Posted on 06/19/2009 12:14:40 PM PDT by DJ MacWoW
MONTICELLO — Queens hunter Edward Taibi pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter on Friday in the shooting death of 16-month-old Charly Ann Skala.
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After he made the plea, Taibi turned to Charly Ann’s grandparents, aunts and uncles who were seated in the courtroom, opened his arms and said, “I am sorry.”
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“This was a travesty and a tragedy that has changed the lives of two people and two families forever,” Taibi said, while standing outside the courtroom following his plea. “I hope one day it brings some kind of closure to the family, some peace and closure in their lives.”
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Taibi, 46, was in a tree stand and shot once at a deer, wounding it. He then climbed down from the stand, and fired a second time from 378 feet away from the mobile home. He was hunting with a .300-caliber Winchester Magnum high-powered rifle.
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Some hunters are stupid. Don’t hunt unless you know what your doing with a gun/bow.
Sounds like he’s a basically responsible guy who has learned his lesson about gun safety the hard way. I don’t really see any point to locking him up, if he’s willing to pay the family a big chunk of his future earnings. The only effect would be to waste tax dollars keeping him locked up, and prevent him from doing anything to help the family for however long he’s locked up. And he already saved taxpayers a bundle by pleading guilty.
We’ve got such a huge number of people either not being locked up in the first place, or being let out after obscenely short times, despite a history of repeated criminal acts and no evidence of intention to stop committing crimes, that I just can’t see the point of locking this guy up. Revoke his 2A rights, leave the manslaughter conviction on his record, and let him go do the best he can to set things right.
Basically I agree with you but the family might have felt that no jail time would diminish the value of the little girl.
378 feet from an occupied dwelling that isn’t yours or someone you know is close. Close enough that a hunter needs to be more careful as people, pets and livestock might be wandering about.
Obviously he had several lessons that needed to be learned. Illegally firing at deer over salt licks, not knowing his backstop . . . And his shooting days should be legally over. But he sounds like someone who really isn’t going to do it again, really would stay away from guns if that was part of his sentence, and really would try to compensate the victim’s family monetarily. He just doesn’t strike me as a good use for a scarce and expensive prison cell.
It's been some years since I hunted in New York State, but I believe discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a dwelling is ILLEGAL there.
So this fellow was NOT being responsible, if this happened in NY State.
It happened in NY. Swan Lake, NY.
It’s getting the the point where any accident in this country results in a prison term.
If he was from Queens, he was a city boy hunting in what we in the West would consider to be somewhat like a suburb. ...scary (treed and populated). He didn’t find out where the local homes were. He also used a western cartridge in an eastern area. .300 Win Mags are not needed in the east, even for defense against black bears. Bear diets and terrain are different there (much smaller bear except for the rare fatso). In much of the west, one can see for many miles without trees blocking views of homes, and winds are often high (reasons for .300 and .338 Win. Mags.).
That’s also true. During the ‘70s and before, accidents were accidents. Now most favored constituents are determined to lobby to stop all danger, pain and death (another pathology of city life).
I live in an area with about 10-15 houses within a 100 square miles, some of them occupied. The large ranches nearby are much less populated. ...can see all of the houses within 10 miles from our hill. Stiff winds are common, as are larger animals (elk, bear, etc., and moose on the other side of the Ranges to the west and northwest here. With frequent high winds, heavier bullets make more sense. It hasn’t been very uncommon over the past 3 years to see bear that stand near 4 feet on all fours and six to eight feet long (more protein in their diets, perhaps). ...and more bears, as they populate more heavily.
I also remember living in the Ozarks, though, with little places nearly all occupied by homeowners, mostly between 35 and 160 acres. The people who lived there were very aware of where neighbors’ houses were. Accidents happened there much more often than here, but the locals in the Ozarks feared accidents by hunters from the cities more than each other.
It’s not generally better in the northwest for hunting, IMO. ...just more bother and expense.
I cringe when I see hunters around. Locals know what they’re doing. But city? *sigh*
It’s a pathology of socialism. Government is to control every detail of human activity and provide a risk-free world. Therefore, any accident must be a crime.
Well said!
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