A burglar meets his end

Today's Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger carries a story today entitled, "Homeowner kills intruder." This is a classic situation you hear about in endless hypotheticals, but rarely ever see an actual news article about it happening. Christopher Stiff, 31, broke into the home of 53-year-old Tommy Christian, who shot him. Stiff died at the hospital.

But after reading the story, I kept wondering about it. For one thing, it says that it's the second fatal shooting of a burglar within the last couple of months in Jackson. The police apparently saw both of them as justifiable self-defense, which based on the facts in the article, they were. The relevant provisions of Mississippi law are cited. A Jackson police official said of the Christian-Stiff case, "You have the right to protect yourself and your property."

Yet there are several questions that occur to me that are not answered in the article. (Christian and his attorney refused the reporter's request for comment.) Was the intruder armed? Was he on drugs at the time? (He was busted lasted week on "drug charges".) Did the shooter and the burglar know each other? Did the shooter have any previous history of violence or a police record? Were the entry wounds on the burglar's front or back? What time of day did the shooting take place? What were the races of the shooter and the burglar? Were other people in the house? Were there witnesses?

The article says the burglar was shot twice, once in the leg and once in the abdomen. For the person defending against an intruder, shooting for the abdomen makes sense, because the defender can't assume he's going to have more than one shot. But what's with the leg wound? If he was wounded in the leg, why shoot him in the abdomen? And vice versa?

Maybe I've just watched too many episodes of Law and Order. But I just wonder if the facts in this case are quite as clear-cut as the article gives us to believe. One of Christian's neighbors responded more like a character on television than someone who was thinking about a killing just having occurred in the neighborhood, "If they come up on me, I will shoot every bullet in there. I would have done the same thing if I would have gotten to my gun. Something's got to be done about this crime. It ain't just Jackson. It's national."

Tags: authoritarianism, mississippi