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You do NOT shoot a 17 year old kid for this type of thing, PERIOD.

Just want you to know, piytar, that I wholeheartedly agree with you. No question about it...YOU ARE RIGHT!

While these teenagers had no business being in the girl's bedroom, the father's actions were far worse.

Maybe he was hiding because the Dad is a nutjob.

This doesn't excuse those kids, BUT, if the father is found to be a "nutjob", the next thing we'll be reading is that he has plead insanity, maybe on the advice of an attorney.

The thing that stands out for me is this : The girl was so terrified of her father that she chose to barricade herself in with her BF. God only knows what that man put her through for the first 17 years of her life, to make her too afraid to come out to argue or plead with him. Did she believe that her father was perfectly capable of deliberately shooting her, if she was outside the room????

This is not "love", neither is it a father defending his child, it is possessiveness mixed with rage. The father didn't care if he hit his daughter-he probably felt at least at that moment in time that she deserved whatever she got for defying him.

Some posters have said the father is showing incestuous urges towards his daughter. I am more inclined to think that the father's actions can be described in terms of Van Vogt's Theory of the Right Man (scroll down to Oct 2004):

Essential here is that the "Right Man" must always have his way and is afraid of losing face above all... a conviction that they were always right, and a total inability to admit that they might ever be wrong...And if things don't exactly go his way, he may scare people into submission by breaking into outbursts of rage or downright violence...wild, insane jealousy. Most of us are subject to jealousy, since the notion that someone we care about prefers someone else is an assault on our amour propre. But the Right Man, whose self-esteem is like a constantly festering sore spot, flies into a frenzy at the thought, and becomes capable of murder...He feels he [is] justified in exploding, like an angry god. [...] he feels he is inflicting just punishment.... The Right Man hates losing face; if he suspects that his threats are not being taken seriously, he is capable of carrying them out, purely for the sake of appearances...What is so interesting here is the way the Right Man's violent emotion reinforces his sense of being justified, and his sense of justification increases his rage. The Right Man feels that his rage is a storm that has to be allowed to blow itself out, no matter what damage it causes. But this also means that he is the slave of an impulse he cannot control; his property, even the lives of those that he loves, are at the mercy of his emotions.

Be that as it may, I cannot believe there are people applauding the father. This is not the case of a violent criminal burglarizing the house late at night and adding rape to theft-the victim was invited over. Nor is the daughter a child-she is past the age of consent. There is no indication at this time that she has the mind of a child, which would make her actual age irrelevant. And as others have pointed out, the father seems to have "entrapped" the two teens, having his friend keep a look out-he WANTED an excuse to become violent, otherwise, why didn't he go to the police and ask for a restraining order forbidding the young man to go within a certain distance of his house? Simply because he was too embarrassed to admit to the cops that his daughter was deliberately choosing to disobey him?

There will be a criminal trial, and the father may well be found guilty . There will also be a civil trial (much easier to prosecute), and much of the man's assets may be seized to pay his victim's medical and rehabilitation expenses. As the young man was not hurt accidentally but as a result of the father's deliberate action, I don't think homeowner's insurance will pick up the tab. So the wife may be left destitute, depending on what Arkansas law is re: community property, what property is solely in her name, etc. If the young woman wanted to go to college, I hope her grades will get her a scholarship or she can pay her own way. But everything right now is pure speculation-the trial will bring out the truth (hopefully). And I hope reports that the young man has regained some feeling below the waist are true.

Dude read the article...The boyfriend is 19 years old, the daughter is 17. Also, the dad was firing warning shots!!! Too bad the ADULT Boyfriend was in the path of the bullet. I think if a regular dad found their teenage, underage daughter with an adult man, they would be upset too!!