If I go to the door in the middle of the night and someone is trying to ENTER my house, or I THINK they are trying to enter (opening or turning the handle).
I am going to be scared to death.
Would I shoot them? no, because I wouldn’t be answering the door with a gun, but that’s me. But I can understand someone else even more scared doing differently.
Here is the deal.
Lets just assume the exact same situation happened... BUT it was a home invader who intended to force their way into the home and kill the old man. The old guy goes to the door... opens the inner door so see the home invader opening the outer porch door. IF it WAS a home invader the old man would of only had a FRACTION of a second (since he opened the inner door already) before the home invader would of attacked him.
I know.. this kid was just confused and innocent, and simply at the wrong house. BUT the old man had to make a 1/100th of a second decision that his LIFE depended on.
I am just thankful the poor kid didn’t die, and hope he has a full recovery. But I feel sorry for the old man.
I personally think the old man agreeing to pay for the kids hospital bills would have been more appropriate than criminal charges.
Kansas City Police Chief Graves said they were investigating whether the gunman was protected by Missouri’s “stand your ground” law, which allows people to use deadly force if they believe it will protect them from death or “great bodily harm.”
But as investigators and Lester’s legal defense look to the self-defense laws that may apply in this case, Sean D. O’Brien, a professor at University of Missouri Kansas City School of Law, tells TIME, “There’s still a reasonableness standard. He has to be able to point to something to say he was in fear of [the] ringing [of] the doorbell, and [Yarl] being Black by itself is not going to cut it.”
https://time.com/6272343/kansas-city-ralph-yarl-shot-protests/
I feel sorry for him too, but if he went to the door with gun in hand he needed to have a vague notion of what he intended to do with it.
Living with that much fear, why did he feel compelled to open the door at all???