The homeowner who fatally shot a 20-year-old University of South Carolina student who tried to enter the wrong home on the street he lived on Saturday morning will not face charges because the incident was deemed “a justifiable homicide” under state law, Columbia police announced Wednesday.
Police said the identity of the homeowner who fired the gunshot that killed Nicholas Donofrio shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday will not be released because the police department and the Fifth Circuit Solicitor’s Office determined his actions were justified under the state’s controversial “castle doctrine” law, which holds that people can act in self-defense towards “intruders and attackers without fear of prosecution or civil action for acting in defense of themselves and others.”
Donofrio repeatedly knocked, banged and kicked on the front door “while manipulating the door handle” while trying to enter the home.
Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door “and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob”
Yeah, that’s more than just trying to walk into the wrong house when you’re blackout drunk, so I can see why they would consider it justified. But that’s the word of the police, so we’ll see if a different story comes out later.
We’ll only ever hear one side of this story because the other witness is dead.
What would the other side of the story be? That he was breaking into his own house, but that the gun was fired from someone that had already broken into his own house and was wrongfully residing there? The facts are pretty basic here.
Yikes. This is terrifying.
I feel bad for the owner who had to make a split second decision on what to do.
Because not much difference between rowdy drunk kid and a mentally deranged person. And making the wrong choice could mean your whole family is in danger.
20 years old is an grown man, not a kid.
Hard to imagine I’d not do the same thing if that happened to my house with my family home.
Would you have possibly tried, I dunno, yelling first? Seems like if you’re already armed there wouldn’t be much danger in say “WHAT THE FUCK ARE DOING?”. It says nowhere in this story they actually tried stopping him, just that they phoned the cops, window broke, they shot him.
It also doesn’t say if they didn’t. We have no reason to believe that they didn’t yell at him.
But yeah, if someone pounds on my door at 2am, then tries to force the door open, then smashes my window to try and unlock the door, I’m not waiting til they get inside to see if they are peaceful.
Not risking my life or the lives of my wife and kids on wishful thinking. It’s a tragedy that the guy lost his life, it really is. But he didn’t exactly leave a lot of wiggle room for the homeowners in the house he was invading.
So what you’re saying is literally you have a gun drawn down, you are ready to fire, and you still do not attempt yelling first?
Did I say that?
Or did you say that?
Or ya know, shooting at leg-level? Shooting the hand that was trying to manipulate the door knob?
That’s what I’m thinking. Call the police first?! That’s a normal response. Not reach for a gun and shoot the person to death. And the student didn’t get inside. I thought an intruder who could be killed was someone who made it inside. So anyone outside the door is fair game, even if they’re knocking and banging?
A female resident called 911 as Donofrio kicked the door, while a male resident went to retrieve a firearm elsewhere in the home
They literally did that.
Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door “and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob,” at which point the male resident fired the shot through the broken window
Breaking a window and then attempting to open the door is enough to justify killing in self defense under local laws, even if the intruder has not entered the building yet.
The article is specifically written to have a headline that implies someone got away with murder, to get traffic. The point of articles like this is to profit, not to inform.
Man shot while breaking and entering, is a much less profitable headline.
It doesn’t say if the people in the home ever told him to stop. Did he know there were people in there? If he did, why did he break the window?
He thought he was locked out of his home I’m sure.
Oh shit something very similar to this happened to my mom once. She’s an older woman who lives alone and terrified of everything. Yes, she owns a gun.
One night ~ 2-3 am a man knocked on her door and demanded to be let in. She’s terrified, grabs the gun. He moved around to different doors, knocking and banging and yelling to be let in. He started shaking the door handles. My mom called 911 and was hiding in a bathroom. They asked her to just wait, police were on the way.
Finally she goes out, sees the guy at a window, and pointed the gun at him…but the gun has a laser pointer when you squeeze the handle. So she screamed back that the red dot on his chest was about to be where she was going to shoot him.
He ran off. Police show up, say they found the kid - 20 - drunkenly stumbling around the neighborhood. The bar had just closed and he thought he was at his friend’s house. A week later he sent her a $20 gift card to a local restaurant with a note that said “Thank you for not shooting me.”
The cops said if she had shot him, she would have been legally within her rights.
Agree or disagree with any or all of this, I’m sorry for the family of the person who was killed. It’s just a terrible situation all around.
Relevant:
According to previously unreported details that police released about the incident Wednesday, Donofrio repeatedly knocked, banged and kicked on the front door “while manipulating the door handle” while trying to enter the home.
A female resident of the home called 911 as Donofrio kicked the door, while a male resident went to retrieve a firearm elsewhere in the home, the news release states. The homeowner owned the gun legally, “for the purpose of personal and home protection,” according to police.
While the woman was on the phone with police, Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door “and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob,” at which point the male resident fired the shot through the broken window that struck Donofrio in his upper body, according to police.
Under those circumstances, I don’t blame the homeowner for using a gun to defend himself and the other female resident. This guy was literally breaking into their home. If it had been me, I would have been terrified and very thankful to have a gun on hand for defense. I’m sure a lot of people here will protest to the shooting, but I would urge them to really think about what they would have done in such a situation. I don’t know what Donofrio’s reasons were for trying to break into the home, but they hardly matter; the fact is, he did try, and the residents of the home had every reason to think they were in danger. If we had multi-shot stun guns that could reliably incapacitate an intruder, I’d say he should have used that rather than a lethal weapon, but current stun guns aren’t that reliable and only fire once before needing to be reloaded. That a life was lost is sad, but I agree that no criminal charges should be filed in this instance. However, I’m not saying that I entirely agree with the Castle doctrine on which this is based, as I’m not intimately familiar with it, but the general notion of being able to use lethal force to defend oneself against a home intruder I do agree with on principle.
I do not agree with the castle doctrine. It’s too easily used to justify lethal force when retreat is an option, however self-defense is a valid justification and from the description given I think that’s completely plausible. An unknown person breaking the glass and potentially armed could be a threat. It sucks that a guy who possibly did nothing wrong has to defend himself in an investigation, but we should have a high bar on lethal actions for civilians and cops (the standard should be higher for cops).
An unknown person breaking the glass and potentially armed could be a threat.
That’s a valid statement.
It also demonstrates a wider problem: gun proliferation is so incredibly high that the default assumption is always going to be “that person might have a gun,” and this will always prompt a much lowered threshold to use one’s own gun in return.
No disagreement. I’m a commie pinko by American standards, which is to say slightly left by European standards. I support gun regulation but it won’t solve the proliferation until we face up to this weird fetishization of guns we have.
I can’t tell, did they announce at all or just fired the moment he broke the window??
Surely this could have been avoided by asking questions first…. What the fuck
Idk man, I’m liberal as hell and even I have problems with that line of logic. Man’s smashing up their house, putting myself in the invadees shoes I’d be worried about warning the home invader(s) and making them use their weapons.
I’m not saying I think everything is fine and dandy in this situation, mfs are using guns way to much in America. But since the occupants had a gun for self defense AND their home was being broken into, I find it hard to blame them for defending themselves.
Same, progressive who believes people have the right to defend their house once someone is clearly trying to force their way in.
I’m uncomfortable with that loophole only because of you’ll recall, several years back a black lady knocked on a stranger’s for because her car broke down in front of that house and got ventilated without discussion.
That’s wack as shit, and I have to wonder how police would determine a frame-up if that particular trashbag had broken the window to make it seem like the lady was breaking in.
Only solution that comes to mind is a ring-like device which only records to local storage.
Absolutely, I think there should be certain objective things that have to happen before “fearing for your life” is a valid defence.
Someone breaking your window after trying to enter forcefully through your door is where I start thinking it’s okay to use a deadly weapon to defend yourself.
Someone knocking on your door (regardless of the time of day) is not a reasonable situation to fear for your life, at least to the extent where you attack the person.
Ya, he “surely” could have rationally had a conversation with a black out drunk that’s been trying to kick a door in, smash the glass and open it from the inside, because that’s what sane people do when they think they’re at their own house…right?
I mean I’m not in the camp of thinking the homeowners were necessarily in the wrong, but have you seriously never heard of someone breaking their own window to get back into their own property when they were locked out? Also, yea it is possible to communicate with a blackout drunk person, or at least try to warn them.
I dont know the whole situation, but if they didn’t make any effort to communicate or warn the guy before they shot him, I do think that’s cold hearted. If they did try to communicate and were ignored, then I think they didn’t do anything wrong.
Legally speaking they are obviously in the clear. I just dont know if this was acceptable from a moral perspective to me without knowing the full details yet.
I’m upvoting you simply because I think you’re debating in good faith and even though I don’t agree with you, I think you’re adding something real to the conversation.
While I do think the situation would likely have ended better if the homeowner had tried to engage the invader in reasonable conversation before pulling the trigger, I don’t think he should be legally required to do so. Remember: it was the home invader’s actions that caused this whole situation. People keep winging about the homeowner’s responsibility to take action to *protect *the invader of his home, but no one is acknowledging that the invader could have prevented all of this by simply not invading the home. People who behave this way have problems, but they’re virtually always not the people they are harming with their actions. They need help, surely, but they also need to be isolated from the general population and punished for the harm they do to others.
And for those who chime in to object to the fact that I said people should be punished for their crimes, just know that I’m all for prison reforms that make prisons safer and help people begin new lives after they’ve served their time, but that I ABSOLUTELY FUCKING DEMAND they serve their fucking time. I have no use for people that can’t wrap their pathetic brains around the notion that crime and punishment are inextricably linked. It’s not about vengeance. The entire reason we have a justice system is so that we can punish criminals in a more objective, humane way than victims can with their tendency towards revenge rather than justice.
I completely agree with you that there should be no legal requirement to warn an intruder before utilizing self defense. I just feel that its nuanced, and in this particular case, if I was the homeowner I would be screaming my head off warning the intruder that they are about to die in not such a polite way. I just would feel morally obligated to do everything I could to divert the situation, and I would hope most others would do the same before making the decision to end a life.
I agree with you, I do. It should be legal to protect your property. The problem is when you have a gun, everything looks like a shooting. If you didn’t have a gun, how would you handle the situation? You could leave. You could lock yourself in an interior room and wait for the cops. You could fight them Kevin style. All of those options, at the end of the day, would give you a better chance of not killing somebody.
It’s not about protection of property to me. I don’t care about that. I care about people having the right to use all reasonable options for defending themselves against violent attackers. And to your point, might this person’s death have been avoided if the occupants of the home had fled or hid somewhere? Certainly. But should they be legally required to do so? No, not in my opinion. Reason being, I don’t think the impetus should be on victims to take their attackers’ well-being into account when it’s the attackers that are creating the problem in the first place. Telling a person who is scared for their life that they need to fight the impulse coming from their amygdala to fight back against a violent attacker is totally unreasonable. If a person is coming at me with their fists and I have a gun, I don’t think I should have to refrain from firing my weapon and take the hits my attacker is throwing, just to make sure he doesn’t die. What if I die? What if I lose an eye or get my face scarred up? What if he takes my gun and shoots me? No. No, fuck that, if someone is attacking me, they’ve given me permission to defend myself in whatever way seems reasonable to me, and I’m not risking my own life or even just serious injury because someone else has anger management problems. They’re the problem; they’re the threat to society; if they die, yeah that sucks, but it’s their fucking fault, not mine for defending myself against their violent behavior.
I’m so sick of people having all this empathy for violent criminals, and way too little for their victims. You want to tell other people to react in a calm, collected, pacifist manner when they’re being attacked, to risk their own lives and wellbeing for the sake of their attacker’s? Tell you what, you get yourself attacked somehow when you’re not expecting it and demonstrate how cool, calm, and pacifist you are under fire; you show the rest of us how easy that is. You do that, and maybe I’ll consider what you have to say, but until then, you’re just a hand-wringing, pearl-clutching bystander who has their priorities messed up and doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.
That’s fine but where’s the line. If someone pulls up in your driveway, is it OK to shoot them? If they knock on your door? What if you have an argument and they throw popcorn at you? The last one was deemed reasonable in Florida. If you have a legitimate conflict with someone, is it just a matter of who kills who first? If someone breaks into your home, this case, he broke the glass and was trying to open the door. Can you shoot them? Do you need to warn them first? What if they were just outside walking around creepily. Is it OK to kill them? Can i provoke someone then when thry come at me, can i kill them? Where’s the line? This is a real question because right now the rules don’t make sense.
I love not living in america
Me too. I love Europe… mostly.
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But there’s one thing in which America is homogenous - school and mass shootings.
We love not having you!
We love not having you
We hate having these garbage laws to protect rooty tooty point and shooty more than our actual citizens
Those ARE citizens dipshit!
Personal accountability. Don’t enter a mental state where you can’t identify your own house.
Should I just allow someone to kick my door in?
“banged and kicked on the door” ≠ “kick door in”
He was drunk and frustrated. He was likely kicking the base of the door trying to be loud enough to wake a roommate to open the door since he couldn’t get his key to work and was confused. Castle doctrine should not have applied here as he was likely not an obvious threat. The shooter could probably have talked with him through the door or, heaven forbid, actually opened the door and talked with him to figure out what was going on and helped the obviously inebriated young man home.
Castle doctrine is intended for when someone is making an obvious threat with deadly intent. The way it is being implemented here you can shoot a proselytizing baptist dead on your porch because they were there to attack your soul.
Where the fuck were his friends? Sounds like he was blackout drunk. No one was sober enough to look out for him?
Folks, if you friend gets this smashed, don’t let them wander off by themselves. All manner of bad could happen. Simply falling in a bad enough spot may be enough. People have been known to drown in their own vomit.
If we did a better job of looking out for each other, it wouldn’t come to these shitty situations in the first place.
Regardless of how drunk you are, you should not get shot for a silly mistake which endangered no one. Gun laws and this obsession of defending private property in ALL cases is simply stupid. Losing your life because you got drunk is stupid
Do you routinely physically break open doors when you’re drunk?
So when people kick in your door, smash windows, reach in to open it, would you call 911? If so, why? Maybe because you fear for your life? Hope you don’t have a family that expects you to protect them.
Responsibility here would be being charged with murder and serving time
For defending yourself against someone who is physically breaking your door open at 2 in the morning?
What was the threat against his life?
Having your home burglarized is reason to fear grave injury or death under law, wake up. Breaking into the house IS the aggression.
Someone breaking into your house? You have no idea what kind of weapon (including a gun themselves) someone who is physically breaking into your house has.
No it wouldn’t, don’t be a retard. READ what he did the homeowner had EVERY reason to assume he was dealing with a home invasion.
You make a good example of how many stand your ground proponent’s don’t understand proportional response.
And you dont grasp laws written so morons dont stand their and wait to be murdered in their own home by somebody violently entering it. Dont try to equate an equal force argument with a home invasion in progress. The home invader has already shown intent. The kid died because of his own stupidity and irresponsibility.
At least charged with murder and let a jury hear the particulars.
I agree
Exactly-- no one wants to take responsibility for themselves anymore, and then has the nerve to complain when they are justifiably executed on the spot. Maybe you won’t have that last beer next time
The American responses are shocking, no wonder they have a mass shooting near enough every day
😭 Some of us are trying. None of our political parties care enough yet. I don’t know how to make them care.
Arson (50% jk)
They tried that already, during the George Floyd riots. It just further emboldened each side.
What’s it like revolving your life around propaganda?
TIL facts are now considered propaganda
Two things. Site your ‘facts’. I’m willing to bet your sources are highly biased.
Also here’s the definition for propaganda.
ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause.
You weren’t aware of that little fact?
Sorry, I was wrong. It’s a bit under 2 mass shootings a day.
List of all mass shootings: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
They define a mass shooting as a shooting incident where 4 or more people, excluding the shooter, are shot. They have 498 mass shootings recorded so far this year.
We are currently on day 255 of the year.
498/255 = 1.95
Or are those facts too biased for you?
When you use a website that has a purpose of further a narrative, yes that’s absolutely biased. That’s like people using NRA stats to argue in favor of guns. So until you can use actual data without spin, your arguments are irrelevant. Your website gets its data from somewhere, what’s the source and do the numbers still line up to your claim?
Any other developed country and there wouldnt be a death involved.
Genuinely curious if you had someone smashing your window and trying to enter your house forcefully what your response would be.
Phone the police and tell him to fuck off? Maybe hit their arm with a bat or something. If I was alone I could even just leave. Not immediately execute them.
Sir this is a reddit clone we have a blind hatred of the police here please choose another option.
You spelled justifiable wrong.
I dont have any guns so probly hiding and calling cops. But also I dont live in any other developed country, Im not blaming the homeowner for fearing for his life in the country with more guns than people. If we were somewhere else, not only would the homeowner not have a gun, anyone trying to break in would be much less likely to have one.
I’d leave.
probably depends on if guns are involved or not.
This is such an annoying answer. I’ve had a strange man enter my home unannounced. I remember standing just behind a wall with intent to stab him with the knife I had because if someone breaks into your house you don’t assume a good time. Even without guns strangers are dangerous. That maintenance guy was seriously lucky I happen to recognize him in that split sec and stopped before stabbing him in the chest.
I’m American and I’ve never worried about guns. They aren’t as common as people think in a lot of areas. Mostly we have a few yahoo’s with a shitton of guns and most people with zero. I’ve still been in several situations where I felt unsafe without guns even being a consideration. If this dude was doing all that at my house, I’d call the police and then wait with a knife like I did with that stupid maintenance guy I almost stabbed who should have known better.
That maintenance guy is an idiot. I worked maintenance for years and you never enter someone’s home without ringing or knocking and waiting for a reply (even if they say the home will be empty). When you do unlock the door you open it slowly while calling out, “Hello! Maintnance!” I’d say 30% of the time someoine was there when I was assured the property would be empty. Kid skipping school, home sick and forgot our appoinment, etc.
You are correct. That’s why I didn’t assume maintenence guy, but instead rapist.
How did they enter your home? Did he have a key? Had you called for maintenance?
He’s definitely an idiot.
Nope. He had a key, I guess he used it? IDK I just heard my fucking door open. He was there to fix something or other that was causing issues with the apartment below Mr. It was like 2PM which I guess is why he didn’t announce himself, but yeah he almost died.
Mostly we have a few yahoo’s with a shitton of guns and most people with zero.
How do you know that? Are there actually stats on that? I’m a left-leaning gun owner, and I’m careful to avoid talking about guns around most people to avoid unnecessary conflict. The people who make it their entire personality are a very vocal minority.
Because I’ve lived in shitty areas with actual drug dealers and BS like that. Less people have guns than you might imagine. Maybe it’s different in nowhere USA, but in urban shithole, USA and Middle class suburbia that’s about what I’ve found. People have like 3+ guns or none at all. I guess it’s possible all my friends are just hiding this from me for some reason and in my hometown I just happen to know all the people who shoot guns, but honestly it’s been rare that I’ve seen people with just one gun. It’s not that I’ve never seen it. My cousin’s husband owns exactly one gun.
I don’t think there’s any way to get stats, but I think that the US has more guns than people lends some credibility to this idea.
So it’s all anecdotal, and based on what people tell you? Like I said, gun nuts are a very vocal minority.
And I’ve lived in a slum too. An apartment in the building I lived in was basically a trap house, a neighbor was stabbed on his way home from work, my gf’s vehicle was stolen, my vehicle was vandalized, and someone tried to enter my apartment because he was drunk and confused. And after all of that, I still have no idea how many of my neighbors had guns because most sensible gun owners don’t advertise the fact.
this uh…this story just kind of reinforces how bad of an idea guns are, cus you would have killed a guy who also wasnt trying to kill you.
Depending on the gun they maybe wouldn’t have killded him, even if they hit them. Also if you are already jumping at someone with a knife, it’s not that much easier to stop than a gunshot.
Yes it is. Take a look at gun homicides vs knife. Guns are more deadly and we have the deaths to prove it.
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Going to call bullshit on that.
The drunk kid smashed a window and kicked the door repeatedly. This wasn’t a quiet kid accidentally wandering into a room.
Hard to shoot someone who’s made an honest mistake when you don’t have a gun…
Honest mistake ain’t busting in a window tho. I’ve locked myself out of my own house before and I’ve never went “I’ll just break a window to get in”
I’d be terrified if someone was trying to break into my house at 2am.
The ex did once. I came home and had to cover a basement window with plywood.
You hear stories about people with dementia doing this all the time. Guess they don’t deserve to live anymore either.
It’s also hard to shoot someone who hasn’t made an honest mistake and is actually breaking in specifically to do you harm, when you don’t have a gun…so your comment is total nonsense.
Maybe we should just stop shooting people all together.
If someone intends to harm me or immediately threaten my life, I’m shooting them. There is no moral or ethical argument you can make that will invalidate that. I consider the right of self-defense to be an inalienable right even if that requires lethal force.
Also hard to shoot somebody breaking in to your home with violent intentions when you don’t have a gun.
And the only way to find out what the intruder’s intentions are is to wait until it’s potentially too late to defend yourself.
Just make dishonest mistakes and you’ll get voted as president.
This is the US mentality. Yeah, kid was very dumb, kid was in the wrong. Kid should probably be arrested and spend some time in jail to learn his lesson. Nope, death penalty.
Yeah, the states has the same accidents as anywhere else in the world, but they sprinkle a little gun into the mix.
I’m in a developing country and such things don’t happen here. Some months back an upstairs neighbour of mine tried to enter into my house when i was inside. He was trying his key and then rang the doorbell and i opened it and he was very confused. Then he looked at my house and realised he was on the wrong floor, said sorry and went away. These things happen if all the apartments look the same. No one needs to die for such small blunders. What’s more disturbing is the amount of people here justifying shooting the kid because he broke a window and was forcing his way inside. They don’t realise they wouldn’t have to fear other people so much if there were no guns available in the first place. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of replies that gangsters don’t obey rules and what not but isn’t that the same in every other country without guns? Maybe Americans like to kill people a lot. No wonder their entire country runs off war and destruction.
They don’t realise they wouldn’t have to fear other people so much if there were no guns available in the first place. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of replies that gangsters don’t obey rules and what not but isn’t that the same in every other country without guns?
Home invasions happen in countries that have strict gun laws. I’ve lived in a bad apartment complex (one apartment was a trap house, a neighbor was stabbed on his way home from work, several vehicles were stolen and mine was vandalized), and a neighbor tried to get into my apartment late one night. I didn’t own a gun at the time, but I absolutely would have stabbed him with a kitchen knife if he had broken a window and stuck his hand inside. Instead, I asked him if he was okay and explained that he was at the wrong apartment.
You don’t need a gun to kill someone, it’s creepy enougth to assume the intruder has ‘just’ a big knife
Good - one less idiot walking the earth.
While the woman was on the phone with police, Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door “and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob,” at which point the male resident fired the shot through the broken window that struck Donofrio in his upper body, according to police.
He wasn’t “trying to enter” he was literally breaking into the home.
I would’ve let off more than one shot at that point.
So you wouldn’t have tried talking first? Like they didn’t either? Seems nuts to me
Spoken like someone who’s never feared for their life or more importantly, feared for their partner’s life.
alright, everyone take a standardized test, if you fail, you’re executed.
No wonder Americans are so infatuated with the second amendment!
If someone is breaking into your home, you should defend yourself and your family with whatever means is available. The amount of people here saying you should have a polite conversation or comply with the robber’s demands (even if that demand is to harm you) is bizarre.
Its not bizarre. Its called reasonable force
So, defending yourself is only valid once you’re actually in the process of being killed? A bit too late at that point. Someone physically breaking into your home is a valid reason to use force in response.
A bit too late at the imaginary non event in your head?
But the definition of threat is what you described. It is a threat against your life which this was not and its why this is tragic because failing to assess caused an unnecessary death.
So, again, someone physically breaking open your door, who has unknown weapons themselves including a potential gun, should be something you do nothing about? Just let them in and hope they don’t mean to kill you?
that’s what you’re saying not me. Use my words, not yours
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for all the non-Americans, here are the things you don’t understand about why we say it was justified.
Mental illness is rampant here. The high productivity expectations have a serious toll on people. There aren’t enough doctors to be even close to handle the scope of it. Many doctors offices are getting bought up by large companies who can and do pick the most lucrative clients.
Our justice system releases mentally ill people who are clearly dangerous because they haven’t committed a big enough crime YET.
And people don’t look out for one another much anymore. Combined with a misguided sense of independence, drunks are left to do things that friends in other countries would put a stop to.
This is why we fear random people, this is why drunk people manage to get into circumstances uncommon elsewhere. This is why we say the shooting was justified. We all think about how badly it could have gone if he didn’t shoot, and it wasn’t just a drunk guy at the wrong house.
Mental illness is rampant here.
All the more reason why you guys shouldn’t have so many guns.
true, but that ship has sailed.
If enough people want it changed, it can be changed, right?
have you seen American politics? Having the majority vote doesn’t even win the presidency. And all these anti abortion laws recently… all the polls show a majority don’t want them. The government works for business, not the people. If enough corporations want it to change, then it can be changed.
We can agree that it’s not going to change soon, yeah
usa_anthem_kazoo_earrape.mp3playing in the background. This shit is abnormal in the rest of the world.Kid accidentally enter wrong home this was Not Justified. Mother fuckers the law needs to be repealed and done over then.
Shooting someone just for entering or knocking on your door isn’t an excuse to shoot to kill someone. Should at least give person a warning.
I hope that homeowner never finds peace again and better be glad it wasn’t my kid.
He didn’t just accidentally enter the wrong home, he was forcibly breaking into the home when he was shot. Even breaking a window to open the door from the inside.
Tragic as he was likely just intoxicated and confused, but understandable that the homeowner would use force to defend himself
While the woman was on the phone with police, Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door “and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob,” at which point the male resident fired the shot through the broken window that struck Donofrio in his upper body, according to police
Glad breaking and entering is now considered worth a death sentence.
This wasn’t a punishment or sentence.
He was literally breaking through the door to enter the house.
What was the home owner supposed to do? Hope he became non-violent once he got in? Challenge him to a game of chess? Declare a set of non-lethal rules and duke it out?
The homeowner has a right to not be attacked in his own home ffs
Idk. Maybe yell, “Hey. Fuck off” and call the police? If it is a drunk person, they probably embarrassingly realize it’s the wrong house. Or if they keep trying to get in after, then shoot?
Also the home owner wasn’t attacked. His window was.
You may want to read the article - they did call the police. Unfortunately it takes less time for someone to violently smash through a door than for the cops to arrive.
Interesting that you summize that they were apparently silent as this guy smashed their door
And, would you really play the odds that someone violently entering your house would suddenly have a moment of clarity when they entered? He was messed up enough to think shattering his own window was a viable option to get into his house.
But they never tried yelling at him, did they? Even after he had a firearm, the article says nothing about calling out with a warning first or anything. That seems insane to me.
It also doesn’t say they didn’t. Are we going to just list off a bunch of things the article doesn’t say?
Keep moving the goalposts!
You have to judge it from the perspective if the person living there. They hear someone banging on their door, trying to get into the house, breaking the window and forcing their way in. They had absolutely no reason to believe this was a simple misunderstanding, and every reason to believe their life was in danger.
Go read the article before you comment.
He mightve thought he was trying to enter his house. However breaking a window and reaching for the lock is a good way to get either shot or arrested for b&o even if he is drunk as a skunk.
Hey doofus did you even read the article? He was breaking into the home. Maybe read the fucking article before spouting bullshit, next time.
This wasn’t a kid knocking at the wrong door in the middile of the day.
This was a 2 AM and break in where the guy busted a window to get at the door handle. This is WAY MORE than just knocking or a misunderstanding. I would agree that mistakes or even simple burglary don’t deserve the death penalty, BUT… if he was aggressive enough to be smashing things in the middle of the night after banging on the door and windows, then what would he also be aggressive and mistaken about when he got inside? At a certain point being concerned for your own safety is legitmate and we crossed that line awhile ago.
