Headline Man Who Shot Sleeping Intruder 2016

The above headline must be one of the most misleading that I’ve seen. It comes from the Associated Press, aided and abbetted by the AP leading sentence. From the washingtontimes.com:

BEND, Ore. (AP) – The man who shot and killed another person asleep inside a Bend home in 2012 is asking a court to throw out a wrongful death lawsuit against him.

Only one problem: the intruder wasn’t sleeping. He was actively fighting the couple that found him asleep in the homeowners house. There was an extensive investigation, and the shooting was ruled justified.

The story is all over the intertubes, with the factually incorrect headline and first sentence.

The Washington Times
From USA Today
At katu.com
The Roanoke Times
At pressofatlanticcity.com
At tucson.com

I have found only one source that corrected the headline: ktvz.com, a tv station in central Oregan.  It is the local station where the case occurred.  They only corrected the headline — Man who shot Bend intruder asks lawsuit to be tossed — and factually wrong first sentence because of complaints from people commenting at ktvz.

Here’s the story from when the shooting was ruled justified, after an extensive investigation, a year ago. From ktvz.com in 2015:

Perry, then 37, shot and killed Munoz, 33, early on the morning of June 24th, 2012, after returning to his Awbrey Butte home with his girlfriend, Amanda Weinman, of Eugene. They said they had returned to find an intruder had kicked in the door and was asleep on the couch. A fight ensued, and Perry said he shot the stranger in self-defense . . .

Hummel said it was true Munoz was shot in the back, as his father had said, but added that Perry did so while Munoz was fighting with Weinman.

“There was a bite mark on Amanda Weinman’s body above her breast and some minor bruising. And Shane Munoz also had bruising and contusions throughout his body,” Hummel said.

Bend Police Chief Jim Porter said the evidence confirms what Weinman and Perry reported.

“It was obvious for officers there, that the living room where this took place was extremely disrupted,” Porter said, adding that Bend PD spent over 500 hours on the investigation.

A shooting where the local police spent over 500 hours investigating, where there was extensive evidence of a protracted fight, becomes an AP headline of Man who shot sleeping intruder.

Later in the story, the AP sort of gets it right. But a lot of people only read the headline. A lot more only read the headline and the first sentence. Another trigger-happy gun nut shouting make my day!

The AP has been shown to be hostile to self-defense with firearms for decades. It’s time for them to start to tell the truth.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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29 COMMENTS

  1. “It’s time for them to start to tell the truth.”
    Don’t hold your breath!

    • It’s time for readers to stop buying the rags that rely on the AP. And tell the nice salesperson that calls to get you to re-up exactly why you dropped them.

      I dropped my local paper when they started using the USA Today format. I knew they were a lost cause. They can hold their breath while waiting for me to re-subscribe.

      • While rolling out the trash and recycle this very evening, I picked up the Startlegram (AKA The Fort Worth Star-Telegram) mistakenly delivered to my house. I was almost shocked at what a pathetic shadow of itself it has become. The thing felt like it might have been ten pages. I remember twenty years ago catching kicks for the Startlegram and having individual sections which had more pages.

  2. I once shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know….
    Capt. Spalding

  3. Damm he shot while the perp was fighting with his woman. If it had been me, my wife would have shot me on principal. Lucky gal. +1 for “mouse calibers” (Im guessing)

    The truth doesn’t get clicks….. But National Inquirer style journalism does. Main stream news is starting to look like the checkout line.Very seldom do the “headlines” have much to do with the topic. I’m waiting for ALL news stories to start with “One weird trick to” I trust the “Press” about as much as I trust the USG. There at least 3 sides to EVERY story, Yours,Mine and the Truth and very seldom do they ever match.

  4. I am all for freedom of speech and the freedom of press. But there is absolutely zero accountability. Why can’t we qualify misleading headlines like this as political hate speech? You can’t yell fire in a crowded movie theater because its misleading and could endanger lives. Same thing here, low information democrats read this and inch closer to civil disobedience and lawlessness which HAS already played a hand in endangering our police forces nation wide.

    Libel suits are a joke since only the affluent have the time and money to go down that rabbit hole. I’d like to see an oversight comity stood up for the sole purpose of going after misrepresentation in the media. Force integrity otherwise outlets become no better than state run media.

    • Political hate speech is not illegal, and you can yell fire in a theater. The SCOTUS case that half quote came from (Schenck v. United States) literally ruled that you couldn’t protest the draft. That’s pretty well overturned. What you can be held accountable for is the reasonably easy to predict outcome. The victim of this liable should sue for liable.

    • Quite often hysterical anti’s conflate or misconstrue the 2nd with a “right to kill” or “license to murder.”
      Makes sense then that these same people would view the first as a “right to lie” or “license to slander.”

      • The foundling fathers could not have conceived that modern theaters would have adequate escape routes so that yelling “fire” would not get people killed.

    • “I’d like to see an oversight comity stood up for the sole purpose of going after misrepresentation in the media. Force integrity otherwise outlets become no better than state run media.”

      Who would manage and oversee this committee, and what power would they have to influence the media companies?

  5. AP keeps trying to get me to sign up for their app and this kind of pseudo journalism is why I won’t.

  6. And what if the idiot WAS asleep? He’s still an illegal intruder…and I haven’t bought a newspaper in years. The local Daily Southtown has a paywall if want to look at the estate/garage sales-they will never get a dime from me. I even turned down a free Chicago Tribune trial after they endorsed Bury Soetoro-twice…

    • I don’t think it’s legal to kill someone for trespassing unless you’re in reasonable fear for your safety. It would be pretty hard to argue that a sleeping person is dangerous as long as they’re asleep.

  7. It could have been worse. The headline could have read “Man Shoots Intruder in His Pajamas.”

  8. So does the court of public appeal, who gets its evidence from the main stream media, decide if this man is innocent or guilty? No. It’s the judge and/or jury that see the evidence brought before them in a court of law. Why should we be surprised, or care, if the AP has an extremely misleading headline to attract readers? The media tells partial truths and the political class lie. We need to take anything we read or hear with the amount of salt needed considering the source.

    • There isn’t enough salt in all the oceans of the world. Besides, stories like this can taint the jury pool.

  9. Can I assume now if I was asleep sometime in my life and have no intentions of breaking the law, I will not be prosecuted because that’s the trend I see nowadays?

    • Correct. That’s why Ruth Bader Ginsberg hasn’t been arrested at the Supreme Court Building.

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