Last Friday in Palm Beach, 22-year-old Terrence Wilson was fatally shot while attempting to drive away with a stranger’s minivan. There are two conflicting reports about what happened.

According to one report, the van’s owner had parked in front of a barber shop, left the vehicle running with his five-year-old daughter inside, and walked inside to pick up his 12-year-old son. That’s when Wilson opened the driver’s side door and leapt into the vehicle.

The van’s owner, who is a concealed carry permit holder, yelled at Wilson to stop, drew his weapon and fired, fearing for his daughter’s safety. He then managed to get back into the car and steer it to a stop.

Another report tells a slightly different story. According to that one, the van’s owner had left not one, but two daughters in the car while he ran into the barber shop. Additionally, according to that report, Wilson ordered the girls to get out of the van before driving off.

Either way, there’s security camera footage of part of what happened below. In the video, you can see the van jumping the median on the corner. According to the second report, the owner of the van was struggling with Wilson for control of the vehicle at the time. Then, the owner is seen walking beside the van, steering it to a stop.

See that for yourself here:

One fact that isn’t in question is that this wasn’t Wilson’s first time on the wrong side of the law. According to county records, he’d already been arrested twice: once for breaking into a car, after which he subsequently spent 180 days in jail for burglary, and once again for driving without a license. The crime that led to his death was consistent with that record.

Even though Wilson, himself a father of a 1-year-old boy, endangered another man’s child(ren), there are people who think he did nothing wrong:

“He was the sweetest and funniest person you could meet,” said his longtime friend Amanda Swanson, who worked with Wilson at Jimmy John’s. “He worked two jobs to support his son and girlfriend.”

“This was my friend and this was not for him,” she added. “He had no problems.”

Evidently, Ms. Swanson’s opinion of Wilson isn’t shared by local law enforcement. No charges will be filed against the man who shot him.

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59 COMMENTS

  1. He left the van running & unlocked and his his kld inside. He’s an IDIOT. So is the funny fella’ he shot. That about covers it…

    • And you left your gun in your house unlocked, and it got stolen. You are an IDIOT.

      The criminal is the one who tried to take another persons property. The thief was not coerced into stealing the vehicle, had he left it alone the kids would have been fine, as would he. There could have been $1000 in cash sitting on the front seat, doors unlocked, car running, cold beer in the cupholder. Temptation is not a defense. Case closed.

      • He’s still an idiot and so are you for not agreeing with me. Don’t leave your car unlocked and running…duh. I have no problem with his dirt nap(even with a goofball endangering his child).

        • So anyone that doesn’t agree with you is an idiot? Who does that sound like…hmm….ready to start violating their liberty to save them from their own stupidity, as you view it?

          God forbid I’d like us all to live someplace where evil isn’t the predominant factor in our decision making, and blame is placed squarely and solely on those who do harm to others. This garbage isn’t going to stop if people are both willing to allow criminals to get away with criminal acts and be back on the streets, AND blame victims for being “stupid”. I guess the dad was asking for it…

        • Embrace the power of and, DY.

          The guy who left his kids alone in a running vehicle in public was an idiot. So was the guy who tried to steal a van with kids inside. AND the dead guy deserved what he got, and the armed defender absolutely did right in giving it to him.

          FWW is right on the money with this one. They were both idiots, and there’s nothing wrong with the outcome.

      • Nobody offered a defense, let alone temptation as a defense. Everyone agrees the criminal is responsible for his own actions.

        Given that, the father is an idiot for subjecting his family to that criminality, which is a separate issue from the criminality itself.

        • “…the father is an idiot for subjecting his family to that criminality…”

          So just curiously, how far does this logic extend?

          Would he be an idiot for living in the bad part of town? Would this by extension include being an idiot for having a lower than desirable income, or life circumstances like medical bills requiring you to move to an area with lower rents?

          Perhaps he would be an idiot for allowing his children close proximity to blacks and hispanics who have a disproportionate representation in crime statistics, or perhaps for frequenting businesses where it is known that blacks and hispanics shop. I don’t know the father’s ethnicity, but this would be particularly difficult if he was black or hispanic himself.

          Maybe he is an idiot because he failed to recognize someone walking by who is known to law enforcement as someone with a criminal record?

          Or perhaps he is an idiot for not assuming that everyone in sight is a potential kidnapper and car thief?

          How far exactly does your “she was asking for it” analogy go? Does it go all the way to safe storage laws? or red flag laws? or to bans on certain types of firearms?

          NO you say? Then how is your argument internally consistent?

      • A better analogy is you left your gun sitting unlocked and unattended on your porch. Yes, it’s illegal for someone to take it, but you’re negligent as well. What if a child picked it up and hurt himself or someone else? What if one of the daughters put the car into gear?
        Check your insurance policy. I bet theft isn’t covered if you leave the car running and unlocked. Here in CO, it’s explicitly against the law (anti puffing law) , but many people run their cars unattended to warm them up in the winter. They then get stolen. One officer told me about someone who had their car stolen from a 7-11 while puffing and then the replacement car got stolen the same way. The person asked, “Why does this keep happening to me?” If you want to legally do it, you need a keyless start system.

        • “A better analogy is you left your gun sitting unlocked and unattended on your porch.”

          Don’t worry, dipshit delivery drivers will do that for you! They’ll ignore the signature requirements, leave the gun and even leave it so that the box has giant letters that say RUGER in bright red pointed towards the street!

          (Yes, this actually happened to me. Oh, and it happened in a REALLY shitty neighborhood too! I was surprised the box was there when I arrived home.)

        • Check your insurance policy. I bet theft isn’t covered if you leave the car running and unlocked.

          I’ve worked in the insurance business and that is 100% bullshit myth. No insurance company can deny thft of vehicle coverage you for leaving your car running or unlocked. Theft from the car, yes they can deny without sign of forced entry. But coverage for theft of the vehicle can’t been denied if you left it unlocked, with keys in it, or even running.

          No different than if your home has a window unlocked and you are robbed.

          While some jurisdictions (a minority) have laws against your leaving your car running, but that does not effect coverage since those are civil infractions, they are parking infractions. You are not denied coverage for theft if you park illegally either.

          So please stop repeating BS myths.

          BTW leading your gun on the porch is not always illegal, or even negligent — it depends. Your porch is your curtilage.

    • There have been a couple of carjackings at my nearest grocery store.

      A woman put her twins into their car seats, started the car so they would have air conditioning and began loading groceries into the trunk. A guy jumped into the front seat and drove off. Cops found the car a few blocks away. The babies were still alive and well. Surveillance video enabled them to catch the thief who was convicted of kidnapping as well as car theft.

      Four guys pulled an old man out of his pickup, threw him to the ground and drove off. The old man went to the hospital. I never heard if he got his truck back.

      Although it’s not illegal to leave yourself vulnerable, you (or your family) are the one(s) who will suffer if some brazen SOB takes advantage of the opportunity.

    • In a perfect world you could leave your shit unlocked, we don’t live in a perfect world. You can’t leave designer shoes outside your door and reasonably expect them to be there in the morning. You can’t leave a running vehicle with unlocked doors and reasonably expect people passing by to not see a crime of opportunity.

    • In reference to the above argument about who is or is not an idiot: My 4000/5000 (400/500 for most smaller schools) level philosophy class would have a field day with this topic.

      An absolute field day. God this would be a fun one.

      As it is, I’ll have to get by with Ibn Sina’s arguments about the nature of the soul. *sigh*

    • Nah i want to live in a place where you can leave your door unlocked. The guy was fine the criminal messed up for stealing. Where is the law against leaving your car unlocked?

    • Former Water Walker, do you also say “She’s an idiot for not wearing burka and getting gang raped for enticing honest men into rape”??

      I bet you do.
      The only people who should be careful and fearful are criminals. Not enough are shot and killed like they should be.

      • People on this website are critical of anyone who doesn’t carry a spare magazine and a backup piece. Yet leaving your car unlocked, running, and your young children unattended while you’re in another building isn’t worth any criticism whatsoever?

        Being a negligent person doesn’t mean he deserves to get robbed. But he is negligent. Negligent with his car and negligent with his children. He is lucky that his negligence didn’t cost him the life of his children.

  3. I pray the scum bags family doesn’t sue the law abiding citizen. The sweetest guy??? Give me a break.

    • But but but tuition is due, turning his life around, need to deliver today’s “meals on wheels” to the old folks, etc etc etc/

      Wilson, himself a father of a 1-year-old boy NO was a sperm donor, writer has NO idea what a “father” is.

  5. Pretty good start. Bring up the next volunteer to be brought to room temperature. When will people learn, if it’s NOT yours…If it doesn’t BELONG to YOU ; don’t TOUCH IT…there are no victims…only VOLUNTEERS. 30

    • I help out with a local Scout Troop. The 12 points of the Scout Law are pretty exhaustive, but I share one more: “If it’s not yours, don’t fuss with it.” It avoids 99% of all potential problems.

  8. Thanks to the jacketed lead filled pro-jectile he will never do another thing wrong the rest of his life……isn’t that sweet.

  9. Hey, remember when tbe little girl on the back seat was kidnapped, then rescued by turning the carjacker’s skull into a chunky red stew?
    Then the hilarity ensued? Ahhh….good times.

    No bill the father for the homicide, then charge him with reckless endangerment for leaving the kid in a running vehicle. I hear in here on a near daily basis how if you take away guns, then felons, or the suicidal, or terrorists, or spree killers or whomever, will just find other means to achieve their aims. Vehicles are often cited as just such a potential weapon. Numerous specific instances of vehicles used as weapons are readily proffered.

    I agree. Sooooo….essentially this father left his kid alone with the equivalent of a loaded gun. Nail his butt to the wall.

      • “Jonathan Houston” used to post here as “2ASux”. he believes all victims of crime are at fault for their victimization and that non criminals need to be disarmed.

    • I hear in here on a near daily basis how if you take away guns, then felons, or the suicidal, or terrorists, or spree killers or whomever, will just find other means to achieve their aims.

      You have some of the most nonsense posts here, and th latest is over the top.

      You don’t need to “hear it here” that if you remove guns the same things happen to the suicidal or by the murderous — it is a stone cold fact. plenty of countries with no guns have bigger mass murders, more suicide etc .Are you denying the FACTS show that criminals or “suicidal” find other means?

      As far as minors in cars, and they don’t have to be running to be stolen with a kid in one.

      Your conflation of someone making a lapse in judgement with someone deciding to commit a major crime (and theft of a car is grand theft, a felony) means you are the type to blanket blame victims. Your comment is despicable.

  10. What a surprise. Some prick tried to steal a car full of kids, gets shot, and the dindu squad rolls into screech about how he was a good boy that didn’t deserve this.

    My heart bleeds peanut butter for you Terrence Wilson Jr… If you get reincarnated try not breakin’ the law ass-hole!

  12. Poor Terrence Wilson. He was just turning the car around, and now he’ll never have the opportunity the be the kind of thief he could have become.

    Clearly, he would have been a great getaway driver.

  14. Is the news station to cheap or to stupid to put the video up on digital scream vs. Actually video taping a monitor. Maybe I am just too picky. I saw several shadows as news staff walked around the news room floor. This seams lazy. Also, good for the dad putting this asshole 6 ft under.

  15. Methinks it does require a rocket surgeon to know you NEVER leave your vehicle running when you exit it. No medical degree required to know one NEVER, NARY EVEN A LITTLE BIT leave your children alone in a vehicle – PERIOD!!! Leaving it running also is pretty much a case for losing custody of your children!

    STUPID!
    STUPID!!
    STUPID!!!

    • Damn well maybe the gov shouldn’t be able to say who gets to keep custody of their kids… because unless the guy left them in there to go the bar for hours he didn’t do anything wrong.. the carjacker did now he’s dead… good job

    • More kids are kidnapped from unlocked homes. Should it be a crime to not have locks on every window or if you don;t to have any unlocked?

  16. Welp, he won’t be stealing any more cars.

    That said… putting your kid(s?) into that position… what a fool. He ended up having to choose between shooting into the vehicle with his child (or children) or watching them be kidnapped (from his point of view). Bullets do funny things when they hit hard surfaces like glass and bone. Could have ended up going from the bad guy into the kid. Or what if the thief’s foot ends up on the accelerator? So many what-ifs. And that doesn’t mean he made the wrong decision to shoot, but why did he let it get to that point?

    Because it was EASIER to not lock the door. The criminal is to blame but it won’t bring back your kid if your laziness lets them get killed. I hope he learned. Complacency kills, and it doesn’t always kill you.

    • That’s just their bias showing, and indeed, the headline ought to read: “Carjacking brought to just conclusion!”

  19. He had no problems…except for a habit of theft that graduated to carjacking.

    CCW’er probably saved a life by putting his worthless ass in the ground before he could work up to murder.

  20. This is in response to Former Water Walker’s comment to the effect that the shooter here is an “IDIOT” for leaving his vehicle as he did, running and unlocked. I expect there are other comments here to the same effect, as well as some critical of that view, as is the very next comment after Former’s. I am decidedly in the latter camp, find the view typified by Former’s comment repellent and somewhat arrogant.

    Yes, there’s risk in what he did. But he was parked at the door of the shop, and evidently going to be in sight of the van. Very few vehicles can be locked with the engine (A/C) on. Locking it for a minute would be better, but we all have the fear of someone seeing children inside and calling the police and/or breaking a window. Busybodies who don’t know you just left and are going to be back in seconds. You could lose your children for this. So you leave it running, even though you can’t lock it. The alternative was to find the nearest legal parking, take the girl(s) out of their car seats, and go to the shop with them. Maybe life happened, he had other duties, was running late, etc. and so elected not to have life grind to a halt while he picked up his son.

    The shooter does something debatable, makes an on-the-fly real-time decision that is arguably incorrect – as most real-life decisions in fact are, finds himself in a sticky legal situation, often arrested and in jail, or in a recent “warning shot” case in GA, in jail for life, and these people like Former come pouring out of the woodwork gleefully calling the guy an “IDIOT” who deserves whatever trouble he gets simply for being so stupid. I am needing a name for such people, or for such an attitude. Something more cutting than know-it-all. Ideas, anyone?

    • Of late ‘Armchair Commando’ has been popular, with its overtones of armchair quarterback coupled to chairborn warrior it seems to have the proper snark and imagery. The term seems custom made for those who, making up for lack of context with 20 20 hindsight, condemn the decisions of others when such result in undesirable conclusions.

      Armchair Commandos seem to specialize in the judgement of others, presumably to make use of their unfortunate circumstances for self aggrandizement. That is, at least where the armchair commando is being duplicitous, for there are other types; those so paranoid that they truly do wonder what fool would sally forth sans armor and long gun, and those who are unable to envision that all circumstances and environments are not those with which they are familiar.

      One type typically infects the inexperienced, attempting to cloak themselves in tough talk and psudo-wisdom, while another, darker version is typically the province of older men, who ought to know better, but who hold their own manhood cheap, with their internal fear, having not acquitted themselves in extremis, and thus forever afraid they would not, come the worst, go about acting outwardly as the sage of war, bearing such as both shield to their honor, and salve for their ego.

      Combat and tactics are a bit like religion: you don’t need to know much about either to have an opinion, and since neither can be proved without inviting death, no one’s opinion about either can be easily disproved. This opens the floor to anyone who wishes to engage, and as with most things, the result of needing no expertise or qualification to pontificate generates much noise and little substance.

      • “Combat and tactics are a bit like religion: you don’t need to know much about either to have an opinion, and since neither can be proved without inviting death, no one’s opinion about either can be easily disproved. This opens the floor to anyone who wishes to engage, and as with most things, the result of needing no expertise or qualification to pontificate generates much noise and little substance.”

        This, raised to infinity. And the Internet is an enabler that raises that result to infinity again.

    • self righteous.
      i’m good with judging and calling idiot. i’m an idiot everyday.
      your poor judgement allows you to take a life. high level stakes entrapment.

  23. It’s against the law in Florida to leave your child unattended in the car.
    Even for one second.
    You have to take the child with you when you leave the car.
    Even if it is inconvenient.
    That is a good law to follow.
    As this hero Dad found out

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