Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Crime in the News - Accidental Shooting?

A news story developed here in Missouri over the weekend.  An 18-yr old man was shot and killed by another 18-yr old man. 

Around here that's not usually a story worth following.  It seems to happen more and more around any city of more than x-number of people.  Even in the little outlying towns.

But...

Initial reports claimed this was an accidental shooting.  The dead man was supposedly the shooter's best friend.  And it's all so very tragic.  He says he wasn't expecting the friends he had invited over to arrive from that direction, so he was afraid and fired a weapon.

Except...

One particular witness says that when the car pulled up, he heard the shooter call the deceased by name.

It still could be an accident.  The same witness says he heard "Oh expletive" either right before or right after he heard the shot. 

But...

Why did he have a gun in his hand when walking out to greet friends?  Why would he have a gun in his hand when walking out to greet strangers for that matter?  Paranoia?

Still...

The shooter was the one to call 911, and he was standing there crying while the EMTs tried to save the other guy's life.  Could be he was genuinely sorry because he had accidentally killed his friend.

Could also be that he was fake crying to try and smooth the way for a lesser charge. 

He's been charged with 1st degree murder and armed criminal action.  Whether those charges stick or they plead it down to a lesser charge or the evidence bears out that it was actually an accident, time will tell.

What do you think?

(As always, I don't have all the details, but I've given you what I do have - minus the names and locations so this doesn't blow up all over the internet with for/against people stopping by here to bitch at me.)

1 comment:

  1. That's one for a book. And without seeing footage of his behavior at the scene, I can't speculate. One of the things I was taught was body language, facial expressions, and voice stress. For instance, the woman who strapped her 3 little boys in the back of her van and rolled it down the boat ramp into the lake where they drowned? Yeah...her reaction was totally fake, except for the fear of getting caught, but she also had a layer of psychopathy to cloud things.

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