Posted on 08/29/2002 7:33:51 PM PDT by aculeus
A man stabbed to death a burglar he found in his family's home because he believed he was going to be killed with a machete, an Old Bailey jury heard yesterday.
Barry Hastings, 25, discovered the man after deciding to visit his two children, aged two and four, and his wife, Nicola, from whom he was separated but on friendly terms.
Peter Kyte, QC, prosecuting, said Hastings told police that he noticed all the lights were off in the ground floor flat in Tottenham, north London.
"A bedroom light came on and he saw a black man, an intruder, prowling in two separate bedrooms," said Mr Kyte.
Hastings entered the flat through a door which he found had been broken open and claimed to have heard voices, including that of his two-year-old daughter. "Thus it was he entered the kitchen and grabbed a large bread knife," said Mr Kyte.
Hastings told police: "The next thing this guy has come running down the hall. He has gone, 'Right you bastard, this is it', and he has got a big thing in the air.
"It was all dark and the curtains were shut and I couldn't see. The light caught it and I thought it was a machete. He just attacked me and we started fighting.
"The next thing I knew we were outside. He said, 'Let me go'. I was frightened for my life. He ran at me. I was just trying to fight for my life, I was just hitting him and hitting him, probably as hard as I could. I don't know which part of his body I hit."
Roger Williams, 35, suffered 12 stab wounds to his head and back, including one which penetrated his heart. He staggered along the road, leaving a trail of blood until he collapsed. He died in an ambulance en route to hospital.
After the incident, Hastings went to his mother-in-law's home where he found his family. Mr Kyte added: "It was plain he was scared, almost hysterical. He was crying and explained someone was trying to break into the house. He said he thought he had killed him." Hastings, a trainee gas engineer, denies murder and claims he acted in self defence.
Mr Kyte told the jury that Mr Williams, from Tottenham, was "a man with many criminal convictions. His record shows him to have been a career burglar since, at the very least, 1983, and he had used violence in the past". He was also wanted by the police.
He was "bent on burgling" when he took a jemmy from a friend's house and decided to break into the flat.
However, Mr Kyte said: "The law recognises a man is entitled to defend himself, his family and his property, but only if his actions do not go beyond the reasonable and the necessary.
"There is no doubt that Mr Hastings had stumbled across a burglary. There is no doubt that Mr Williams was a thoroughly bad hat in the eyes of the law, but nonetheless he was just as entitled to the freedom to live as anyone else."
Although a householder had a right to defend himself, "we argue in this case, alas, this man overstepped the mark and went quite a distance beyond what in law he was entitled to do".
Mr Kyte claimed Hastings had initially said the stabbing took place inside the flat, but blood stains revealed it was outside. Although Hastings said Mr Williams had repeatedly brought down what he thought was a machete, he suffered only "trivial injuries".
The trial continues.
This and the other burglary case are not about self protection, they are about government wanting to make an example out people how engage in vigilante justice.
LOL.
The interesting part about that guy, is that he seems to have shaped his opinions about the world from literature and art.
When someone bases their world view on fiction, their world view will probably be fictional.
Maybe burglar number six made off with it, and the farmer hadn't had a chance to replace it yet.
I guess he didn't have a wood-chipper or hungry pigs, either.
Good question, if you're English.
"The state, in its Criminal Code, forbids citizens to have firearms or other weapons, but does not itself undertake to defend them! The state turns its citizens over to the power of the bandits -- and then through the press dares to summon them to 'social resistance' against these bandits..."
Solzhenitsyn, "Gulag Archipelago", Vol 3, Chapter 16
The same forces that were behind the Sullivan Act (severe restrictions on handgun ownership, still in place today), passed in New York State around 1921. "Big Tim" Sullivan had this fear that Jewish and Italian Anarchists were going to overthow the government. Thanks to him, I have to wait six months to get APPROVAL to own a handgun in this state and then register it with the authorities.
I second the motion. This MAN was fighting the war on terrorism. The burglar has a history of violence. Violence now ended. We should send a navy seal squadron to rescue him, whisk him off to America, give him a parade, a medal, and US citizenship, and tell the brits to suck their thumbs [after we attack Iraq].
Vigilanteeism is practically dead in America, due to decades of liberal effort. In fact, here in Virginia, people are uncertain of when they are allowed to defend themselves, or their homes.
Heard you're coming to NY in December. We'll plan to throw you a party. Maybe I can get Bo Snerdly (JamesGolden) to come up from Florida if we time it right.
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