Free Republic

June 28, 2008, was a defining moment in my life. It was the day I shot and killed a man in the defense of my life and the lives of others. We all have defining moments. They might not be as tragic as taking another man's life, but they are events that change the way we look at things -- or even, perhaps, how we live our lives. Before that muggy Saturday evening in June, I would have said my defining moments were many: graduating from high school; enlisting in the Army; getting married; having children; getting run over by...

Son witnesses mother's death in Bethel township

PHILADELPHIA -- It appears an armed robber picked the wrong store to hold up. Police said it's the robber who wound up getting shot. Authorities were were crediting cooperative witnesses, some good police work and also the store owner with nabbing the suspected robber. "He said to me, 'Give me all your money. Give me all your money,'" robbery witness Angel Dia said. But Dia said the armed robber who stormed Antonia's Grocery Sunday night got one heck of a surprise. "The other guy, the owner, he got a gun, too," Dia said. Dia said he was standing in the...

A Lincoln-Lemington man who has been on both ends of a pistol over the past 14 years was killed early yesterday during an apparent home invasion in Homewood. Ronnell E. Pittman, 32, was hit in the chest in a shoot-out around 2:40 a.m. after he entered a residence in the 1500 block of North Murtland Avenue, Pittsburgh homicide detectives said. Police said the trouble began around 2:30 a.m. when Mr. Pittman entered the Murtland Avenue home uninvited. The occupants ordered him to leave, but he returned a short time later with a semiautomatic pistol and began shooting at Mr. Hill,...

An armed 18-year-old from Duquesne was shot and killed early yesterday morning when police said he and an accomplice tried to rob the occupants of an East Liberty apartment. Shawn Davis died of a shotgun blast to the head inside of 300 N. Negley Ave. His accomplice, Rashawn Gibson, 20, of Garfield, was taken into custody and charged with burglary and other offenses. "It was definitely a home invasion," said city police Cmdr. Thomas Stangrecki, head of Major Crimes. "We're still sorting it out." The man who fired the shotgun has not been identified, although he did not live at...

Telephone video of the ending in Philadelphia. No charges filed. Another one bites the dust..... Yay store owner! :)

On a cold February night three years ago, Philadelphia Police Officers Anthony Desher and Joseph Jonas responded to this radio call: "Cars, stand by, 3221 North Front, person with a gun in front of V.I.P. barbershop..." Inside was 27-year-old shop owner Daniel Estevez, who had called 911 after an argument spiraled out of control. Instead of getting help, the barber was shot at by police. Then he was criminally charged with shooting at them, which a judge later determined did not happen. While fighting his criminal case, he lost his business. At a time when more people in Philadelphia are...

It was clear to John Lee that the four guys who came into his East Germantown deli Saturday night would not be paying customers. "They all had their hoodies pulled tight, and it wasn't a cold night," said Lee, 48, owner of the Chelten Market at Chelten Avenue and Musgrave Street. "I said, 'You need to take off your hoodies,' then one of them came around the counter with his gun drawn, so I shot them." Lee fired five rounds from his .38-caliber revolver, striking three of the bandits and rupturing a water line, police said. The gunman dropped his...

When a man and his dog dashed into the house with a rabid coyote on their heels, his wife slammed the door on the coyote's neck. Craig S. Luckenbill said Thursday that he ran to get his 12-gauge shotgun, and his wife managed to close the door, but the coyote continued biting at the door and the front of the house. The coyote was in the front yard when Luckenbill went out and killed it with the shotgun, he said. "I'm a hunter but I've never seen anything like that." The Pennsylvania Game Commission confirmed Wednesday that the 40-pound eastern...

Police said a Clarion University of Pennsylvania student who was shot to death Oct. 19 after he broke into an off-campus residence with a friend was apparently looking for cocaine and was armed with a gun that had been taken from the son of a Pittsburgh school board member. According to an affidavit filed last week, Mark Anthony Brentley Jr., 22, whose father Mark Brentley Sr. serves on the city school board, told police he believed his friends Kristopher Major Mills, 21, of Stanton Heights, and Jason Tyler Vaughn, 20, of the North Side, had stolen his 9 mm handgun...