Posted on 07/23/2013 10:58:05 AM PDT by rwa265
It was just supposed to be a pit stop.
A group of family and friends on an annual float trip stopped at a gravel bar in the Meramec on Saturday afternoon to refresh drinks and answer the call of nature, according to Loretta Dart, who was on the trip. Her cousin went into the woods to urinate.
In doing so, he apparently ignited the ire of a property owner along the river fed up with people traipsing on his property. James Robert Crocker, 59, confronted the group with a 9 mm handgun, and in an altercation over property rights that rapidly escalated to gunfire, fatally shot Dart’s husband in the head from a few feet away, authorities say.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
I can’t know what to think about this unless I know the Race of all involved. (sarc)
Sounds like a mess.
I know several property owners along the Guadalupe River outside New Braunfels. They see thousands of tubers and others floating down the river on a weekly basis. And they have to deal with loud obnoxious behavior, trash, trespassing and yes - public urination - on a daily basis.
They’re not the type to shoot someone over it, but.....
Get off my lawn.
Do alligators survive winter there?
Something to think about!
I’m sure La could spare a few.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Crocker (shooter) wins Darwin award.
The property owner didn’t own the gravel bar. I understand his frustration, but shooting the person was a poor way to p*ss away his freedom.
If a guy’s brandishing a gun and telling you to get off his property, even if he’s wrong, you don’t “try to calm him down”, you get out of there ASAP and call the police.
In Oregon the land owner owns to the ordinary high water line, it is public land below there. So at times of the year it is possible / legal to walk along the bank and fish or swim. There are some navigable/non-navigable water issues that affect this right, I do not recall what they are at the moment.
I understand why this guy was fed up with people using his property like a toilet, but damn just get a dog!
They didnt stay on the sand bar, they entered the property.
In many cases these people floating down can be extremely obnoxious. Throwing trash, nudity, broken bottles, screaming and anything else a bunch of drunk people do when they think they are outside anyones view.
“A lawyer from Ozark, Mo., Harry Styron, has researched extensively the topic of property rights along streams and rivers.
“These cases are really very confusing. They are difficult to interpret,” Styron said. “You are on private property, but you have a right to be there if it’s a navigable stream and as long as you are on a gravel bar that is submerged during parts of the year, because it’s part of the stream bed.”
The property issues can be hard to sort out, he said. But either way, he said, “it obviously doesn’t have anything to do with people shooting people. We don’t have a stand-your-gravel-bar law yet.”
exactly!
The guy sounds like the kind of guy who shouldn’t own a gun, now someone is dead because of him.
The claim is that he went down there waving his gun around, shot into the air, and shot into the ground, and then admits shooting a guy who wasn’t threatening him.
Besides, legalities aside, if you end up killing someone while yelling at rafters who stop on your river bank, then you are not exactly a picture of a rational man.
A real mess, but I know I would have felt threatened if someone with whom I was arguing approached me with rocks in his hands. Also why didn't they just leave? If some guy is running you off with a gun it's might stupid to stay and agrue with him.
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