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 ...
If the drunken assholes aren't breaking the law that doesn't give you a right to shoot them.
“Depends upon the laws there. If there’s Castle Doctrine and/or Stand Your Ground he might get off. If the pre-dead guy laid a hand on him on his property it’s even more like self defense.”
According to the article the dead guy didnt have any rocks and was trying to diffuse the situation.
“Crocker told police the shooting came as the culmination of a dispute over whether the group was trespassing or not, and he fired after a man approached him with rocks in his hands. Paul Dart wasn’t the one with the rocks. “I just shot the one closest to me,” Crocker said, according to police.”
I think this guy is going to have a hard time claiming self defense in this case.
When people buy properties along a navigable public waterway, they have to expect the revelry that goes with any body of water.
If they don’t then they are morons, no matter how wealthy they or their ancestors may be.
If you can’t handle it, then get out of there.
(and going off into the trees is NOT public urination)
“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.”
So, the confusion is due to the nature of rivers. They are constantly changing, such that you cannot draw a property line, since it might change from year to year. The existence of the easement is not in doubt, though.
As a result, if they were on the easement part of the river, the shooter killed a guy who was not trespassing. If they were on the part of the shooter's land that does not have an easement, then he shot a guy who was reasonably confused about where the line was, because Missouri law is confusing. (And make no mistake, I don't defend the law. Missouri needs to properly define property rights along the river if it is this confusing. But for purposes of this case, we have to go by what the law is TODAY.)
In the former, the shooter goes to jail. In the latter, the shooter may still go to jail, but it depends on whether the fact of trespass in broad daylight by someone clearly not there to rob or commit a felony gives a property owner the right to take the life of the trespasser. The property owner will also use the cousin holding a rock and the grabbing for the arm to justify the shooting. My guess, and I don't practice in Missouri, so it is only a guess: He still goes to jail. Trespass is a misdemeanor. Generally, you can't kill to protect property. You can use deadly force at night inside the home, and to protect yourself or others from grave bodily injury. But not to stop someone from peeing on a river bank. So, I believe, it's a jail he'll be goin'. If there are aspects of Missouri self defense law I am not aware of, I will be happy to learn.
So, in a nutshell, this guy claimed the river out to the middle, and put a sign on the sandbar. He is wrong about that, as a legal matter. He accosted a group that was on the sandbar, and chased a guy who was behind some shrubbery taking a leak, and that guy ran out onto the sandbar, so was not trespassing any more. They got into an argument about whether he owned the sandbar. From the article:
The man said they were on private property and to get out. He waved his gun around and fired it in the air and into the ground near Paul Dart and her cousin, Loretta Dart said.
Crocker told a detective that men were yelling at him “stating that they weren’t going to leave and that the gravel bar was public property,” court records say.
At one point, Crocker told Kling, “I have the power here. I have the power,” Kling said.
They argued about the gravel bar, during which they were all on the gravel bar, and during which Crocker fired the weapon.
Sounds like the Darts were in the right all along, except that the cousin maybe was trespassing briefly. Yet one of the Darts is dead. Yup, Crocker is goin' to prison.
They are all dumb, The Darts should have got into their canoes and left, calling the cops when they were out of range. But they were stubborn like Missouri mules tend to be and they held their ground. I can't say I think less of them for that. They are probably good people who never in a million years thought some idiot would actually shoot them for being on a gravel bar in the middle of the river that millions of others stop on every year.
The bigger dummy is Crocker. He killed an unarmed man who was not trespassing on his land, after firing shots at other people who were not trespassing. If he thought they were trespassing, all he is allowed to do is call the cops. He can try to effect a citizens arrest and wait for the cops, but in the case of a misdemeanor, you cannot use force to hold someone if they resist. He can use deadly force if Missouri law authorizes it, but under these circumstances I don't think it would. And so his life, previously productive and valuable, is over because he is too stupid to know what an easement is, and too hot headed to know when to pull back.
A man is dead because of him.
You need to read more carefully. He fired the weapon before anyone picked up a rock.
My very first thought.
On behalf of drunken assholes everywhere, I thank you.
I'll drink to that.
Mr Shooter looks alot like the idiot that didn’t believe me when I opened my cell phone to call the sheriff, and went into shock when a black and white Bell Jet Ranger landed in my field behind me 20 minutes later.
His oratory directed toward the two M-16 armed deputies that exited the craft eliminated any need for explanation on my part, and resulted in his immediate encumbrance of his arms behind his back in lovely bracelets.
>> “Did you not read the part where the vistim grabbed the shooter’s arm or the part where some of the party approached the guy with the gun with rocks in their hands?” <<
.
Doesn’t matter a bit.
When you brandish a weapon, you accept responsibility for the consequences that ensue.
I used to hunt asparagus when I was a kid, except we never crossed a fence.
There was plenty in the ditches.
It looks like both sides made mistakes. "Put that gun down and we'll see who has the power!"; refusing to leave; picking up rocks; grabbing the shooter's arm. Needless & hazardous escalations by the "guests." The sequence of those incidents along with the responses of the property owner will be critical.
Doesn't look particularly promising for the shooter to me... very dicey, although threats were apparently issued by the "trespassers."
If these people weren't truly trespassing, the shooter is dead meat, and if they were, he looks to be in trouble still.
It'll be an interesting case to follow as all the facts come out...
You would be making yourself an idiot.
Crocker was wrong in shooting the guy but sometimes I do wonder about people like the Dart guy. Dart was not very smart. It was obvious that Crocker was angry and the last thing you want to do is touch or approach an angry man.
The Dart guy probably watched too much tv. I don’t care if its the police or some random stranger. If someone has a gun and is angry...you either apologize for your action and retreat to defuse the situation or you run like hell. I dare anyone try and grab a cop’s arm and tell him to calm down..or grab armed robber’s arm and tell him to calm down.
Maybe Bruce Willis can do something like that in a movie but not in real life.
Situation would have avoided if those told to leave just left...even if they had the right to be there. The crazy azz dude has a gun. It changed the whole situation from being a simple dispute to a potential life and death situation. This is where you gotta be smart and don’t be a hero. Mr. Dartt paid the price for trying to be a hero.
The fact the Crocker did not go nuts and start shooting everyone could be big in a trial. He shot the guy who lunged at him and not some “innocent” person. Calling him nuts and crazy is not a sure thing here when he could control himself from just emptying his gun into everybody in sight.
I have been around a lot in my life, I have taken guns and knives from people and been around a lot of violence and rough people in my life, I cringe when I hear of a case of what I see as wimps with guns, who kill because they are just the kind of people who shouldn't own guns because they are badly constructed mentally and emotionally. I think most of us know people who can own a gun, but that we know shouldn't, the kind of people who always want to lay down the law to others.
I have lived around water for much of my life, and I can't see a situation where I shoot the rafters down on the river. I don't think that I would have had to kill anyone that day, even if I they didn't kowtow enough to me while using their river.
Sometimes the shooter is wrong, even if he beats the rap legally, that is what I was trying to say in post 52.
Post 132 does a good job of showing a place where some middle class rafters stopping to pee and take a break, didn't need to be dealing with shots in the air, in the ground, and to die at the hands of an unstable man.
""'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.'
He added, that despite the confusion: 'It obviously doesn't have anything to do with people shooting people. We don't have a stand-your-gravel-bar law yet.'""
Are you kidding? I think I saw him in the movie “The Hills Have Eyes...”
Well, if you look at the picture in post 132, it appears the river is shallow at that point. So there may not have been a spot deep enough to submerge the foul deed. There was mixed company in the group, so it was not like they could whip it out and go right there. That might also disturb other people going past. The rivers can get pretty crowded on weekends. Even when the river is deep enough, you don't always want to jump in. Sometimes you just dried off and don't feel like getting wet again. There are lots of reasons why you might not just "pee in the river".
What was your idiot doing on your property?
He thought that he had the right to cut the locks on my gates. He never got the chance to explain his reasoning to the deputies, he got arrested for resisting an officer.
How did you keep him from cutting the gates? Was there gun point involved?
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