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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Homeowner not likely to face charges in shooting |
| 2007-06-12 |
| The man who shot and killed an intruder in his Tech Terrace home over the weekend will most likely not be charged with any crime, the district attorney said Monday. Charles Mire shot Ross Baker inside Mire's home in the 3000 block of 24th Street about 3:35 a.m. Saturday. Mire, 43, told authorities he feared for his and his family's safety when Baker entered the home and set off an alarm, according to Lubbock police reports. Lubbock County Criminal District Attorney Matt Powell said the law allows a person to use deadly force if they fear injury or death. "Finding a stranger in your home at that time in the morning - that's about as scary as it gets," Powell said. Friends of Baker say that the 23-year-old Texas Tech engineering major must have been lost or disoriented when he entered Mire's home. Baker had recently moved into a home four blocks from the Mire residence in the Tech Terrace neighborhood. Marcus Davis, Baker's roommate, said Monday that Baker was not the criminal type. "He didn't have any enemies," Davis said. "Everybody he met loved him. He would never hurt anybody." Police say Baker entered the house through an unlocked side door. Baker, who grew up in Weatherford, doesn't have a criminal history in Lubbock, according to police records. Toxicology tests are still pending to determine if Baker was under the influence of drugs or alcohol when Mire shot him in the stomach with a 9mm pistol, according to police. Prior to firing the fatal shot, Mire ordered Baker to surrender several times and fired a warning shot, according to police. The district attorney's office will make a final determination in the case after the police hand over all the details of the shooting, including the toxicology report. The shooting comes three months after Gov. Rick Perry signed into law a bill that gives Texans a stronger legal right to defend themselves in their homes, cars and workplaces. The bill, backed by the National Rifle Association, states that a person has no duty to retreat from an intruder before using deadly force and provides civil immunity for a person who lawfully uses it. There have been several recent incidents here in which younger people especially just did not seem to take deadly force seriously. We had a weird one recently with an IT contractor from Iowa who was working out of his truck on the dock of my warehouse. We have video and audio monitoring of the area. As confirmed by the playback, our uniformed and armed security guard approached the back of the truck and simply said "hello." The IT contractor, who was a few feet inside and facing the other direction, turned and yelled, "that's a good way to get a knife through your chest!" The startled guard, a very tough and imperturbable type, answered, "Oh? How's that?" He was giving the fool a chance to back down from a terroristic threat charge by saying he wasn't serious, but the fool didn't bite. Instead, the moron jumped down into the guard's face, made a motion toward his pocket and then a throwing motion and said, "Like that!" The guard retreated about 10 feet and started to call the police. The IT idiot yelled, laughing, "You can't arrest someone for that!" and lunged toward the guard, knocking the phone out of his hand. Before it was over, the guard had kicked the idiot's ass, the local police had added an additional ass-kicking and a trip to jail, and the inmates there probably added their own greetings, skinny midwestern geeks being something of a novelty in the Lubbock County lockup. Uniformed security guards in Texas are licensed by the Department of Public Safety and have the same protection from threats and violence as police officers. Assault or threaten one and he might as well be a Texas Ranger. The IT fool is looking at ten years of hard time for assault and terroristic threats. If it is up to me, and it just might be, this asshole won't see the free world again until 2017. ALL employees and representatives of his company are banned from our property until Doomsday and their contract is null and void under the gross misconduct clause. |
| Posted by:Atomic Conspiracy |
| #1 Someone in the house is scary enough, someone ignoring surrender demands while you point a gun at them and ignores a warning shot, that's definately fear for your life. It doesn't matter if the guy in your house was drunk or stoned either, cause if he's that out of it, he certainly can be considered a serious danger to you and your family. |
| Posted by: Silentbrick 2007-06-12 17:19 |