A man and his wife see a neighbor drive up to her house. The neighbor is in her 60’s. As they watch, a strange man approaches her, speaks to her, then grabs her, drags her from the SUV, throws her to the ground and jumps in the vehicle. The wife opens the passenger side door, but is struck by the vehicle and knocked down.   The husband fires several shots from a handgun. A short while later, the vehicle crashes . . .

From azfamily.com:

The responding officers discovered it was the stolen vehicle and that the driver was the suspect. Police say he had suffered a gunshot wound.

He was transported to a local hospital, but later died of his injuries.  He has been identified, but the next of kin has not been notified.  It will require an autopsy to determine the actual cause of death.

The carjacker was 29 years old. No charges are expected to be filed against the shooter. The husband had just seen the suspect attack two women, one of whom was his wife. The suspect was also in the process of committing several felonies, which Arizona law specifically says justifies the use of deadly force to stop or prevent.

From azleg.state.az.us 13-411:

 A.  A person is justified in threatening or using both physical force and deadly physical force against another if and to the extent the person reasonably believes that physical force or deadly physical force is immediately necessary to prevent the other’s commission of…

 …  aggravated assault under section 13-1204, subsection A, paragraphs 1 and 2.

Aggravated assault in Arizona is satisfied by both assault that  threatens serious physical injury or use of a deadly weapon (the car).

©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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69 COMMENTS

  1. One less piece of scum on streets and one less sucking tax dollars in a corporate prison, win win all around

    • [sarc alart] But, but he had just turned his life around and was on his way to collage[why he needed the car], where he was going to learn a trade and take care of his alining babies mamma and donate his time at the local YMCA helping gang kids get clean [/sarc]

      • Bet he planned to stop at the local hospital on the way to college to donate a kidney as well. At least he donated 2-3 quarts of blood!

  4. Good riddance.
    It is technically possible that the gunshot hit his arm or something and he couldn’t turn the wheel, thus dying from the crash rather than the gunshot. I don’t care either way, but the autopsy should be interesting.

      • You sir just made my day with that comment. Her trunk monkey was obviously malfunctioning though since they are supposed to dump the body after taking care of business.

      • I’m torn, if the trunk monkey was injured by one of the shots, is Obama going to give his “if I had a son speech” and then call on Holder to prosecute the shooter for not being more careful? Will the “Shannonites” also get involved? Will there be marches? Will JJ and Al show up? This has the possibility to be bigger than Ferguson.

        • Only if he was black. If he was Hispanic, white, Asian, Native American, etc… Obama & company will be as quiet as a mouse about it.

  5. Somebody better give the bad news to shannon watts. Guns do stop bad guys and this bad guy was to old to be listed amongst the dead kids she’s always ranting about.

    • Mrs. Watts knows for a fact that goof guys with guns stop bad guys with guns. Less than two years ago a neighbor of hers shot and killed a man attempting to rape his daughter. There is no way that Mrs. Watts didn’t hear the shots, sirens, or news reports of the incident. It was later found that the attempted rapist was responsible for multiple rapes and at least one death.

      But, you know, facts… They’re so inconvenient.

  6. Hell yeah. A story with a happy ending. The best part was where the POS dies as a result of his injuries.

  9. Chalk up one for the home team; good on both neighbours — an heroic household, there.

    Hope that the gals aren’t too banged up and the SUV is reparable…

  11. That poor guy just needed to get a little cash from turning that stolen car over to a chop shop and he was going to take the cash and turn his life around……or not.

  14. Sounds like the scum was in the process of retreat and one would have no reason to suspect further attack. I’d have a hard time justifying use of deadly force in this case, legally. I don’t really have a problem with it personally though.

    • Re-Read the Arizona law quoted above.

      Repeat as necessary until you understand that ‘Legally’ the shooting was justified.

      • And that’s nice and all until you shoot the wrong person of the wrong color and Eric Holder is banging on all your neighbor’s doors to get statements against you…

    • The neighbors saw him walk up to her and ask to use her phone, and were suspicious enough that the wife went over to check it out. The guy apparently didn’t see her coming around the corner and panicked when she tried opening up the other door. He presumably reversed the vehicle and gunned it, which would be attempted murder. Not knowing whether your wife and neighbor are dead or alive and realizing a violent criminal is now in command of a vehicle is a pretty good reason to grab your firearm and open fire. That said, Al Sharpton could still show up tomorrow and start a riot so the other neighbors need know they’re not out of the woods just yet.

    • In many states, and in AZ, if someone is stealing, (and fleeing) in a vehicle that isn’t theirs, its a forcible felony, and any forcible felony can be stopped with the use of deadly force, even if its not yours. It could be your neighbors, just like in the story. Especially if the said perp has physically assaulted people to get the vehicle.

    • This would be a perfect scenario where your words to the police could condemn or exonerate you … hence don’t say anything until your attorney is on scene.

      The husband’s use of force would NOT be legal if he was angry and exacting revenge. The husband’s use of force would be legal if he was acting to stop a man who was actively wielding a deadly weapon (car) after using said deadly weapon (car) to attack someone. Think of a criminal who just shot someone and starts running toward other people while pointing his firearm at them (still in hand of course). Regardless of the fact that the armed criminal was running away from you, he was running toward others and still armed and that would justify using deadly force. That scenario is the same as the carjacker speeding away.

      Had the carjacker jumped out of the car and ran away from everyone, the husband might not be legally justified to use deadly force.

  15. Yay! A bullet well used…the family of the scumbag perp should have to pay for the cost of the spent ammo.

    • Things have certainly changed since then. Now, there will certainly be a report to file.

      Seriously, I need to watch those movies again. Yeah the weaponry is a bit dated in some respects, but the attitude ain’t.

  18. Here in Bedford Falls, every time a carjacking scumbag gets his brains blown all over the dashboard, an angel gets his wings.

  20. Move along, move along, nothing to see here folks, shows over,everybody go home… Sir, you are free to go…

  21. Beautiful!, just beautiful! I love it when a heart warming story like this has a good ending. I hope the perp didn’t have a wife, or someone he left behind. He probably had parents though.

  22. I do agree with many of the posted comments, but ‘happy ending’ kinda trivializes the situation. I’m not going to give any further comments directed to the POS who initiated this, but the fact is there are still 2 women that were subjected to the violence and will have a lifelong memory of the events, and the gent who fired the shot was probably tied up for a few hours in investigation and most likely will have to deal with the fact that he had to clear leather/kydex. Might have been very easy, might have been the most difficult decision. Yeah, it’s something that most of us prepare for, but the actions and decisions the force a civilian to send a projectile downrange with lethal intent is a not trivial to me. Especially with other current events and the 20/20 hindsight that others who rush to judgement typically will espouse.

    • The fact that they had closure very quickly after the assaults goes quite a way towards their healing as far as mental anguish goes. Not erased, but real solid closure on the event.

    • Oh pish. The dirty secret is that it is exhilarating.

      Robert E. Lee said, on a similar topic that it is well that war is so terrible or we should enjoy it too much. But if you do it that, the Freudians and bleeding hearts that control our culture will crucify you.

  23. Does everyone remember the recent post about the FBI reigniting the caliber wars? I commented in that post that I chose .40 S&W and carry 180 grain bullets in case I ever have to shoot an attacker through a windshield at an oblique angle. This event justifies my choice.

    • Why? Why would you bring that up. I guess you just wanted to start some caliber crap in a thread about a great DGU (I mean, a kill shot through a presumably moving car window, well done, sir). Shame on you.

      (Insert obligatory shot placement is more important and 9mm gives you more opportunities to pull it off comment here.)

      😀

      • Of course, as I read your, “Why? Why …”, I read your comment hearing the voice of Nancy Kerrigan!

  25. So, approximately $2.00 just saved the taxpayers $40k a year in incarceration fess not to mention alleviating an expensive and overly worked court system?

    Bummer.

    I do hope the gentleman and the two ladies involved do not experience any lasting psychological issues, situations like that can have some rather unpleasant lasting effects.

  29. Next time the wife needs to think before she decides to pull a stunt like that (opening the door to… do what, exactly?), she could have gotten hurt and that would have been sad. Hope the car’s owner is okay.

    As to the dead guy… play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

  30. I love my adopted state of Arizona. A place where our neighbors really do have our back and they have the fire power to mean it.

  31. Gosh and I’m leaving Arizona for L.V. Nevada. I hope Nevada is a pro, pro 2A state. I know the dip reid runs it, but he is going to be gone soon, hee, hee. We all must be ready for car jacking jerks. Boy oh boy sure cleaned that up a bit.

  33. Good thing this wasn’t New York, New Jersey, California, etc…the guy probably would have been arrested because his wife had already been injured and was not being threatened any further, and thus the man had no justification to shoot at the fleeing criminal.

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