Reasons To Be Careful

Regular readers know that I support the right to be armed for self-defense. I run the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog where my co-bloggers and me link to news stories of American civilians (not police officers) defend themselves with guns. Most of the time, these are incidents where it is hard to get too heart-broken about the death of the criminal. Incidents like this one. Or this one. Or this one.

There have been other incidents over the years where the shooter was legally in the right, because the shooter had good reason to fear death or great bodily injury, but you still shake your head that someone had to die over such a stupid argument. These aren't terribly common, but they do happen, and we report them.

And there are some incidents (and I emphasize "some" because they aren't very common) that happen that are a reminder that living in fear--even when that fear is completely justified--can have tragic results. Here's one of those cases. My co-blogger Pete linked to this story from the August 5, 2007 San Antonio Express-News:

After realizing that his home had an intruder, a homeowner chased down a 19-year-old man and shot him to death on the Northwest Side early Saturday, according to a police report.
Raymond Lemes, 48, said he was asleep when he heard a scream.
Lemes grabbed his gun and realized an intruder, later identified as Tracy Glass, was in his home in the 9800 block of Autumn Star.
Glass took off and Lemes chased him down the street. When he caught up to the suspect, Lemes said Glass took a swing at him so he shot the man.
When police arrived at 2:35 a.m., they found Glass facedown, dead with gunshot wounds to the chest, neck and arm.
The homeowner had a license for his .40 caliber Glock pistol, a police report said.
He told police Glass probably had gained access to his home through a sliding door that had been broken for some time.

A friend of Glass contacted me, quite irate, insisting that Glass was visiting his sister in San Antonio, went out for a walk, and got confused about which house was his sister's place. This is not an absurd possibility. I've seen a few news stories over the years where someone gets shot entering the wrong house at night by mistake--but usually, such a person is riproaring drunk. Most people get halfway in the door before they realize that they are in the wrong place.

That Lemes's house had a door with a broken lock at first sounds implausible--but I recently discovered that the slider on my house (which is less than two years old) had a lock that was no longer working. I discovered it only because we were going on a trip.

Lemes certainly did not need to chase Glass down the street, gun in hand. It was lawful to do so. Armed pursuit of a fleeing felon, and even use of deadly force by a civilian is lawful. But it was not particularly wise--and Lemes is certainly going to be fighting a civil suit over this fateful decision. It is conceivable that Lemes may still face criminal charges.

Lemes claimed that Glass took a swing at him, and that he fired out of fear for his life. This news account suggests that the bullet wounds were all in the front of the body--which at least makes Lemes' claim that he was engaged in self-defense plausible.

I will be curious to know if the autopsy on Glass shows intoxicants in his system. This is by far the most likely explanation for both the mistaken entry into the wrong house and Glass' apparent aggressive actions against Lemes. Even if that turns out to be the case, this was a tragedy, one that will cause Lemes enormous difficulties for years.

If Lemes had shot Glass inside Lemes' home, this wouldn't even be under discussion. Glass' mistaken entry at night would have been recognized as a tragedy, but there would be no question about Lemes being in the right. The pursuit of Glass outside was at least a big mistake.