was seen in public was at a Florida beach, when someone shouted out "There's George Zimmerman- there's a bounty on him!" and the guy ran away like a chicken-shit.

He'll be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his miserable life.

Maybe.

But who would want to kill him?