Home Invasion, tragic consequences

Sad situation as reported. But reports are often only an outline.

I must admit I'm thinking 6 guys don't go in cahoots to one house unless they think the six way split is going to make it worthwhile. And I'm thinking unless the house was way more ostentatious than the surrounding houses, they thought there were drugs or drug money there.

The age range of the suspects (46 to 19) do look to take it out of the gang-related area.
 
"gang related"

Just trying to clear up an earlier comment about this not being gang related.

If someone were to collect crime statistics/murders in a given city it might change the picture if all of them occurred between rival gang members or if they were all gang members preying on regular citizens. Or previously unaffiliated people committing crimes by preying on citizens.

So I think the idea behind the comment was to lean away from the thought that the parents or children were in a gang, put themselves at risk, and "had it coming anyway". The home invasion seems to have been unprovoked.

It's noteworthy the different mind set of those 6 men. Who knows if they were surprised/startled - that could be a deceptive thing to say to the press rather than "we decided to shoot anyone inside". So the responsible citizen has some decisions to make first before he/she pulls the trigger.

It's a terrible thing that happened. I wish it did turn out differently but the confusion the young man caused may have spared his sister great harm.

So here's food for thought: If your children are teens or younger, what do you teach them to do? What access do you allow them to firearms?
 
This hits close to home for me. One of my co-workers recently had a very near home invasion. Only his thirteen-year-old son was home. The two would-be invaders nearly kicked in the front door and the teen (unarmed) called 911. He yelled at the men that he had 911 on the phone and they eventually fled. I wonder, as does my co-worker, what would have happened had the bad guys not left the scene. To this day my co-worker has not taught his son how to use a defense firearm nor does he keep one handy in the home. He tries to never let his son be alone again... and he did buy his older daughters defense pistols. All this seems strange to me since my co-worker is ALL FOR home defense with firearms.
 
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1. Be very careful if you decide to investigate bumps in the night;

2) While it is statistically less likely for "nice families" to become the victims of home invasions, it does happen;

3) Had the boy been armed with a 5-shot snubbie, he would likely not have had enough rounds to deal with the apparent number of BG's.
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Re: 2 OK, just what is to be learned from this "lesson"?

If you have intruders in your home when the statistics say it's unlikely, how does this "lesson" do one single thing to deal with the problem? I think learning this "lesson" is only likely to make MORE people LESS prepared to deal with it when you have folks saying it isn't likely to happen to them.

Were all the intruders armed with a deadly weapon? When you speculate that something might have happened if, there's no "lesson" there, either. Just a board member posting his thoughts we re: to what might have happened IF.

Not suggesting that a 5 shot revolver is the best HD gun, but lessons are learned from actual events and the dead young man was armed with nothing with which to defend his life.

It's easy to see that a home owner with a revolver, facing multiple assailants, could could have fought his way back to safety. No lesson here, either. Just a possibility.

Real lessons:

1. leave the house and call the police from a neighbor's instead of investigating. Or get out of the house to use your cell phone, if you can't.

2. When you hear gunfire after a loved one has gone to investigate unarmed, leave the house and go get help, or at least get to safety before you use your cell phone.

Sorry to be a little hard on you for expressing an opinion, but there's a distinction between real lessons and speculation.:cool:
 
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Thirteen??

I have grandkids around that age. I would not be teaching SD to them. I have met other 13 YO's who would be mature enough. Many are not.
 
the best thing for me has been to have defence barriers in place, good dead bolt locks on all doors used for entry.front and back doors,celler door under bayshores is drop barred. and a hundred pound chow that is very vocal, i think i,ll get a alarm that will sound off in the house when some thing is on the porch. and i do keep loaded firearms in my house. eastbank.
 
Nnobby45, when number of bad guys = N, and number of rounds = N-1, it's not a good start.

It might have been enough to scare them off. That is speculation.

If it hadn't scared them off, it would have offered too few rounds. That isn't speculation.

And my point about nice families and nice neighborhoods was that statistics don't comfort one much when one is becoming the statistic, and sometimes nice people in nice neighborhoods do indeed become the statistics.
 
I'll admit it was an exaggeration to imply that the copious number of pawn shops was due to stolen goods being actively fenced through the shops-
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And there it is.

Nnobby45, when number of bad guys = N, and number of rounds = N-1, it's not a good start.

It might have been enough to scare them off. That is speculation.

If it hadn't scared them off, it would have offered too few rounds. That isn't speculation.
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You are certainly right in that not having enough ammo for the number of bad guys isn't a good way to start off a confrontation and that if having a gun would have been enough is speculation. However, it is that speculation that is promoted extensively by those citing Kleck's 2.5 million defensive uses of guns each year, more than 6800 times a day. After all, it is only in a small percentage of those 2.5 million purported events that guns are fired in self defense.

However, this is one of those cases where simply being present was enough to drive the criminals away. Of course if Nicholas had been armed with a gun, I am sure the gun would have been noted as the reason for the robbers taking flight, but that wasn't the case here at all. As noted in the OP, we don't know how many of the six criminals Nicholas actually encountered, but as Nicholas' father noted, they appear to have been startled by Nicholas and retreating at the time of the shooting and did not remain after the shooting.

Whether a 5 shot revolver would have been enough if it didn't scare them off is also speculative. As noted in the OP, we don't know how many bad guys actually were in the house during the event. Six were arrested, but that doesn't mean six were in the house or that six were encountered by Jackson.

With that said, the robbers were driven away by their encounter with Jackson and he wasn't armed. They did all the shooting.
 
DNS, I agree with that last post.

The BG's left without the victim having or using a gun, so no gun was enough... in a way.

And for all we know, five of the six were lookouts or drivers or fences.

And the vast majority of defensive uses of firearms result in no shots fired.

But on the conservative side, I'd prefer to have the option of more ammunition, in case there actually are multiple BG's and they don't run. As noted, more ammo isn't helpful if one makes oneself an easy target for multiple shooters; solid tactics are required.

But tactics have to be truly stellar, if one lacks adequate ammunition.
 
exaggeration

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FYI:

http://timesfreepress.com/news/2011/...iend-indicted/ [timesfreepress.com]

http://timesfreepress.com/news/2011/...ng-into-homes/ [timesfreepress.com]
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I see what you mean about exaggeration. You have one article about a single robber who sold items at gun shows and pawn shops and another article that mentions the pawn detail doing their job during the Christmas holidays. It says that for the entire year of 2010, law enforcement only cleared 11% of burglary cases in total using their vast resources of investigation and mentions that on the occasion that something does turn up in a pawn shop that it is a big break in the case. In other words, they aren't clearing very many burglaries via pawn shops. They don't get very many big breaks.
 
Nnobby45, when number of bad guys = N, and number of rounds = N-1, it's not a good start.

It might have been enough to scare them off. That is speculation.

If it hadn't scared them off, it would have offered too few rounds. That isn't speculation.

And my point about nice families and nice neighborhoods was that statistics don't comfort one much when one is becoming the statistic, and sometimes nice people in nice neighborhoods do indeed become the statistics
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Don't disagree with you. We can't know what may have happened if he'd been armed with 5 shots. However, we can say with absolute certainly what happened to him when he wasn't.

Maybe the best lesson of all is that home invasions happen to people even though the odds say they won't. Somewhat enigmatic, considering that home invasions will happen to SOME people (even in "nice" neighborhoods) with 100% certainly.

And, of course, there are always those who believe in the Wildebeast theory that plays the odds and says the Lions will have somebody else for dinner.
 
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1 thought.

A nice house in a nice neighborhood. The young man in that family felt safe in his home. And the parents felt safe enough that they didn't quite feel the need to go over a plan of action with their children. I have conflicting thoughts here because on one hand it's important for children to know they have a safe stable environment. Maybe in the teenage years (more likely to be left alone) the children could handle a plan of action but too early and they might always be on edge. Part of me wants to make this a parenting issue but really it's the perps.

Not following along with the whole pawn shop debate but I will say this: what do you think happens when a robber finds he can't sell the stolen goods for cash? - I can only guess that it's useless in his/her eyes and the hard earned property is now trash.
 
Ether way my M4 would make a good account of myself,and no famliy member hurt after the exchange of fire.except for myself rest of the family would be in back bedroom with a 1187 & a 870 pointed at the door calling 911 yeah i know i wouldn`t win but its unlikely that group of attackers.would be brave enough to go threw the house after such a battle and some of them wouldn`t be able to!HOGSHOOTER
 
Considering we don't have the whole picture here there's no way of knowing how it would have played out if the boy was armed or not. Did he walk right into a room surrounded by the criminals? It's more likely when he reached the top of the steps he saw them through a door. Not all the bad guys would be able to engage him at the same time through the choke point (the doorway). We all the criminals armed? We don't know, but even if they were if the boy opened fire they may return fire or try to flee out the window realizing their victim isn't helpless. I'm guessing most criminals want to live to rob another day. Either way, there's absolutely no way of telling how this may have played out.
 
I have been mugged twice in NJ many years ago, both times I believe I was just an opportunistic target. Turned out I had about $40 in wallet both times and thats all that was taken. in 1989 my mum and I were home when we had a night home invasion by 8 guys. Guess what? Inside job, my parents had recently withdrawn a large some of money to pay for work done at the home. One of the guys who was to be paid planned and directed the whole thing. I had a crossbow but had that taken from me by one of the perps. No I could have taken him out, but my mum yelled at me to stop and hand it to the guy. Smart move on her part they left us unharmed took all the loot with them. The Judas guy came over in the morning to console us, and my dad got suspicious alerted one of the investigating officers of his suspicions about the guy's odd behavior. He ratted out his partners when they took him downtown for questioning, and he quickly wanted to strike a deal for himself.

Moral of the story really is 6 guys? They knew what was at the home they were after and it was worth it to them. Second lesson is were it not for my mum's quick thinking, we probably would have wound up 6 feet under. She figured delivering a cross bow bolt to one of the sap's chests would have only guaranteed we got killed. My blood and raging hormones said fight though. But what would I have done against 8 armed men. They all had large hatchets and daggers. I am sure I'd have taken out one, but can only imagine what would have happened next. The other thing is we were the ones who were surprised. I probably surprised them with the crossbow, but it had no effect on them. None. Looking back am glad I cooperated with their instructions and demands.

Now I live alone and they'd have to kill me because I'd just open fire and pray. Thing is we also didn't know if co-operating would have made them leave us unharmed. Its just the way they reacted to our co-operation. Sometimes you just make the task easier though. Hard to say what you would do until you are in the situation yourself. Time just slows down and events unfold in slowmo. Its crazy, and you revert to pure instincts not any real reasoned options.
 
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