Posted on 12/13/2015 11:55:51 AM PST by naturalman1975
A MAN who killed his neighbour’s intruder has been dubbed a hero and people have taken to social media to call for a bravery award.
The 42-year-old rushed to help his neighbour who was being chased around her home by the intruder on Friday afternoon. Police believe the intruder previously lived in the house in Frankston Heights, Victoria.
Witness Hilary Lennon told the Sunday Herald Sun the woman was screaming and was chased out of the house to her backyard, with the intruder following close behind.
“The woman was very afraid and was screaming very loudly, she was frantic. Something has given her a heck of a fright,†she said.
Ms Lennon then saw the woman’s neighbour walk her back up the steps and “he had his arm around her shoulder and she was covering her faceâ€.
The man had responded to the woman’s screams and confronted the intruder, who was later found dead in the woman’s backyard.
The Sunday Herald Sun believes no weapon was used in the killing, with one line of inquiry focusing on possible asphyxiation. The man was questioned but released from police custody, pending further inquiries into his involvement in the death of the intruder.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
This case is quite local to me (less than ten miles) and I am watching it with interest, to see how it plays out. Australian law allows for reasonable force to be used in self defence or defence of another person, and in a case where a reasonable person would believe there is a risk of death or serious injury, any level of force, including deadly force, is reasonable. That's the law based on common law, and it's not that complicated in principle - except that it doesn't always seem to work out that way. In some cases in the past, police and prosecutors have seemed to go out of their way to try and find reasons to bring a case to court.
Obviously there needs to be an investigation to make sure that there isn't more to a case than there seems to be.
At the moment, it looks to me like the police are working on the assumption that the man was justified in using the level of force that he did. News reports on Friday afternoon (when this happened) said that he had intervened during an 'aggravated burglary' and that is considered a serious violent crime - the media using that term would probably have got it from the police. The fact that the man was released from custody after questioning would also suggest the police consider it likely he was justified (it would have been very easy to keep him in custody over the weekend pending a Magistrate's court decision today).
The fact that no weapon was involved helps - strictly speaking, the use of a weapon doesn't change the facts of self defence in itself, but you do have to explain where the weapon came from and why you happened to have it available and police can sometimes be over zealous in looking for a reason to charge somebody with a weapons related offence, even if they accept the act of self defence was justified. It's why the advice here if you use a weapon is always "Do not answer questions until your lawyer is in the room, to make sure you give the 'right answer'" (which, typically is, "I just happened to be cleaning my gun/knife/machete/cricket bat at the time. So I had it to hand." (You can use a weapon in self defence if you have one available - but you can't generally carry a weapon for the prime purpose of self defence - one of the genuinely bad laws in Australia (speaking as somebody who often finds himself explaining that the weapons laws aren't as bad as some people have been lead to believe, this one is stupid and problematic.)
Yo. Killed him with his bare hands.
But this is exactly why firearms should NOT be denied to the citizenry.
A big guy can confront, intimidate, and even smother a miscreant, but those who are old, or small of stature must not be denied an “equalizer.”
Will he be charged with a “hate crime”?
AMEN
I always enjoy your posts. Thanks.
L
Just curious.
Hope this is as reported and the good Samaritan goes free.
It’s not a large presence - until the 1960s/1970s, Australian immigration laws (the ‘White Australia Policy’ which, frankly, was racist) significantly restricted non-European immigration to Australia and since that changed, most non-European immigration has been Asian. Immigration from Africa was rare. That’s starting to change in recent years, but it’s still only a few thousand people a year and less than 1% of the population.
The shop keeper was another story all together. We had to beat him to deaf wiff his own shoes...
“So you liquidated him(her), eh? Very resourceful”.
Some may say so, but is it really?
Why couldn't the British, who owned and colonized Australia, decide to keep it the province of their own kind? They didn't let the French nor the Chinese nor us Yanks set a colony of our own people there, did they? Even though it was vastly unpopulated. One might as well argue, "Who did they think they were, keeping a whole continent to themselves!"
And later, when Australia became its own dominion, why would it be wrong to want only settlers/immigrants who were like them?
The Japanese do it (ban non-Japanese immigrants).
The Chinese do it.
Many, many nations do.
It seems to me that only the nations that are majority Caucasian "have to" allow peoples of all types to live there less they be called racist.
That's racist!
Walk in fear of no man
No matter what his size
When in trouble call on me
And I will equalize
Sam Colt
Absolutely.
I have personally had the experience of being assaulted by an “unarmed teen” who was about 80 lbs heavier than I, and I can testify that his fists and feet were weapons as he threw me on the ground and beat and stomped me.
If I’d had an equalizer with me, I could have zimmermanned his arse.
IOW,if a person is,for example,charged with what we call a "hate crime" (assaulting a person specifically because he was black,for example) the jury could vote "guilty" on the assault charge but "not guilty" on the hate crime charge because they believe that,despite what the law might say,that some motives don't deserve more punishment than others.
So,if this guy was put on trial for what he did I would,assuming that the basic story regarding the degree of peril this woman experienced was sufficient,vote "not guilty" even if local laws clearly prohibited what he did.
Another problem with choking someone to death in self defense is that they will likely be rendered unconscious and no longer a threat before they’re dead. The legal vultures will claim you could have stopped.
God made all men. Sam Colt made them equal.
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