Posted on 08/30/2011 12:32:28 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- San Diego police say a boy throwing rocks at vehicles was struck in the abdomen by a crossbow bolt fired by a passenger in small sport utility vehicle.
Officer Dino Delimitros says the boy and a friend were throwing rocks in the Linda Vista neighborhood Monday afternoon when a passenger in a black Toyota RAV4 pulled out a crossbow and fired.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
It was a bolt of smarten up he got at a young age which might help him survive until old age. I am glad he and his pal survived their misadventure.
Her father rushed her to the nearest hospital where doctors saved her life. Later she underwent a series of painful operations to put her face back into something resembling normal.
As far as I know the police never found the perp but it wasn't through lack of trying... everyone in the area wanted his blood. He should have been whipped to death for what he did.
Yep, I remember right there by Forest Park.
As far as the crossbow, that’s not what I would have resorted to. It’s still an assault first degree and not worth a lifetime of prison over.
Having said that, I would relish the look on the kids face when I pulled the badge and bracelets out.
You can hit gallon milk jug at about 20 yards. Penetration is iffy (one bolt will go through a 1/4 plywood and the next bolt bounce off), because the bolts are not that stable.
It is a lot of fun to shoot.
The only downside is that it takes two people to string the bow (50Lb pull and the bow is less than 15 inches long)
YOU may have thrown rocks at cars going 60+ mph on the highway, but don’t attempt to assign that experience to other posters here.
Most people here were raised well enough to understand that throwing rocks at cars could easily cause the death of the driver (or any passengers in the vehicle.)
Seriously. It seems like a lot of folks here are conflicted by this one, or at least have to caveat their support. It sounds like someone got a wakeup call. Hopefully he will heed it.
When I was a brain-dead youth, it never occurred to me to throw rocks at cars BUT my farm buds and I used to play an even more dangerous game. We'd sneak out late at night with a million candle-power spotlight and set up to the side of a blind curve or hilltop crossroads. When a car would come we'd pop up from cover and spot the driver right in the eyes. We had a good laugh when they'd scream and cuss and swerve all over the place. Then we'd move to a different spot and do it again.
By grace of God alone, none of our victims wrecked out. There were a couple near-misses, though.
This got to be a habit with us. So much so that we went out one night after a blizzard. The road was down to one lane. The first guy we "zapped" ran off into a snowbank. We thought it was great fun until he popped out with a rifle and drew down on us. We ditched the light and took off running like mad. I don't know if he fired (he was surely blind as a bat at that moment anyway). We were crashing through brush and making a massive racket. We broke into an open field and kept running. In our haste we forgot there was a fence ahead and we both hit it running flat-out. The next day we had a lot of 'splaining to do: what happened to dad's light and why were we both limping and what the heck gave us those cuts and bruises?? I don't recall the cock-and-bull story we spun, but we NEVER even discussed doing that stunt again. Looking back, I think we got off really light.
Custer wore an Arrow shirt at the battle of Little Big Horn.
;)
There is room for conflict.
On the one hand, this is a deadly assault.
On the other, once you stop your car, it is unlikely the perp can lob another one far enough, and any follow up assault is likely not to constitute deadly force. So the threat is essentially over.
This makes firing at them, or running up the hill and beating the snot out of them more like retaliation than defense. Now, the latter needs to occur, to keep them from assaulting someone else, and in some states, you are justified in using deadly force to prevent a felony or defend someone else from using deadly force - but it would be a hard argument unless you can show that you waited for them to try to drop it on someone else before dropping them.
Now shooting from a bridge is another story altogether.
Also, note that at least one iteration of the story does not sound as though the shooter turned and fired in reaction, but perhaps chased the thrower down later.
Of course, he is not around to tell his side of the story, and the “kid” has a vested interest in telling his.
See post 40.
Is such a shooting legal self-defense anyplace?
I personally wouldn't. However, if I had kids or a wife, and someone threw a rock at my vehicle when I am driving, that person had better run very very fast because, to me, that person just attempted serious harm. I saw some guys some months back driving on the wrong side of the road for fun ending up hitting an oncoming car. If it was my car, and I had my family in it, that person is dead unless they can (very quickly) tell me why they were doing that (acceptable responses include rushing someone to hospital etc - silence or 'just for fun' are not acceptable). Same thing about rocks - if I catch the person I will have the presence of mind (for a few short seconds) to ask him why he was throwing rocks at my car. The answer better be good and quick. Oh, and I do not consider a 16 year old a kid.
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