Somewhat related to the post yesterday about the 3 AM intruder and the homeowner's dilemma, this story out of Texas raises issues of how much a citizen can lawfully do when victimized by criminals.
In this case, though, a four-year-old child was the victim and the criminal, caught in the act, is no longer alive.
'He Got What He Deserved', says the headline on The Blaze. I can't imagine any decent person arguing with that headline, but on the CNN website, where I first saw the story, there were some people objecting to the father's action.
Would any of us act differently in such a situation? I can't imagine any healthy parent being other than outraged and furious. I cannot conceive of anybody behaving coolly and objectively in a scenario like this.
This incident took place in Shiner, Texas, a town with which I'm familiar, and I am not surprised that most of the townspeople quoted in the article thought that the father did what he needed to do.
Shiner is in South central Texas, and it is a town originally settled by German immigrants, as are several of the towns in that part of the state. It is also known as the home of Shiner Beer, thanks to the German founders of the town.
Someone on the comment thread speculates about the ethnicity or race of the criminal (oops -- should I say 'suspect'? Or 'alleged perpetrator', as the liberals insist?) and someone else answers that the perpetrator is unlikely to be black, because in that part of Texas, you are Anglo or Mexican -- or in the case of Shiner, German-Texan. However in the common parlance Germans are Anglos, loosely speaking.
The deviant may have been a hard-working individual who just came to Shiner for a better life, shall we say. But no information has been released as of now.
So was the Dad right or wrong? Technically speaking, he may have been guilty of breaking some law, but how would a normal person react in such a horrible situation? The problem with letting our 'justice' system take its course is that if that had been allowed to happen, the attacker would be coddled by the system, provided with free legal help and the family would be forced to re-live the troubling events during the trial. All the while, the usual suspects try to gin up sympathy for the wrongdoer, who would be described as a 'troubled individual' with an 'illness' or disorder. He would then, at best, be sentenced to years of confinement and 'treatment' at taxpayers' expense, while expensive appeals followed one after the other. And there is always the possibilty of acquittal on a technicality, or an escape. Texas has seen cases of violent criminals escaping from jail or prison only to kill or harm other innocent people.
Lefties always cry about how our justice system is unfair and biased. It is, in favor of wrongdoers.
Maybe it worked well, our system of law and order, when we were all a homogeneous people with a common set of moral and ethical standards. Now, it's a travesty.
Was this 'vigilante' justice? It seems to me to have been simply a man acting on very normal feelings of outrage, justified anger, and a desire to protect his child. Now let's see if the bleeding hearts are able to work up any sympathy for him, as they do for the worst criminals among us.
