A Texas man is facing a first-degree murder charge related to the fatal shooting of a man sitting in a parked car outside his home earlier this month in a case the victim's family believes could test the limits of the state's so-called stand your ground law.
The confrontation began in the early morning hours of October 11 in Martindale, a small town about 35 miles south of Austin.
Terry Duane Turner, 65, told police he woke up to use the bathroom and "discovered an unknown vehicle with its headlights off, to be parked inside of the driveway next to his pickup truck," according to an arrest affidavit obtained by CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/25/us/texas ... index.html
OK let's ignore the fact this is yet another case when it took weeks to bring charges and it only happened because someone made enough fuss to make a Texas sheriff do his damned job
Let's focus instead on the alleged thought process of man who wants to think he isn't a murderer.
Instead of him it's you. You wake up and you see a car in front of your driveway and it has it's lights on.
For some reason that may or may not relate to the man's skin colour you think he looks suspicious or dangerous or in some way suspect. Now if it was me at this point I would be calling Five-O because it's their job but you don't go that way, you have a gun and you're going to get this person away from your property.
First question there is why? If you're in your house and you've got a gun you can shoot anyone who comes through the door. Going outside places you at risk. The person you believe to be a malefactor is placed in a far better position simply by you going out to confront him and your risk of being killed goes up.
But OK you've watched one two many John Wayne films and you figure you can point the gun at him and say get off my land.
You go out, he sees you and although he doesn't know if you've got a gun or not he chooses the better part of valour and he starts to pull away from your home.
Well done you. Mission accomplished. You've used a gun to protect your property and NRA are proud of you.
But that's not enough you run up to the departing car, closing the distance and presenting a better target, you bang on the window with your gun letting the person you believe to be dangerous know for sure you're armed and you're putting him in a situation where he has to feel more scared.
Finally while he's running away, and you claim to think he has a gun, you shoot at him. Why? All reason says that if you're shooting at him he has every reason to shoot back. You have already won this confrontation, he is no longer on your property and in fact he's running away.
There is no logical reason for you to discharge your weapon and every reason for you not to.
That's why we know this Texas man is a lying piece of garbage.
We don't need to know the person in the car was unarmed. It's immaterial that he had been a responsible citizen and stopped his car and got off the road while he was looking up directions on his phone.
The killer is not a person who was protecting himself or his family - quite the opposite his actions put himself and his family at greater risk. He was not protecting his property because it was never under threat.
Best guess, he wanted to be a big man and tell his buddies he scared off some [Black people - but he would use other words] and he knew there was a good chance the sheriff wouldn't care enough to challenge his bullshit account of the event. And 99 times out of 100 he's probably right, and possibly this time too.
