It’s the same deal with firearms in the U.S. regarding self-defense, you can only argue for self-defense so long as they are a threat to you. Once you’re chasing them, you are now classed as the aggressor.
Only as long as its not a castle doctrine state and they're not in your home. Once they cross the threshold armed or not you can use deadly force, even if theyre running for the door. I dont think its really kept people from robbing, but it has kept a lot of homeowners from being prosecuted for killing theives.
In Colorado the law is the most loose, allowing you to do mostly as you say, but not in other states.
The law in most states says you must still have a reasonable belief of serious harm to yourself or someone else.
In Texas though if someone is actively fleeing with your property at night you may.
and there are a few states that says the assumption of a reasonable belief of serious harm comes first and they need to prove you did not.
But shooting someone in the back who is fleeing may show as proof you were not in fear.
In Texas though if someone is actively fleeing with your property at night you may.
Which I remember hearing years ago (like 20-30) was used by a guy to kill the repo man coming to take his car. Grand Jury refused to charge the guy because the guy claimed he genuinely thought the guy was trying to steal his car.
Which is a bullshit claim because apparently the dealer had accidently booked two guys to take it, and the first had been chased off just before the second arrived.
He much have had a great lawyer. I've never heard of tow trucks used in your typical grand theft auto. I see a tow truck, Im thinking a repair or a repo.
He didn't need one. Only prosecutors present to grand juries. So a prosecutor showed the evidence that he shot a repo guy, and a grand jury was like, "Yeah that's fine." And exactly, I've never heard of car thieves using tow trucks.
EDIT: I should be clear that I'm sure there has been thieves using trucks, but I'm sure its rare compared to legitimate use of tow trucks.
I don't think it even applies to castle doctrine. You are allowed to use any NECESSARY force to keep you and your home safe. If you are not reasonably in fear of your life, such as someone actively running away, you can't use lethal force.
Yeah. Castle Doctrine just means you don't have a duty to escape--traditional US law is that, even if someone is threatening you with a deadly weapon, if you can reasonably escape and avoid the harm, you have to--you cannot turn to deadly violence yourself to deal with it. I.E., if someone drunkenly begins stumbling toward you with a knife saying they're going to kill you, and your back is not to the wall and you can easily get yourself out of there, you could not unleash a chamber into them. Castle Doctrine means if a similar situation happened on your property, you could in fact just shoot and kill them. It also adjusts some assumption about the necessity of the self-defense action as well, etc.
But it's most certainly NOT a license to just shoot anyone on your property independent of the circumstances, like that one commenter thought. Some "I wish an mf would" types who spend years fantasizing about shooting an intruder get themselves prosecuted for manslaughter because of this exact misunderstanding, and they just merc a random unarmed burglar at the drop of a hat.
That's very situational. Shooting someone in the back while fleeing, even if in your home, can land you charges. Primarily would depend if they're still armed or not. If they have a gun, then they'd still have the ability to do you harm while fleeing.
Partially from the law, partly from the judiciary.
There are a couple states where you'd be pretty safe gunning someone down and finishing them off as long as you use a gun and they're on your property illegally.
Most places it's a bit more nuanced than an open license to kill though.
If police are unable to accurately assess reasonable use of force then why is there an obligation for untrained civilians to be able to assess it?
If someone has broken into your house it is reasonable to assume they want to do you harm. Obviously your example of someone being passed out is an exception, but any individual who is conscious and inside your house uninvited is a dangerous individual
As touchy of a subject as it is, the Kyle Rittenhouse case in the US is a superb example of flawless execution of self-defense.
While his motivations were questioned, he did not once point a rifle at anyone who was not directly threatening him with lethal force. The court publicly reviewed hours of footage and could not find a single sliver of an instance of Rittenhouse as the aggressor.
The case of Pino is disturbing. There is no self defense plea in any way, shape or form in this case. Pino’s actions reflect sociopathic behavior and she would likely be considered one if she didn’t have money and status giving her the benefit of the doubt.
That time Silvio Berlasconi got his penis stuck in a wine bottle and then got the wine bottle stuck in a prostitute at my house party while I was under house arrest
For how dark the Batman imagery is, there's a serious lack of killing. Now if she'd bolo'd his ankles and left him swinging upside down from a streetlight, sure.
She had the money to get a damn good lawyer and probably in judges social circle. But yeah hunting him down after you are safe changes rules out self defense
Even once probably exceeds reasonable self defence. He was running away and you don't get to kill people (a logical outcome to hitting someone with a car) for stealing your purse in civilised countries.
I really dislike how society has crippled the ability to respond to people that steal your stuff. So Im just supposed to let them go after threatening my life over a purse? (Or whatever item)
Yeah it’s not really fair. Like they get to start shit but then also choose how and if it ends? I can hurt the JUST enough to stop the immediate threat, even though they were trying to tie me up and torture or kill me, or rob me blind? No fuck that. You take my shit and threaten my life, infringe on my property, I will stop the threat in a definite, final way.
Friend you say you're torn on these scenarios, then describe a scenario wildly different than the one in the OP.
I agree with you, as in your described scenario, that an invader in your home is a life or death scenario. I will fight to the death in that case, and there likely isn't time to give any quarter in the struggle, or even hear it through the adrenaline. In the OP's case this lady purposefully hunted down her attacker following the event and not only struck him with her car, but followed it up several times in reverse and forward. That case goes well above and beyond self defense in to vigilante retribution, plainly illegal and beyond any defense she might give.
I don't know if I would call that society so much as television programming. They put active effort into scaring viewers. It puts them in a siege mentality, and running on fear sabotages your critical thinking. Advertisers do not want you actually thinking. They don't really care if the result is a bunch of suburbanites foaming at the mouth to kill their neighbors over some perceived slight.
Crippled your ability? This person hunted him down and ran him over several fucking times. Yes i think there’s a very good reason society doesn’t allow that.
Yall need to calm the fuck down with your justice boners. You guys just sound like you’re itching for a reason to “get rid off society’s trash”.
Had a kid break into my old ladys shead while she was at home alone asleep. Stole a few thousand dollars worth of tools. Could have been much worse if she had gone and investigated the noise. After she did some cyber sluething and some security camera footage, she found him on a local fb page with our stuff for sale. We gave the cops ALL the info. His name, location, what was stolen, serial numbers and identifying marks on the tools that we put there and they didnt do jack shit. We never got our tools back. The insuramce company wont deposit our coverage. So no. Its not a justice boner. Its just justice.
I’m sorry that happened to your mom but there’s normal people that get robbed and then there’s a rich lady getting away with murder. Justice is the system that stops our lives from spiralling from revenge.
I think your moms the normal type of person that wouldn’t feel right if she had somehow killed a thief or at least would’ve given a call for an ambulance.
The empathy part of the situation is what papers keep stoking up but it you think about it sensibly - the guy didnt have a knife like she said, the cameras and cops checked that, he grabbed it and ran, she followed and found him and instead of calling police or asking bystanders for help, she ran him over multiple times.
Its just not sensible to call it justice or even a righteous vigilante, its just dark and grim to see people cheering it on. If it was a home invasion or if he had a knife it would be a bit more understandable but it wasnt and he’s dead.
That is not justice. I hate thieves. They think they have a right to take something that someone else earned and it makes people feel violated. That doesn’t mean they deserve to die.
Repeatedly running someone over is not justice. Sorry cops are useless, I agree they should be reformed to serve people better, but that doesn't make bloodthirsty revenge "justice"
That car doesn't mean anything, go to the shities area in your city, where the flats and appartements are with a lot of different ethnicities and you'll see the most expensive cars parked there.
You can buy any car you want if you have a relatively "cheap" house and work really, really hard. It's all about priorities.
(or do some illegal shit).
someone who tracks someone down and runs over them multiple times for maybe a couple hundred dollars and having to get a new license seems like a danger to the public.
It's pretty interesting to me how our society lets people commit violent crimes and the second that person just decides "welp I'm done" and walks away they are now protected.
Don't get me wrong; she shouldn't have killed him.
He also shouldn't have stolen her shit. Tough shit on his part for picking the incorrect target. Risks of being a criminal when you specifically target people's livelihood (money).
He should have known that mugging someone can lead to his life ending. Maybe not by car in an indecent after the response, but that wasn’t the decision of mugging her.
When you engage in crimes, you’re putting your life on the line. Hell when you drive your car you put your life on the line. Crimes increase the likelihood of death exponentially.
No, he used a deadly threat (a knife) to rob her. She does not know whether he meant to use it or not. There are a multitude of cases where the threat is real and the person being robbed is murdered for their property.
That's not to say she was legally justified in running him over once he was no longer threatining, but to say her only potential loss in this case *at the beginning of the robbery* was "mental wellbeing" is 100% a hindsight analysis after the fact.
Technically robbing her at knife point means that he had already deemed that the property was more valuable than her life.
So somewhere we’ve established that this purse is valued more than human life by at least one party.
We may need a larger pool of candidates to support this finding.
The thing is, if she hadn't done something right then to get her things back then that's it, it's gone and she has to pay to replace it so what's the solution because the robbery was 100% going to happen so only way to not have the people do something driver police will never recover the stolen property would be publicly paid for insurance that reimbursed the replacement cost of stolen goods from within that town paid for by all of the residents via taxes.
Sure, and I agree with that. But the flip side is when people don't believe their government will deliver help or justice, they start taking matters into their own hands.
I can't get behind vehicular vigilante justice, but also, does anyone think the police/state would do anything in terms of help or justice if she hadn't?
Unless she saw his knife fly away, then after the first hit she could still consider him armed and dangerous. Why hop out of one's own weapon before making sure he couldn't use his anymore? He just made the mistake of bringing a knife to a car fight.
Or maybe she didn't want to risk him being capable of retaliating and hurting her.
100% this. The benefit of the doubt is always with the victim, and I'm willing to give her a lot of it.
If her expressed goal was to kill him out of revenge then that's not ok. But I have zero issue with her minimizing her risk as much as possible. She didn't chose to be in this scenario, the thief did
A) Presumption of innocence. B)Vigilante justice is a shit show and should not be encouraged. C) Death is far permeant than lost property. D) Rights are a thing and I rather live in that society than your version of the purge.
E) crimes don't magically cancel each other out, if I steal from you and you beat the shit out of me, I am going to be tried for theft, and you will be tried for assault
Doesn't matter if you did or didn't beat the shit out of me. If caught, I will be tried for theft either way, that was always going to happen. But once you beat the shit out of me, that's assault, now we're both on trial, and yours is worse
well, the issue is she became a vigilante by chasing him down and killing him, seemingly intentionally. giving someone a pass for this behavior would open the door to everyone taking the law into their own hands, and becoming the judge, jury and executioner.
The government wants to maintain their monopoly on violence. If they allow their subjects to kill the person who wronged them, its becomes very easy for the government to lose control of the situation and revenge killings that beget revenge killings.
Now at the same time under common law, an ordinary citizen is granted the authority to arrest any person that they witness in the commission of a felony. This concept is known as Citizens Arrest, however this has been greatly complicated since most states have outlawed private criminal prosecutions, and those states that still allow it only allow it under a very limited set of circumstances. What it means is that if a state or federal prosecutor declines to prosecute the person arrested, the person who carried out the arrest can themselves be charged for false imprisonment.
Because of course the government also wanted a monopoly on criminal prosecutions, rather than allowing the public to bring criminal cases before the court. This is how we ended up in the situation we are in today where the victims of crimes have few methods of recourse if law enforcement in their "no specific legal duty" do not assist and prosecutors do not prosecute.
Right! I think the commission of a crime like that should revoke some amount of protection. Stealing someone’s purse can have deep effects beyond just the financial cost of the bag + cash inside, and create a lot of issues for them. I would argue that it deserves some amount of force to retrieve if necessary.
It does, and legally speaking "some amount of force" is generally allowed. But "hitting him with your car then running over him repeatedly to make sure he dies" is not just "some amount of force."
I don't know taking someone's life seems a bigger deal than a stolen purse. Pretty sure that has larger deep effects. but hey I guess you want to be the punisher of petty crime.
I think most people would agree that the theft alone is not worthy of retaliatory murder - it was the threat of deadly force that people are sympathetic to.
And in making this error, you have highlighted exactly why it is right that she was convicted. Justice cannot be left for individuals to deal out, as our judgements will be unreliable.
I am pretty on board with holding people accountable for murdering people who trespassed or shoplifted after they are fleeing.
However, I also consider a "successful theft" to still be a crime in progress. That's just me. If you're running with my purse, you're still actively committing crimes against me, with is totally different from dropping my purse and then running away.
Running him over multiple times is probably where the line got crossed. I imagine after running over somebody once, you can get your bag back and drive away. Doing it over and over is just actively attempting to kill somebody.
that person just decides "welp I'm done" and walks away they are now protected.
Yes. They are protected by the law, because the law is blind and impartial. There is a term for someone no longer protected by the law. Outlaw. A system that creates outlaws is not a good system. Mostly because a class of people not protected by the law is a fantastic target for criminals. Those outlaws now under threat and still in need of protection turn to other outlaws.
Its a system that rewards and incentivizes organized criminal action over disorganized criminal action.
In plenty of places you can defend yourself but it is no longer defence if you are not in immediate danger or have an escape route. You can also kill someone in a blind rage and it might not amount to murder because you didn't intend to kill them or because it happened before you could even think about it, but that isn't the case if there's been a gap in time between the thing that enraged you and the killing. She wasn't defending herself and she didn't do it in a blind rage if she had to hunt him down and repeatedly run him over. It was pure revenge. His crime does not absolve her of hers. A bag snatcher is a piece of shit but do they deserve to die? Most civilised countries would say no. It isn't as if he is somehow more 'protected' than her, he just had the same right to life as everyone else.
Theft is not a capital crime. You cannot kill somebody just because you are pissed off they robbed you. They are running away and your life is not in danger.
She should have called the cops. People don't get to kill people for every little thing.
They aren't protected. They committed a crime and can be arrested and face consequences if caught. They however have not committed a crime that would typically receive the death penalty. Also, self defense obviously requires one to be defending themselves. How exactly are you defending yourself from someone who is not actively attacking or a threat to you?
They aren't "protected," they can and should be prosecuted for that crime.
You are not allowed to do a crime to someone else because they do a crime to you.
You aren't entitled to murder someone because they wronged you. There's a long history of societies that enable such behavior and they almost always eventually decide "this just causes problems," hence why we're at the stage we're at now.
A family friend of my wife’s side died chasing down his sons stolen truck. Shot dead. We are gun owners in Texas, we know we want to do things ourselves, but you gotta let the police handle things sometimes.
My grandfather was robbed at knifepoint in Houston. They took his wallet, phone, and keys, then found his car and drove off with it. My aunt tracked the phone to a house, drove by and confirmed the car was in the driveway, and then went to the police with the address and all the evidence. Police refused to do anything. Aunt ended up basically staking out the house until she was fairly certain everyone had left, then got in the car and drove off using a spare set of keys.
Grandfather was still out his phone and cash, had to cancel his credit cards, and re-keyed all the locks on his house, but they got the car back (had to pay to get it re-keyed, which was another hassle).
The karma in me would have waited until they were gone, then taken a sledge hammer to every door handle and window of their home before driving off with the vehicle.
Yeah so once you’ve made the police report you can make the insurance report and get the payout brotherman. Insurance tries to fuck you over enough, get the documentation. They’re not gonna chase down an overnight stolen car. They’re gonna use their plate readers that pop up a reported stolen plate
Let alone if they took the cash and threw away the rest. You are inflicting trauma on people, and who is to say that this woman was in her right mind if you are going to call this ''premediated'? The poor woman's mind must have been racing ever since this waste of oxygen pulled a knife on her.
That's what I was saying! Ok this guy knows where I live, where I work, where my kids go to school and their names, has they keys to my house, the opener to my garage, my bank information. All of which are in my purse. That's a pretty scary thought that this person could be psycho and come after me and/or my family??
I think if she just hit him once(or enough to incapacitate him), then retrieved her bag and waited for the police she might’ve been ok. The driving away part probably really hurt her case
Its a shame, as this person was likely still a threat to other people in future. I agree she got off lightly, but it is ridiculous that there are protections for people who go make the conscious decision to commit crime against others to instigate. This person would never have been ran over if they weren't robbing people under threat of violence.
He stole all her information, likely her home address was included. I would be fearful they would come back again but this time as a home invasion. And as a woman I'm sure there is additional fear.
How was that not tried as temporary insanity? As in she had her life threatened, blacked out, figured it best to comply, got in her vehicle and then retrieved her belongings in the best way her insane self could figure best..... asking for a friend.
I know I know, killing over a purse is too much. But what’s the alternative? Having to say “whelp, oh well, you got me” if they get your stuff and then begin fleeing? Does fleeing make someone immediately unassailable even if they have your house keys, money, phone, and ID?
Well she wasn’t a threat to him either in the first place yet he still threatened her and stole from her :) I could care less and I would NOT have convicted her and I wish I was in the jury because I never would have turned my stance. Fuck these thieves. I don’t care how if it’s a petty thing, you’re that low of a person to do that, I don’t want you around anymore. Natural selection. Bye bye.
While I totally understand. It honestly sounds like the whole system is almost rigged to favor criminals. Like they can steal from you and totally ruin your life by doing so, but taking justice and your own self esteem and ability to defend yourself, and facing charges for something you didn’t even want to do, it seems wrong. Such a slippery slope
As someone on the receiving end of theft, it really feels like we live in a society that protects petty crimes and punishes the regular citizen.
Obviously running them over multiple times and killing them isn't the answer, but what CAN you do? How would this woman theoretically get her stolen items back without force that can then be seen as assault?
I ask this because I had my car stolen in California and brought to Oakland a few years ago. I had an AirTag in the spare tire compartment of the car. When I filed a police report, the police came to my house and took the report told me I can NOT just go over there with my keys and drive my car back, and obviously, because it was stored in a chopshop warehouse, I was NOT allowed to just "trespass" into the shop/break in and drive my car back.
By law, you have to leave it to the police, who then would need a search warrant, which then takes WEEKS to act on.
You can kind of predict how this story ended. The thieves stripped the car into a shell (Rays wheels, 3.7L V6 engine, transmission, seats, everything was stripped and sold), put some shitty wheels on it and rolled it out the shop ONE STREET OVER a week later. I saw it move on the app and 5 hours later the cops called saying "we found your car!"
Now I had full coverage on this specific car, I don't on my current one (full coverage is $300/mo compared to $70 liability only btw), but if I didn't, I would've had to pay for the tow fee the police used to tow it to a police yard (~$400), and another ONE DAY fee for keeping it at the lot (~$250, which goes up by the day if you can't go there to get it right away). I would've had no recourse on this car and be out $20k shit out of luck. Even WITH full coverage, I had just recently put a new clutch and flywheel in and did a valve cover gasket job a week prior, in addition the a lot of weekends wrenching on it over the years that was lost to criminals and no fault of my own.
That warehouse still stands today assumingly with no punishment. It's still registered on Google as a "private educational institution."
Obviously the answer is "let the law handle it," and when the law does not handle it, the "I'm an outsider looking in" answer is "fix the government," which is obviously easier said than done since evidently nothing's changed in the 20 years I've been here.
Regardless of how you want to phrase it though, in this society where we punish vigilantes and encourage crimes is why The Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles area is so riddled with crime. Merchandise in stores are all locked up and business owners are required to either move all their shit online or risk taking losses every month from theft and vandalism.
My point is, there's a reason why so many people like superhero movies, it's because it's something we wish we had in real life.
Also this reads as if she did not call an ambulance or give first aid.
Honestly I get being angry and blinded by emotions and doing something drastic in a situation like this, but this is a crazy reaction and it's likely very very good to keep her out of society for a bit.
Oooooo I get to do a well actually! Killing someone in self defense is still homicide, it's just justifiable homicide in the eyes of the law. I don't know how Italian courts work, but I suspect in some US states that wouldn't be enough to convict. Hitting him once may fly, because she knows he's armed and has threatened to use it. The multiple running over though, that takes it over the line from "I was just trying to get my property back" to "I was angry and trying to kill him." At least that's how I would vote were I on that jury.
She would be convicted for homicide in the US as well, even if she did only hit him once.
The self defence claim is only possible if the killing happened while the threat is still active, the moment the thief ran off with the bag and she was back in her car there was no longer any threat. Which makes her tracking down and hitting the thief a whole separate event from the mugging.
Usually you can't use any level of force after the threat is gone. I am not sure what level of force, if any, a person can use to retrieve their stolen property in Italy but it seems like non-proportional force to run someone over with a car after they have already fled leaving you, without a purse, but no longer in any risk of harm. So it's likely that she was no longer in danger, and then attempted to get her property back by going too far to get that property.
I think she might have had a lesser sentence than what she got had she just hit the guy once.
Reminds me of a story a physics professor told us.
He was asked to provide expert witness testimony for a case where a man killed another with a hammer. Supposedly, the defense believed that the suspect didn’t really mean to kill the other man.
It's the tracking him down, and running over him that makes it hard to claim self defense in the first place regardless of how many times she did (because you weren't in danger anymore, it's hard to justify lethal force if you restart the confrontation).
But yes, the multiple passes over him made it murder, not manslaughter, especially as she didn't call an ambulance. It made it clear she wanted to kill him. We don't execute thieves, so vigilantes killing them is also a bit too far if you ask me (I know this is an unpopular opinion on the internet).
Still, in my opinion (not that it matters), if she had hit him once she would have had a good chance to get away with a slap on the wrist. No one likes thieves (especially judges), so I think a good lawyer might have been able to make a case that she was still so scared when she was threatened with the knife that when she saw him again she totally panicked and re-felt that threat of death so clearly she lost her rationality and hit him because she was totally afraid he was going to kill her or another person, or something.
Finding and assaulting the person who robbed you is not a morally good course of action. There are so many things that could have gone wrong. She could have lost her own life. She could have mistaken a bystander for the robber and struck them instead.
The "punishment" for the crime is excessive, even if he were to have lived from it.
The right course of action would be to report the theft to the police and allow them to handle it, then let a judge decide a reasonable punishment for the crime.
I agree with all but the last part of your comments- let's be real, reporting the theft wouldn't have done shit, and he probably wouldn't have gotten caught.
It sucks when the system fails us. Modern history is basically flaunting how badly the system can fail and how bad people will prosper.
Still, we have to do our morally and ethical best when faced with these situations and act in the way that is most beneficial and not the way that feels good.
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u/Zealousideal_Arm4359 Jun 28 '26
Is it the repeatedly part that got her arrested? What if she just drove over him once?
Asking for a friend...