Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Joe Horn Cleared Of Charges;
Another Second Amendment Victory!
A grand jury here Monday cleared a Pasadena, Texas, man in the shooting deaths of two suspected burglars as they left his neighbor's house -- a case that stirred a national debate over whether he was a vigilante or a hero.
Joe Horn, 62, shot the men on Nov. 14 after he called authorities and declared his intention to open fire on the suspects with his 12-gauge shotgun.
The 911 audiotape captured multiple warnings by the dispatcher, asking Horn to stay inside and telling him that "property's not worth killing someone over." However, Horn grew agitated because the men looked to be getting away before police arrived. As the tape rolled, Horn went outside, shouted "Move, you're dead!" and fired his weapon.
The incident in Pasadena, a city of about 140,000 east of downtown Houston, outraged some activists, who staged protests in the neighborhood.
They argued that if Horn -- who was not arrested -- were not white and his victims not dark-skinned, he would have been taken to jail immediately. [Ah, the race card was played. Who could have guessed? - Drake]
The controversy grew when authorities disclosed that the shooting victims, Diego Ortiz, 30, and Hernando Riascos Torres, 38, were illegal immigrants from Colombia.
"Joe would be the first to tell you that he wasn't acting as a vigilante," Horn's attorney, Tom Lambright, said outside the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, where Horn testified before a grand jury for 40 minutes last week. "He wishes these individuals had found a different line of work so that he wouldn't have gotten caught up in this whole fiasco."
[...]
...a plainclothes detective who witnessed some of what took place later told investigators that the men did not stop when a visibly nervous Horn pointed a shotgun in their direction, and that at least one man appeared to be moving toward Horn when Horn fired.
The burglars - ahem, the illegal aliens who were criminals had massive injuries. The Houston Chronicle:
The two burglars who were fatally shot by Joe Horn outside his Pasadena home were struck in the back, shoulders and arms by buckshot, according to autopsy results released to the public this morning by the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office.
[...]
A Harris County grand jury on Monday decided the 62-year-old retiree should not face criminal charges for the Nov. 14 shooting of Diego Ortiz, 30, and Hernando Riascos Torres, 38.
The buckshot hit Ortiz in the back of both shoulders and elsewhere on the left side of his back, according to his autopsy. The pellets penetrated his left lung, heart, spleen, aortic root, left jugular vein and other areas, the Medical Examiner's Office reported.
The pellets exited his body in his left upper chest, the left side of his neck and his left shoulder.
Torres had buckshot wounds in the left lateral chest and posterolateral torso, left posterior arm and other areas.
The pellets injured his spleen, transverse colon, left lung, heart and left wrist.
Well, Mr. Ortiz and Mr. Torres would be alive today had they decided not to become criminals now, wouldn't they? Ortiz and Torres learned the hard way, didn't they? And that is the moral of the story.
Let's be clear on this, buckshot don't give a fuck what color you are!!!
If you break into a house you might get shot...hmmm who knew?
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