The homeowner who fatally shot a 20-year-old University of South Carolina student who tried to enter the wrong home on the street he lived on Saturday morning will not face charges because the incident was deemed “a justifiable homicide” under state law, Columbia police announced Wednesday.
Police said the identity of the homeowner who fired the gunshot that killed Nicholas Donofrio shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday will not be released because the police department and the Fifth Circuit Solicitor’s Office determined his actions were justified under the state’s controversial “castle doctrine” law, which holds that people can act in self-defense towards “intruders and attackers without fear of prosecution or civil action for acting in defense of themselves and others.”
A college student gets drunk and makes a mistake, and you gleefully execute him for being an “idiot”. He doesn’t get a trial by a jury of his peers. He doesn’t get to explain his story. A frightened home-owner hopped up on adrenaline and his righteous belief he can blow away anyone who scares him just executes him on the spot. That’s a terrible system of justice.
Americans are nuts.
Makes a mistake? That’s one hell of a mistake, he was litterally breaking and entering. Just because he was drunk is he no longer responsible for his actions? He chose to go get shitfaced and then he went and tried to break into a home when the residents were home in a castle doctrine state. The only more reliable method of getting shot that I can think of is walking around the woods in a deer costume durring hunting season.
Also how about we stop victim blaming the home owner here. Yes it would have been better if the guy had lived. There’s no question there. But the residents did exactly what they should have with the information they had at their disposal. They called the cops first but, when the dude broke the window and it became aparent that the police would not get there in time, they did what they needed to do to protect themselves while minimizing the chance of them being harmed. Letting a clearly agitated and potentially armed assailant actually enter their home just on the off chance that assailant was actually friendly would have been beyond stupid. The homeowner not mag dumping on the guy actually shows far more restraint than we typically even see from our police.