Posted on 06/11/2012 6:04:37 PM PDT by marktwain
Everyone around W. Arrow and S. 20th streets knew John H. Spooner, the older white man who had lived there for decades, much longer than his younger Hispanic and African-American neighbors, and who was always walking his dogs around the block.
And they knew he was upset about a break-in at his house earlier this week, when burglars took some expensive shotguns and other items.
He suspected his new next door neighbor.
According to a criminal complaint filed Friday:
As 13-year-old Darius Simmons was moving a garbage cart from the curb Thursday morning, Spooner, 75, confronted him and demanded the boy give back his stuff and the shotguns.
Darius told him he didn't have his stuff.
The boy's mother chimed in, telling Spooner he should just go back inside. Then suddenly, as the mother watched, Spooner raised a black handgun and shot Darius in the chest from five feet away.
Darius ran around the cor ner and collapsed on Comstock Ave., about 10 feet from a small play area marked "Children's Park." As he ran, Spooner fired a second shot that did not hit the boy.
When police arrived, Spooner was still on the sidewalk, holding the gun. When told to drop the weapon, he placed it on the ground and told police, "Yeah, I shot him."
A second witness, who had been across the street, also told police he saw the shooting.
Spooner is now charged with first degree intentional homicide, use of a dangerous weapon, and faces life in prison if convicted.
The shooting occurred about 10 a.m.
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
I have personal experience with good neighborhoods going bad. My neighbors were old.....twice my age, and the homes were brick, well kept and owned by mostly veterans or their widows. NICE homes. After 8 years in that community, the writing was on the wall, section 8 apartments, sleazy duplexes, and very scary people walking the streets at night. We had been surrounded in the fields that I used to walk my dog in..... I sold that house for a $30,000 loss, just to get out. That was 10 years ago.....now driving through that neighborhood....well, it's dangerous. Some people believe their home is their castle....others belieive it's easy pickings....
Then you are batshit crazy.
I am familiar with that scenario of good neighborhoods being destroyed by riffraff, and people having to sell their homes at huge losses and move just to retain their feeling of security and sanity! Some peeps dont understand, but I can see how this man finally had enough.
I DID READ THE ARTICLE, and Spooner would have been justified shooting the kid IF THE BOY WAS IN HIS HOME AND IN THE PROCESS OF COMMITING THEFT. He didn’t do that. He was frustrated. That still does not equal murder.
There are a lot of people at the 'breaking point'...
Frankly noob....I don't thing you have the balls, intellect nor moral capacity to take on publius911 in a debate. But if you do....good luck...;)
Ok - we want race to be taken out of the Trayvon/Zimmerman case (and rightly so) and make a decision of innocence or guilt to be based only on the facts (again, rightly so).
Take race out of this story - a man confronts an unarmed 13 year old kid (I am assuming unarmed as he made no defense with a weapon) and accuses him of theft.
The 13 yr. old says he didn’t do it, the man pulls a gun and shoots the 13 yr. old at point blank range in the chest, then fires again as the boy is attempting to flee.
The boy made no attack at the man, he did not pull a weapon, and as far as we know according to witnesses, he made no threat to the man.
Whether or not this kid actually stole anything is irrelevant to the fact that this man shot an unarmed human being. The mans frustration because of multiple thefts may be relevent to the punishment of the crime, but, as it stands, if this story is accurate and true - this is plain, bald-faced, cold-blooded murder in the first degree.
People who bring up race in this case are the same ones who complain about Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton for doing the same thing. Allow the process to work.
Got all three, and if you are here to tell me that a 13 year old kid deserved to die in this instance, then the same label applies to you. And, I’ve been part of this forum for well over ten years now.
Sez a naive new guy with a glorious screen name.
This post has nothing to do with my post.
Now go back and read my post re: your quote that I referenced.
This doesn’t need to be hard if you just try.
Well, humility is certainly not one of your virtues.....you're on....
P.S. Marktwain, I wasn’t saying that you were bringing race into the issue, I just replied to the first post after the article, and, after reading a number of posts following that did inject race into the story.
Sorry if it looked like I was accusing you of that because you certainly weren’t.
It’s a good idea to have a rider on your homeowners’ policy covering your guns from theft or fire-loss.
I’m sorry to see the people on this thread who are making comments such as “there’s only so much you can be expected to take.” It sounds like Spooner did indeed feel terribly frustrated, and might be dying of cancer so he also had a “who gives a rip?” mentality. HOWEVER, in this country, theft is not a capital offense. If theft ever does become a capital offense in this country, I’m not sure I’d want to live here. The punishment should fit the crime. Even if the 13-year-old was guilty, he didn’t deserve to die for it. If he was not, in fact, guilty, then coldblooded murder is all you can call this.
but this is what happens when there is lawlessness....people take things into their own hands...
no justice, no peace....something like that....
property that you own is your lifes' work....when someone just takes it, its like taking your life away...
BTW, you made the mistakes all first time trolls make. You're arrogant, you claim to have been on forum forever and you claim to have intellectual capacity far exceeding us dumb hicks on FR.... By all means, post away there's about 30,000 people watching...
its not about money and its not about insurance....there's things in my house that are of NO value that I would practically die if they were taken or broken....
a person's possessions means more to many people than just monetary value...
Why don’t you take up Publius’ banner if you are so set on defending him. Tell me how a kid of 13 deserves to die because some doddering old fool believes, with no evidence, that he took his guns, etc. Tell me in what CCW training you were told that this would be a righteous shoot. Tell me that, in the same circumstances, you would pull out a handgun and gun down a child in front of his mother. All I did was call a spade a spade. You’ve done nothing to defend the indefensible, which tells me that you are at least a little more reasonable than the original poster.
Yeah, I hear what you’re saying. I’ve also learned that when some one says, “It ain’t the money, it’s the principle of the thing” you can be damned sure it’s the money.
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