Homeowner Fatally Shoots 14-Year-Old Burglary Suspect
After they kicked the back door in, the homeowner announced that he was armed, and they still kept coming. I don't fault the homeowner for shooting, not for a second. He's got multiple assailants in his home who know that he is armed and yet are not deterred - what, exactly, should he have done? Waited for one of them to shoot at him first? Again, I have to reiterate: We do not have special "intent-o-meters" that can divine whether the group of people in your home illegally are dumb kids who just made the biggest mistake of their lives, or the next Christopher Gribble.An eastside homeowner shot and killed a 14-year-old intruder at his home Monday morning, Dallas police said.
Investigators said three teenage boys, one aged 13 and two aged 14, tried to burglarize a home in the 7300 block of Vallejo Drive. Police said the teenagers reportedly rang the front doorbell of the home and went around to the back when no one answered.
And still, my heart breaks. That boy was only three years older than my son. I know, I know - he chose to kick in that door. He then chose to stay in the house even after finding out that a) someone was there, and b) that someone was armed. He made several really bad decisions that cost him his life - and that's a tragic waste no matter how you look at it. Another story says that the neighborhood near the school has had a series of break-ins during school hours - there's no way of knowing if this was the same group or different groups.
Who knows if this middle school kid was part of a group of troublemakers that were breaking into houses for kicks; to get money for drugs; or for any number of reasons? Who knows if he just ditched school to hang with his friends and wound up going along rather than risk being called chicken? Peer pressure is a powerful force - who knows what happened before that door was kicked open?
I can't celebrate this one, not like the vast majority of the others.
Dead Goblin Count: 278
That is all.
12 comments:
I don't recall if you had the post or who it was recently that talked about "feral children." I'm sorry the homeowner had to kill the intruder, and mad at the parent(s) that couldn't bring the kid up to stay out of other people's homes. Not one to smile about, as you say.
LittleRed1
A shame but the homeowners acted correctly.
It's tragic when this happens, but for some years I've regarded such things as unusually complicated suicides.
1) Don't Kick In Doors.
2) If someone says they have a gun, believe them.
3) If someone says they'll shoot, believe that, too.
Doesn't make it any less sad, but a different kind of sad.
If this hadn't happened, do you think he was ever going to stop? Give up this feral behavior and become a productive citizen? This isn't stealing candy bars, this is kicking in a door on a home you know is occupied. He was already on the way to prison, it was just a matter of how many victims whose lives he impacted before he got caught enough times to actually go to jail.
Doesn't matter if he was 14 or 40.
What exactly do you think the three youths were going into the house to do? Volunteer for the neighborhood watch?
Had the residents of the home been unarmed, they would have faced three teens, intent enough on mayhem to continue advancing despite facing locked doors and clear verbal warnings.
I strongly suspect the youths knowingly targeted the neighborhood watch for intimidation at a minimum, or more likely violence.
The two remaining youths should be charged with whatever level of manslaughter/murder charges accompany a death during a felony burglary of an occupied residence. This being Dallas, they likely will be charged and convicted for this death.
Throughout history, societies have devised many ways to take Teenage Males and keep them from turning into threats. Coming of Age Ceremonies, Masai Lion Hunts, the Boy Scouts, etc were all designed to channel the Teen Age Male into being someone who is an asset.
But nowadays, instead of cracking down on them when needed, we seem to coddle them.
True Story time: A couple of years ago, in my Nice Neat Safe White Bread Suburban Bedroom Community, a Gang of Teenagers, running around age 15-16 was broken up. It turns out they would deliberately get suspended from school, and hit homes that were empty because people were at work. They hit my Neighbor behind me, and they even tried for my House. Thank God I have dogs and good deadbolts, but I still have the marks on the backdoor. The only reason they got caught was that some lady down the street came home for lunch.
All the kids were Prosecuted and went to Juvie, but you'd think Trayvon Martin was shot the way some of their Mothers were acting in court.
And NONE of them were Black or Asian or Poor or Gang Members.
Now 25 miles down the Road in Cleveland, I can come up with a BLNN news story at least once a week where some Teenager shot someone.
Now, it's not a new issue, because the Burglar who tried to get in my place back in '83 was a Teenager. But it sure seems to be growing like Crabgrass nowadays. And we have TONS of "Programs" and "Interventions" and "At Risk" policies to try and "Save Our Youth."
But they all seem to try to get them to "Channel their Anger" and work on their "Self-Esteem" and tell them that "it's not your Fault that you came from a Bad Background."
The Kid who murdered those kids up in Chardon was at a "Special School" for "At Risk Kids."
Personally, I think we need to realize that Teen Age Males with their Raging Hormones need more Gunny Ermey and less "Hillary Clinton's Village."
But it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
Les,
I used to live next door to a USMC Drill Instructor (DI). After leaving The Corps, DI joined the Broward County FL department of corrections and he requested to work with "troubled" teen boys. I recall at a block party how DI told a little story about one of "his" kids. While in DI's charge, Troubled Teen (TT) had been a handful and a half. DI laid into TT in a heavy-handed but fair way. A couple years after TT was released, he came back and personally thanked DI for setting him straight. I'm certain that had TT not been shown The Way of Righteousness, TT would be on a slab at the coroner's office and likely would have been responsible for putting others on that same slab. Bottom line, it can be done. I propose a fund-raising effort for Camp Gunny Ermy.
Brad
I live here in Dallas. It is reported that a number of teenage boys are breaking into houses to get money for the things they want or want to do. These boys played hooky. Had they been in school the dead one would be alive and the other two free. 2 of the 3 already have records.
The dead boy's family is claiming he was an angel who never did anything wrong. These kids get no moral training from their parents. The parents are not in their lives and people wonder what went wrong.
Another story says that the neighborhood near the school has had a series of break-ins during school hours - there's no way of knowing if this was the same group or different groups.
I suspect that this could be figured out by how the B&E/theft rate changes over the next 3 months. But it could be that the other thiefs in the area get scared...
The idea of a group of 14-year-olds doing hot B&E's is scary.
I notice that this hasn't been happening in Detroit, even though you've had 2 stories from Detroit in the past month. (I researched those a little, because I live in MoTown Metro. In both cases, it was usually a late-teen or early-20s perp getting shot by a homeowner. One of the homeowners was over 70.)
I don't know if Detroit would react in outrage, or just shrug, if a similar things happened inside the City.
I do suspect that if a kid from the edge of Detroit got ventilated while robbing an across-the-street-suburban-home, things might get a little tense. Especially if the kid was under the age of 16.
But B&E's on occupied homes don't happen very often in suburbia. And I can't tell how many of the perps are local, and how many are exported from the urban core.
I'm tempted to reread Niven & Pournelle's "Oath Of Fealty". Dated though it is (early 1980s), it's interesting to see the things that haven't changed -- such as the kids (college kids in the book, but kids nonetheless) who deliberately go for B&E as a prank, are perceived as a threat, and are killed for it... and the one survivor explains that they thought it'd be okay. Everyone keeps telling you horrible things will happen to you, he said, but they never do.
That's the result of feel-good education -- you're totally unprepared for a world in which actions have consequences and intentions, for the most part, don't matter at all.
Les: you're right on the mark in re coming-of-age rituals. A related thought is a blogpost I keep coming back to: If we would have a stable society, we must have dangerous old men.
These kids didn't have someone to smack them down, hard, for minor infractions -- and so a major infraction cost this kid his life. As I was told when I became a stepfather, raising kids is all about boundaries. They need to know what is acceptable and what is not, and the boundaries need to be sharp and clear.
Hang on to your kids... and teach them. Think about the simple, commonsense parenting that might have saved this kid's life.
More information is coming out - as it usually does in these cases.
Would anyone be surprised to know that the troubled youth lost a brother to 'gun violence' a few years ago.
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Family-Shocked-by-Teens-Death-in-Home-Burglary-146911125.html
Now I wonder how that could have happened, could it be the younger brother was emulating his older brother?
Family members said Avila, who did not have many friends, never brought any of them to his home.
Gee, guess what is a warning sign of hanging around with the wrong friends MOM !!
Avila's family members say they don't want him remembered as a criminal because that wasn't his life.
It may not have been his life Ma'am but it was certainly a factor in his death. Does anyone really think this was the first time he broke into a house?
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