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.”
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.
Well where I live there aren’t nearly as many guns so the person breaking in would be less likely to have a deadly weapon and it would be a bit less risky to just call the police and hide, or comply with the (assumed) robber, or I’d feel like I’d have a better chance with using a blunt weapon like a bat to protect myself and drive them off, which would be less likely to kill someone. But where I live there are also a lot less robberies in general.
Doesn’t guarantee nobody would have died if the same thing happened in a place with less gun violence, but it might have reduced the chances. Even if people get into the same kinds of confrontations, if there aren’t guns involved the chances of everyone surviving a violent encounter goes up by a significant percentage. Less guns in a country over-all means less chances for a conflict to have a gun involved.
I mean if I take a swing at someone’s head with a baseball bat I’m probably just as likely to kill as I would be by shooting them. I will say baseball bat to the head probably hits less since it would probably render you unconscious immediately.
You’d be surprised. While one hit can kill, concussion/brain injury without death is generally more common from a single hit. Usually it takes multiple hits to guarantee killing someone, and it’s harder to aim if you’re not like, a baseball player, than most people expect. You’re more likely to get a glancing blow, even assuming you catch the other person by surprise. The type of bat can make a difference in how likely it is to kill from a first hit as well.
Yeah I guess that’s all true. Either way I personally would prefer a gun to a baseball bat for self defense for the simple fact that it puts me in less danger than attacking my attacker with a melee weapon. There admittedly isn’t much in my house that is worth my life but apparently the person breaking in values my things more than their own life.
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.
To be fair, here’s the thing. If you replace a gun with a knife, while that doesn’t erase the chance of death by any means, it does lower the chance of death significantly. Because despite what a lot of people might think, in a fight, you’re a lot more likely to survive if your attacker has a knife than you would if your attacker has a gun. If you hadn’t recognized your maintenance guy right away and attacked him, then he’d still be better off with you wielding a knife than if you’d been wielding a gun instead.
And in a country with less guns, both you and a potential robber are less likely to have guns. Maybe you would use a knife, but clearly not everyone would, and saying “there’s not as many as you’d think in a lot of areas areas” is all fine and well, but the statistics show that the US has an absolutely mind boggling amount of guns per capita compared to any other country. The US literally has more guns than people. In other countries, it’s not just in some areas where guns are less common, it’s every area, and most have less than even the areas in US’s that have less guns. Countries that are literally at war have less guns per capita than the US does.
Obviously that doesn’t mean you’ll never be in danger without any guns around, but you will generally be in less danger over-all, and even when you do get into danger you will still be less likely to die.
Gunshots are actually less deadly than knife wounds btw.
That’s not true, gunshot wounds actually have a significantly lower survival rate than stab wounds. I can provide some studies on the topic if you’re interested.
Can you support that statement…?
Source?
Lot more likely to shoot somebody before you have a chance to stop vs stabbing them.
People don’t just drop when they get stabbed and a stronger person can pretty easily take a knife from a weaker one. If you’re trying to defend yourself from a real attacker with a knife you’re probably going to have a bad time.
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.
::gasp:: Actual drug dealers??
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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Stab wounds are far less deadly, and far more treatable compared to gunshot wounds.
You’re right, and there are lots of studies backing this up. Even if you compare similar wounds like neck wounds from stabbing vs getting shot, and getting stabbed in the heart vs being shot in the heart. Stab wound victims are much more likely to survive than gunshot wound victims.
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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.
You hear stories about people with dementia doing this all the time. Guess they don’t deserve to live anymore either.
The ex did once. I came home and had to cover a basement window with plywood.
I wouldn’t call breaking and entering into the completely wrong home at 2 am “an honest mistake…”
One of the presidents of the US did it regularly and he never got shot for it.
The kids only real crime was being too drunk to understand what was going on.
When you choose to get drunk, you’ve also agreed to accept the responsibility for your future drunken actions.
Which US president would break into people’s homes? Sorry, I am unaware here…
And no, he was breaking and entering too. Even if that was not his intention.
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.
People are so damned anxious to use their damned guns
They are. The amount of people who confidently say they’d shoot before attempting to communicate has me terrified; like they want a reason to escalate the situation.
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.
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.
In this case, the person was literally breaking into the house, broken window, reaching for the doorknob. The homeowner had every reason to think their home was being invaded. And given how violent crime can get in the states, unfortunately shooting first in such a situation does make logical sense.
The situation sucks, but this case might be more on the system than the shooter.
You don’t need a gun to kill someone, it’s creepy enougth to assume the intruder has ‘just’ a big knife
That type of thing happens in the US as well. It doesn’t ALWAYS end with a gun. I’d say most of the time it doesn’t.
This person broke a window though and was actively forcing themselves into the home. That’s a pretty big difference from “trying a key and ringing the doorbell.”
It’s always going to be a judgement call, for a different intruder theirs would’ve been the right call. It’s not even about guns, there are knives, drugs, etc. They’re all relevant and the kinds of people that are breaking windows can be dangerous.
I forget all the details but a former neighbors son had an extremely traumatic experience when he was out with a trainee as a paramedic and a guy hopped up on some concoction of drugs incapacitated him (I think by throwing him against the wall) and then the dude spun around and beat the trainee’s skull in with some object.
Just because you haven’t heard of it… doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen in your country, but I hope you’re right. Idealistically you’re definitely right, this sort of thing never should happen, but sometimes there’s no good answer; you just do the best you can with the information and situation you’re in.