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 ...
Well it's a good thing for him that we have a court system and trial by jury, because if it were up to you he'd be screwed without any recourse to things like witnesses, legal representation, etc.
Yeah, the guy seemed determined to cause trouble, now someone is dead.
Lemme hear you yell, “Sooey!” Louder...
I grew up in Iowa and there were places you didn’t go because you would get shot at. Few people ever got hit, but plenty got scared.
Cops never got involved and people stayed off their property.
The one who was determined to cause trouble was the guy with the rocks, and apparently he'll get away without any consequences. I suspect the shooter will get jail time. The guy who grabbed his arm is dead. One wonders why they didn't just leave when the weird looking guy with the gun told them to.
I’ve been floating the Meramec River for many years. It’s a big party on the weekends. I can understand the property owner’s frustration, but drunken floaters are a fact of life on Ozark streams and that’s just the way it is.
Click the link. Read the story.
If I were on the jury - I would be torn. Drunken idiots threatening me with rocks? A repeated pattern of this behavior?
Your suggestion of fence and poison ivy is a perfect solution there. We were at a cabin just outside of Steelville over the weekend, and the ivy grows very well there. Fueling up at On The Run before leaving town there was a plant growing in the flower pot beside the gas pump.
Just glad I was on different water that day.
NEMDF - so sorry that was your nephew. I remember when it was in the news. I believe your nephew was closer to St. Louis than this incident. Those rivers are so dangerous - people have no idea!
Thank you, yes. It looks like this new incident is further out.
Hey dude, one can only wish it was legal to shoot obnoxious people.
No shooting isn’t the answer.
But when confronted by an armed property owner and one of your party is approaching the property owner with a rock do you think the best course of action is to grab the property owners arm?
Yeah - My first thought was would it have happened if the victim wasn’t white.
I keep thinking of the Martin/Zimmerman case.
Not trying to insult Zimmerman by comparing him to Crocker, but the similiarities are obvious.
1. A property owner is tired of being victimized.
2. Beligerant idiot assaults the property owner.
3. Guns goes off. Idiot is killed.
4. Property owner is in deep doo-doo.
Actually, the guy “determined to cause trouble” appears to be the nutcase who went down to the gravel bar and put one bullet into the air, and another into the ground and then a third into the head of a human being, demanding that the rafters get off the gravel bar, he seemed determined to have everyone obey his authority over the gravel bar and the river.
Sorry to disagree, but Mr. Dart looks like he could have been any one of a half-dozen or more salt of the earth folks I knew back in my old church. Now I know there was drunkeness, and that is always going to lead to trouble, even if only by association. I’m just saying I don’t get your qualitiative assessment from Dart’s picture. He looks like someone I’d be comfortable having a beer with. And I don’t even drink beer.
The shooter? Well, if you really need that backwoods bad guy look, central casting could hardly have done better.
Ban rocks.
Correction, the gun was fired. It didn't go off by accident. And I'm having serious doubts about rocks in hand. I try not to underestimate the stupidity of people, but nobody picks up rocks and starts throwing them at somebody with a gun. Particularly when he's already discharged it into the air as a warning. Well, I guess they could have been Palistinians. They throw rocks at people with guns all the time. Sometimes they even don't get shot.
1. Everyone in Missouri knows about the public easement on the rivers. Everyone.
2. It is enforced.
3. Anyone who buys property on a larger stream navigable by canoe and does not expect to deal with canoists is frankly delusional.
4. I have taken many canoe trips in Missouri and during most summer weekends you could chain the canoes stem to stern with 3 foot long chains and it would’t make any difference.
5. In any year the number of canoe trips roughly equals the state population. It is a large industry.
This clown is going up the river.
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