Unfortunately for Mr. White, the law doesn't equate a bunch of drunk kids outside shouting insults while he is securely inside his home as being an immediate life threat.
He definitely placed his life, and the life of his family in immediate jeopardy, however, when he made the decision to go outside his secure home and escalate the situation from a bunch of drunk shouting kids into a lethal situation.
The law typically doesn't smile upon you when you make dumb decisions that serve only to make a bad situation worse.
On Long Island he could probably have expected a multi-officer response within mere moments to a call of "black man under siege by white drunken mob" , considering how eager the police are to avoid any hint of a 'racial' incident.
Instead, he apparently went outside and spent 20 minutes shouting at them and eventually one of them got shot.
I believe that the most likely scenario at work that night was that a drunken Cicciaro thought he could goad the Whites into an act of violence by shouting racial slurs and death threats at them.
As a working class white ethnic from Queens, I have some knowledge of Cicciaro's type and what he was thinking.
He was thinking that he would spark a confrontation, he and his buddies would kick the crap out of the Whites even if the Whites got a couple of good licks in, and when the cops showed up the usual scenario would take place: both sides would accuse the others of swinging first, both sides would press charges, and then both sides would agree to drop the charges and forget the incident.
When I was growing up in the area, this was a pretty typical weekend night scenario.
I'm guessing what happened is that Cicciaro's taunting and physical aggression got the better of White's judgement. Cicciaro dared White and White was stupid enough to take the dare - and now his life is ruined because of a piece of loudmouthed trash and his willingness to take that trash's bait.
This case is about race, but not about imaginary lynch mobs or the KKK.
It is about a black man who grew up in the 60s and 70s, worked hard and made good, moving into a nice neighborhood and enjoying the respect he earned - until a snotnosed teenaged wiseass made him feel that all his hard work to achieve a level of gentility and respect was a mirage. Cicciaro humiliated him in front of his son - and that kind of humiliation can make a man snap.
Cicciaro was pushing White to see how far White would go, how much sh!t White would willingly eat, how much abuse White would willingly take. Cicciaro didn't get the answer he was looking for, and now Cicciaro's useless, assh*le father is prancing around babbling about Disney.
The whole affair is disgusting and disheartening. To top it all off, the airhead who started the ball rolling with a colossal lie doesn't even have the good sense to keep her mouth shut and accept responsibility for what she initiated with her big lying mouth.