Posted on 01/15/2011 8:13:37 PM PST by seton89
The widow of David W. Park, an Albany teacher who was shot and killed as an intruder in an Amherst home, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the homeowner who pulled the trigger.
The lawsuit accuses David D'Amico of the "willful, intentional, malicious" slaying of Park, and acting "without just cause [or] provocation."
Deanna Ripstein, Park's widow, filed the State Supreme Court lawsuit eight months after an Erie County grand jury -- following an extensive Amherst Police investigation -- decided not to file criminal charges against D'Amico.
(Excerpt) Read more at buffalonews.com ...
Is home invasion a crime?
Does Charlie Daniels play a mean fiddle?
Pretty suspicious...
And, if you screw up and kill somebody just because he made a mistake and came in your front door rather than his own, you could very well find you'd messed with the wrong family.
Always, always find out their surname first!
At the moment this guy probably doesn't have a big problem but it'll cost him something to answer the suit, but he's lucky. In New Jersey he'd be meeting the Profacci family, or maybe the successors to the Gambinos (as a couple of Vietnamese thugs are discovering locked up for trying to rob a local mobster's wife at a hair salon).
What you want to do after one of these killings is NOT SWAGGER but avoid becoming a target.
And honor killings? Those Arabs don't reserve them just for their sl__+_ daughters.
No, he could have been a very bright ELEMENTARY school teacher....
Defense Attorney Credo: “It isn’t a lie, if you believe it.” - George Costanza
Technically the guy might have been within his rights to shoot. Nonetheless I would not have done it under the circumstances. Somebody too drunk to know where he was or that he was in the wrong house would be pretty hard to view as dangerous.
There was a case in Houston where a Scot was acting very strangely and got a cab driver to drop him off in the middle of a neighborhood in Houston. He knocked and made loud noises in the back yard of a home and was shot by the home owner. No charges were ever filed against the home owner, and I don't believe the dead man's family was ever able to file a suit against the home owner either.
Which is relevant to what? Oh, yeah, absolutely nothing.
Yeah, drunk people are never belligerent. They are always peaceful and laughable good fellas; and they always do as they are told.
0.18% is not so drunk a grown man doesn't know what he's doing. He was obviously up to no good...
You can't?
Well, time for plan B.
And what if the guy was only pretending to be drunk in order to gain entrance to the house for him and his accomplices waiting outside? Just how helpless are you willing to become due to someone else's error when the lives of your loved ones hang in the balance?
Four men in a car arrived at my place one evening. One of the men exited the car and assertively approached me while holding a piece of paper and speaking spanish, of which I understand only a little.
I was concerned enough that I backed up about ten feet into my doorway before the guy finally stopped. The most innocent explanation for what happened is that the men were lost and the approaching man wanted to show me a written address and ask for directions.
An alternative possibility was that the approaching man intended to tackle me and hold me long enough for his partners to overpower me before I could get back into my house and reach a weapon.
I decided that the risk of the latter possibility was great enough that I had to retreat in order to prevent it. Had the approaching man entered without permission I would have been armed and he would have been bleeding all over my carpet.
There are people who die every day because they are stupid, incompetent, or negligent. I don't intend to let them take me with them.
“You can’t, for example, invite a guy over for a beer and then shoot him.”
I seem to recall a FR thread on that. The guy was invited over, but then wouldn’t leave. He started getting violent - and the homeowner shot him.
But yeah - USUALLY you can’t shoot a guy that you invited over for a beer. (”Get off my couch”)
I think you've got it sussed out right here. Looking for them "Deep Pockets" courtesy of their slimeball attorney at law.
I hear ya - even a marginally experienced drinker would not be that horribly impaired. But this fellow doesn’t really fit the profile - perhaps there is another factor - illness, reaction to medication, etc.
The lawsuit deserves to fail, as the shooting seems fully justified. Still, for the rest of his life, D’Amico will probably wish he had reacted differently. I hope he can forgive himself.
I’d be willing to bet D’Amico’s insurance company won’t pay .. they will look up all the relevant documents, the investigation by the police and, especially, the blood alcohol level of Parks.
They most likely will choose to fight this (rather than establish any kind of precedent) even if it costs more in legal fees than a settlement.
The guy wasn’t that drunk, he was borderline unable to drive.
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