Someone’s not a “victim” unless it is determined that a crime was actually committed. If it turns out he did something stupid like swinging a chainsaw at his neighbor, and his neighbor shot him in self defense, then he was actually the aggressor, not the victim.
You are, of course correct. In my haste to post, I neglected to search for a better word. My apologies. It's been a long time since I've done any posting. I've been seriously ill for well over a year and am just getting back to Free Republic. I even refreshed my mind on the HTML tags for italics :-)
I suspect that you are right that this may well turn out to be a case of justifiable self defense.