Homeowner Fatally Shoots 3 Home Invaders

BROKEN ARROW, Okla. — Three teens dressed in black and wearing masks and gloves were killed by a resident when they broke into a home, Oklahoma authorities said Monday.

The 23-year-old son of the homeowner fired shots from a rifle; officials said. One suspect had a knife, another carried brass knuckles.

“Preliminary investigation looks like it’s self-defense,” said Wagoner County Sheriff’s Deputy Nick Mahoney, cautioning the investigation was continuing into the midday home invasion.

The shooter voluntarily spoke with investigators. Neither he nor his father were hurt.

A 21-year-old woman turned herself into Broken Arrow police and may have been a getaway driver, Mahoney said.

Shortly before 12:30 p.m., the apparent burglars broke through a door in the back of the home outside Broken Arrow, a Tulsa suburb. The young man, who was there with his father, encountered them.

“There was a short exchange of words, then gunfire happened,” Mahoney told reporters.

Two of the suspects were in the kitchen; the other was found on the driveway. He described two as 16 or 17 and one as 18. The suspects’ names were not immediately released.

Mahoney said it did not appear the residents and intruders knew each other.

While authorities said the neighborhood has a low crime rate, resident Leon Simmons told CNN affiliate KTUL there have been a few burglaries in the past six months.

(This story comes from WGNTV.com)

I don't know. Things like this happen literally every day. It's hard to be very surprised by it. I guess that is pretty sad but yeah, my reaction is like, and grass is green so what? It's a sad state of affairs. This is probably a good thread for the gun people to get excited about.

Unfortunate, but you break into others houses (with weapons), this is a possibility. Better luck with their next lives I guess, no sympathy from me.

3 more pieces of shit off the streets, I'd call that a good day.

Sums up my thoughts on the matter.

"Some people should die. That's just unconscious knowledge". - Pigs in Zen, Jane's Addiction

The lesson is not to break into other people's houses. This is not a story that warrants an "anti-gun" or even a "pro-regulation" response. You break in to other people's homes and you run the risk of getting shot.

Very unfortunate turn of events however they broke into that person's house and certainly posed a risk so it seems that it was justifiable, at least shooting the two in the kitchen. However the one in the driveway has me questioning that shooting. Not sure if he was fleeing the scene or not.

Unless more evidence is introduced this story seems fairly by the numbers. And burglars shouldn't bring a knife to a gun fight.

saw on the news that OK has an odd law where the woman who was the getaway drive may get charged w/ murder in this case.

edit: also, why is this in the political area? shouldn't this be OT?

Seems like a pretty cut and dry case of self defense.

There's no law to dictate what the AG can charge an accused of. It's a risk for AG to put a charge that evidences don't support because defense will likely take to the trial. They probably expected the defense attorney to bargain down to an involuntary.

I believe its called Felony Murder, and it is not unique to Oklahoma. If you are in the process of committing a felony, and someone is killed, even your accomplice, you can be charged with felony murder.

I'm not a legal expert, but I believe what I said is correct. If not, maybe someone with greater expertise can correct me.

I totally agree. The kid did a public service.

@balrogbane: I'm moving your topic to regular Off topic. Seems more suited there.

It's unfortunate for the family members of the people who where killed ''BUT" I have no sympathy for the burglars themselves. I own a home so I identify with the actions of the son of the homeowner. If that kid didn't take action, that story could have easily went the other way.

I have a mentor who lives in Oklahoma(he's a gun owner)I'm not surprised by this story. Lives where lost but those lives put themselves in that situation too be taken.

@thegerg: Oh, okay.

THIEF LIVES MATTERS

Quick points:

The law in Oklahoma is similar to laws just about everywhere...if you are committing a felony and someone dies you can usually expect to be charged with murder.

No, things like this don't "happen every day." The odds in favor of nothing like this EVER happening to you or your home remain almost certain.

It seems highly unlikely that three armed young men dressed like ninjas were there to commit a burglary. Which suggests that the young man who "just happened" to be in the kitchen at the time carrying a rifle might have a pretty good idea what they were actually there for. If I were investigating this case I would take his claim that he didn't know them with an entire shaker of salt. This is important because it is vital to stay grounded in reality, and the reality is that things like this happening to YOU, just out of the blue, is not something worth fretting about.

A good way not to get killed, is not to break into someone's home dressed in all black with a knife.

This. lol

People go around saying, "that can never happen to me" and then it happens. It's smart for responsible adults to have something around for home defense. Also, the 21 year old who turned herself in would of mentioned if they knew the residents are not. I'm simply not sure what your post is getting at.

Damn.... I bet those teens didn't see that coming....

Seems a bit excessive - I mean, after the first one dropped the others probably would have run away. Can never be sure though, I guess. Better safe than sorry.

Good. I have zero problems with this.

Don't break into people's houses.

I would have rather used a knife. More personal that way.

@intotheminx: A whole lot more people go around saying "that will never happen to me" and they are right, it doesn't. Kind of like the people who walk around saying "I'm not going to get struck by lightning" or "I'm not going to win the lottery." These things all DO happen...but the odds for any individual are that they won't.

As to the girl that turned herself in...she said they "heard there was a lot of money in the house" from a friend. The guy may not have known the kids breaking in directly, but there was apparently some intersection of circles there. So one more time: if you aren't the person who a) keeps a lot of cash in your house and b) lets that fact become known in social circles that include a bunch of young burglars, then you c) don't need to carry a rifle when you go to your kitchen.

thegerg

No, I think they were there looking to hurt somebody. Burglars look to get in and out without confrontation. They generally don't carry weapons and wear masks. If this were my neighborhood I'd give you five to one odds that there was a drug dealer in the house and that the group breaking in expected to leave with cash and dope and knew they were gonna have to fight for it. A guy who "just happens" to carry an AR-15 with him when he goes to the kitchen for a snack tends to fit that picture as well. If I were the cops I'd be looking for where the guy hid the stash after the shooting.

@timsup2nothin: I'm just trying to figure out why you keep saying it will not happen to everyone. We all know that, but why do you keep stating it? Also, I doubt that guy had a rifle just chilling in his kitchen.

@intotheminx:

I actually didn't say "it won't happen to everyone," which as you say is an obvious truth. I'm saying that EVERY individual, barring unusual circumstances like "I run a cash business out of my home and everyone knows it" or "I run around my neighborhood playing tough guy and making enemies" can honestly say that "the odds of this happening to me are so vanishingly small that making plans for it would be absurd."

Until it does happen, little to late to to fret about then, then what will you do?

As much as I am anti-gun and very liberal when it comes to gun ownership (especially in America, since you folks are crazy enough even without weapons), if you break into someone's home you get what's coming to you..

There is a place called Broken Arrow? That's awesome

Action has consequences. No sympathy here.

I didn't say I was liberal, but my feelings towards gun ownership tend to align with those who are more liberal.

Keep in mind that liberal means very different things in different parts of the world, and seeing as I'm outside of the US there could be a cultural thing that I'm missing.

Again - I'm outside of the US where these terms are popularized as major issues, so I may be missing something. But my observation has been that more conservatives tend to lean more towards being the gun-totting rednecks than anyone else.

Fvck Em!

No sympathy from me either.

@bmanva said:

@timsup2nothin said:

Quick points:

The law in Oklahoma is similar to laws just about everywhere...if you are committing a felony and someone dies you can usually expect to be charged with murder.

No, things like this don't "happen every day." The odds in favor of nothing like this EVER happening to you or your home remain almost certain.

It seems highly unlikely that three armed young men dressed like ninjas were there to commit a burglary. Which suggests that the young man who "just happened" to be in the kitchen at the time carrying a rifle might have a pretty good idea what they were actually there for. If I were investigating this case I would take his claim that he didn't know them with an entire shaker of salt. This is important because it is vital to stay grounded in reality, and the reality is that things like this happening to YOU, just out of the blue, is not something worth fretting about.

Until it does happen, little to late to to fret about then, then what will you do?

The problem is that your meme based argument, while catchy, is predicated on the highly unlikely idea that it will ever happen to me. Just like I might win the lottery but would be stupid to waste time actively planning for it, it would be stupid to actively plan for this minute probability becoming reality. Yet whenever it happens to ONE person (and there is still good reason to believe that one person created much different circumstances for themselves than apply to the rest of us anyway) there are people who leap into this as if suddenly having people dressed like ninjas invade your house is such a likely turn of events that you better get prepared...even "taking precautions" that statistics show put you at more risk rather than less.

@timsup2nothin said:

@bmanva said:

@timsup2nothin said:

Quick points:

The law in Oklahoma is similar to laws just about everywhere...if you are committing a felony and someone dies you can usually expect to be charged with murder.

No, things like this don't "happen every day." The odds in favor of nothing like this EVER happening to you or your home remain almost certain.

It seems highly unlikely that three armed young men dressed like ninjas were there to commit a burglary. Which suggests that the young man who "just happened" to be in the kitchen at the time carrying a rifle might have a pretty good idea what they were actually there for. If I were investigating this case I would take his claim that he didn't know them with an entire shaker of salt. This is important because it is vital to stay grounded in reality, and the reality is that things like this happening to YOU, just out of the blue, is not something worth fretting about.

Until it does happen, little to late to to fret about then, then what will you do?

The problem is that your meme based argument, while catchy, is predicated on the highly unlikely idea that it will ever happen to me. Just like I might win the lottery but would be stupid to waste time actively planning for it, it would be stupid to actively plan for this minute probability becoming reality. Yet whenever it happens to ONE person (and there is still good reason to believe that one person created much different circumstances for themselves than apply to the rest of us anyway) there are people who leap into this as if suddenly having people dressed like ninjas invade your house is such a likely turn of events that you better get prepared...even "taking precautions" that statistics show put you at more risk rather than less.

However unlikely, there's still a chance it will happen. If everyone goes by your logic of playing the chances, then no one would be prepared for when the unlikely does happen. The lottery analogy is flawed since on average American citizen is hundreds of thousands times more likely to be a victim of violent crimes than they are to win the lottery. So to say that you don't plan on winning the lottery therefore you shouldn't plan on being a victim of violent crime is contradictory to the basis of your original argument about chances. And since you love memes, here's another one for you:

Also please cite credible data that demonstrate preparations for a target of violent crimes RESULT in an increase of risks. Because it sure sounds like your typical gun grabbers approach of intentionally muddling correlation and causation.

@bmanva: Do you really need evidence that accidental in home shootings are more likely to occur in homes where there is a gun? Do you need evidence that this chance is increased where the gun is kept "ready to hand"?

By the way, nice misrepresentation with the "hundreds of thousands of times more likely to be a victim of violent crime than win the lottery." First off, when dealing with negligible quantities relative magnitude is not really important. Secondly, if you compare winning the lottery to being a victim of violent crime in your home you'll get a much different result.

You'll also get a much different result if you differentiate between victims who are not involved with any illicit business or criminal activity themselves. The guy in this case had two potentially effective options for reducing the chances of being a victim of violent crime in his home. He chose keeping a loaded AR-15 ready to hand, which worked out better for him than it has in other cases. The "don't have the word spreading through the underground that you keep a lot of cash in the house" option is usually more effective and carries less risk. I generally recommend it.

By the way, I don't love memes as arguments. I consider them a refuge for the otherwise incapable. Be better than that.

lol I can tell you are deluding yourself that you're coming at this from an objective len but the consistency of your logic just fall apart at the slightest poke. You just twisted the context. The original statement was "even 'taking precautions' that statistics show put you at more risk rather than less". First of all, you claimed that there's "statistics"

but when asked for your sources, you retort to the typical "it's common sense" dodge. Second, the contextual risk isn't talking about negligent discharges it's the risk to the well being of you and your family in general. To support your original statement you have to provide evidence that the risk of having a gun out weights the protection it provides against violent criminals which you have not done. Furthermore, one risk very much within the owners control while the other isn't (individual controls their own firearm safety but does not control whether they are targeted by criminals). That imbalance further erode your argument since the risk for an accident prone person is already high regardless of gun ownership status. Owning a gun doesn't inherently change a person's willingness to take risk.

Again, likelihood or unlikelihood of violent crimes is moot. Preparation isn't to address the likely ideal scenarios, it's meant for unlikely disasters. I sincerely hope you are not in an engineering career because the unlikelihood of a water landing makes for a poor defense for why you didn't bother designing flotation systems in the plane.

So far, all your conjuncture about the burglary victim criminal involvement is completely baseless. And the bottomline is having towing around a rifle in his home worked out for this particular individual in this circumstance, hypothetical imagining of what he could have should have done is also moot.

What happens when you are wrong and the individual comes out on the short end of your odds? Oh well?

@Solaryellow:

Funny thing about your argument...it is predicated on me being wrong. That's fine...in this Oklahoma guy's one in a million situation I would be wrong. But that doesn't change the realities for the far greater number of people in that million where I'm right.

And here we reach the crux of the matter. All your clever little memes, all your browbeating, this is what it's all about. The feeling of control. This is why linking you to statistics we both know are out there and that you have undoubtedly seen and ignored before is pointless. This is why the common sense that says that the chances of a fatal gun accident in my house are ZERO while you have made them non zero in yours makes no difference. Because what is really at stake here is your feeling of control. That's what makes you want a gun, and it's what makes you need agreement that you do NEED a gun. And it's what irks you about me knowing that I don't need one. In a delicious bit of irony I actually accept that YOU do need one, but we'll get to that later. First, let's take a look at what your gun is doing "for" me...and everyone else.

I'm sure you're familiar with random mass shootings. A McDonalds in San Diego. A Theater in Colorado. An elementary school in Sandy Hook. No doubt you have commented on these events. Probably fed your feelings of control with the standard chestnuts about how "if someone like me had been there with a gun things would have been better." Thing is that someone like you WAS there. One reason I would never push you to agree with me is that I don't want to give you the final push. Before those shooters got the final push, the one that convinced them that their only path remaining to feeling in control was killing people, they were satisfied with winning arguments, just like you. Now, when they got that final push they would have killed with a knife, or a bat, but they were gun owners. Just like you. That's one thing your guns do for me. They give you that feeling of control without anyone having to be killed, and I'm glad for it.

Now let's look at what they do for a certain young mother at WalMart. Unlike me she listened to the arguments and smiled at the memes from people just like you, and it built in her a paranoia and a feeling of lost control that led her to believe she could only "feel safe" at the WalMart if she had a gun. She was looking at the shelves, as a shopper is likely to do. Her toddler in the cart was exploring her purse, as a toddler is likely to do. She's dead in an accidental gun death. You will rightly dismiss this as a lightning strike type of event. A one in a million that doesn't invalidate your arguments at all. I agree with you. So let's get back to discussing the Arizona kid who shot a home invader a few years back...oh, wait, now there's this Oklahoma case that's more current so you've moved on to using it as the proof that these things are happening to ordinary folk every day. Okay then. Enough about what your guns are doing for the rest of us.

On to where you have my complete agreement. Even though I don't need to carry a gun when I go to the kitchen for a bag of chips, I agree that you do. Because there is this guy in Oklahoma, and it did work for him. Unlike me, he lived in a targeted house. His local underground had identified his house as "a place with a lot of cash." I don't know why. Maybe he was dealing dope. Maybe he was a devoted follower of Alex Jones and had tried to convince his friends and neighbors that banks are part of the big space lizard conspiracy and the only safe place for money is a well guarded mattress. How his house became a target doesn't matter, what matters is that it was.

And here's the delicious irony. No doubt yours is too. See, that need to control, win arguments, get agreement; it means that I'm not likely to be the only person you've tried to browbeat. I'm most likely not the only person who knows you keep guns. And even though I neither know nor care where you live some of those people do. And in YOUR local underworld even though your house probably isn't known as "a place for cash" it is almost certainly known as a gun cache, which is the next best thing as targets go.

So carry on man! Grab your gun and go get yourself a bag of chips. I'm convinced that YOU need your guns, and I wish you all the best.

@timsup2nothin:

And yes I like keep this handy for close encounters.