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 ...
Crocker (shooter) might have a chance if he shot the guy with the rock. Crocker is toast, even if he can prove property rights. Weird laws, owning the river, roads?
People will be people. If you live at the end of a dead end street, you can’t get mad if people turn around in your driveway. When the 10th person of the day is turning around in your driveway, to them they are the first person who has turned around in your driveway. They have no knowledge of what it’s like to own the last place to turn around on a dead end road. Did you not anticipate this when you bought the place? Don’t shoot the next violator, put up a gate.
Mine, Mine, Mine!
Mathew 6:
19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Waterways, even through private land, are held in the public trust. That includes the bank up to the high water line.
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.”
If you don’t want floaters, don’t buy riverfront property on the Meremac river.
If he really wanted to stop people from urinating along that gravel bar, cameras and photos of perpetrators loaded on a web site would probably do the trick.
Let a few dozen people curise by your property every week and urinating on it and see how quick you would get tried of it. The guy was a hot head, but there seems to be no respect for other peoples property.
“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.”
Absolutely correct! Even if he doesn’t have show a gun.
OMG. First - prayers for your nephew and the entire family.
Secondly - I would be contacting the Sheriff and the local authorities handling this case against Crocker as he may be nutty enough to be involved in your nephew’s disappearance.
This is getting to be a real problem in Red Hampshire...New York invaders use everyone’s property like it is their own, and if you call them on it; vandalism follows shortly thereafter. Kids cutting across lawns; fireworks detonated in hayfields; bonfires on posted property; people picking bunches of lilacs off of bushes maintained by owners...people are getting angry, and I don’t blame them one bit. Who knows what kind of crap this guy was putting up before he lost it.
Why didn’t they just pee in the river?
Driveway is fine, what pisses me off is when people drive up into my yard to turn around leaving ruts and breaking sprinkler heads.
I live on a circle which apparently is beyond some peoples intelligence.
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?
He isn’t going to beat these charges. He initiated use of deadly force by firing first. Also, just pointing the gun is assault with a deadly weapon.
I think this guy is not going to have to worry about where his property ends for a very long time.
I’ve seen it all with my background and hard partying life, this was incompetence from an incompetent hot head as he was confronting a common type annoyance of people in outdoor recreational places.
Thank you.
This thread about his loss:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3026040/posts
FaceBook:
https://www.facebook.com/FindJonFranklin?hc_location=timeline
“Let a few dozen people curise by your property every week and urinating on it and see how quick you would get tried of it. The guy was a hot head, but there seems to be no respect for other peoples property”
Very true, but what is the solution? Shoot them? I’m sure others along the river have the same problem. I’ll bet some of them have come up with legal, common sense, reasonable solutions to this problem.
unless he is tried by a jury of “his” peers.....
sorry, if someone brandishes a weapons and discharges it (as a warning) right or wrong, I'd high tail it out of there.
“...bucketfuls of stupidity ...”
Stupid is as stupid does......tragedy
as said.......
Could be a jury of pee-ers
One poster suggested a dog, and another suggested an electric fence. I personally like the electric fence idea particularly if the insulators are on the side away from the river. I think a video of a drunk pi$$ing on it might prove very entertaining.
2nd degree murder. Open and shut case. This guy needs to be off the street permanently.
It could be the same gravel bar I puked my gut full of wine on in ‘73 on that river.
Canoe and float trippers aren’t all that nice as visitors, especially at this time of the year when this river probably gets 200 a day passing through on a week day.
“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.”
Arguing property rights with an armed man who has just fired a shot in the air seems like a poor decision, as is killing someone for trespassing on your property as he is soon to discover.
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