Fatal shooting of University of South Carolina student who tried to enter wrong home 'justifiable,' police say

Donofrio repeatedly knocked, banged and kicked on the front door "while manipulating the door handle" while trying to enter the home.

Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door "and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob"

Yeah, that's more than just trying to walk into the wrong house when you're blackout drunk, so I can see why they would consider it justified. But that's the word of the police, so we'll see if a different story comes out later.

We'll only ever hear one side of this story because the other witness is dead.
- No, they have physical evidence, audio evidence which probably means camera or video doorbell and the kid died on the front porch of someone else's house. Seems like the story told itself. The simple explanation is he tried breaking into the wrong house thinking it was his own.
  Not saying he deserved to die over his mistake, it's tragic and sad that the situation occurred.
  Editing to add this from the article:
  "evidence gathered at the scene, review of surveillance video that captures moments before the shooting, audio evidence, and witness statements."
- What would the other side of the story be? That he was breaking into his own house, but that the gun was fired from someone that had already broken into his own house and was wrongfully residing there? The facts are pretty basic here.
Yikes. This is terrifying.
I feel bad for the owner who had to make a split second decision on what to do.
Because not much difference between rowdy drunk kid and a mentally deranged person. And making the wrong choice could mean your whole family is in danger.
- 20 years old is an grown man, not a kid.
  Hard to imagine I'd not do the same thing if that happened to my house with my family home.
Before you get to the point of destroying your own property, you should have already double checked which unit you're at, whether a family member has a spare key, or whether someone you know can let you stay the night so you can call a locksmith in the morning. It's entirely reasonable for someone inside to think that it's an attempted break-in, so even if the guy just made a really bad choice that ended in tragedy, I don't blame the shooter for thinking it was a robbery, and not wanting to risk the supposed robber having a weapon. It's not an easy choice to make in that situation.
When I was in college I had this happen multiple times. In different apartments but they all looked similar.
Even had one dude peeing on the floor in my bathroom because I roommate was next door and didn’t lock the door. Dude was in the right apartment number, just off one building.
Even had a couple get aggressive and try to fight me.
Still, never shot anyone over it (and I was and am a gun owner. )
- Don't you think it might've been different if it was your own home (instead of a rented dorm/apartment), and instead of roommates you had a wife and possibly other family members in the home?
It doesn't say if the people in the home ever told him to stop. Did he know there were people in there? If he did, why did he break the window?
- He thought he was locked out of his home I'm sure.
Ouch. Yep, that's justifiable homicide
- Not in my state. No deadly threat, no clear intent to commit a felony. Breaking in is not enough for precisely this reason: the person entering may have a mistaken claim of right.

Oh shit something very similar to this happened to my mom once. She’s an older woman who lives alone and terrified of everything. Yes, she owns a gun.

One night ~ 2-3 am a man knocked on her door and demanded to be let in. She’s terrified, grabs the gun. He moved around to different doors, knocking and banging and yelling to be let in. He started shaking the door handles. My mom called 911 and was hiding in a bathroom. They asked her to just wait, police were on the way.

Finally she goes out, sees the guy at a window, and pointed the gun at him…but the gun has a laser pointer when you squeeze the handle. So she screamed back that the red dot on his chest was about to be where she was going to shoot him.

He ran off. Police show up, say they found the kid - 20 - drunkenly stumbling around the neighborhood. The bar had just closed and he thought he was at his friend’s house. A week later he sent her a $20 gift card to a local restaurant with a note that said “Thank you for not shooting me.”

The cops said if she had shot him, she would have been legally within her rights.

Agree or disagree with any or all of this, I’m sorry for the family of the person who was killed. It’s just a terrible situation all around.

While the woman was on the phone with police, Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door "and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob," at which point the male resident fired the shot through the broken window, striking Donofrio in his upper body, police said.
The headline made me instantly rage (as intended). Reading the article made me reconsider. The real answer is to not have guns in the hands of the public. But then only criminals will have guns. Stfu.
- Did you just tell yourself to STFU?
- If the public wasn't allowed to have guns and this guy did turn out to be a home invader, what would you say then?
- Look at that 100%justified use. If only it legal to defend yourself where I live like this. That would be great.

Relevant:

According to previously unreported details that police released about the incident Wednesday, Donofrio repeatedly knocked, banged and kicked on the front door "while manipulating the door handle" while trying to enter the home.
A female resident of the home called 911 as Donofrio kicked the door, while a male resident went to retrieve a firearm elsewhere in the home, the news release states. The homeowner owned the gun legally, “for the purpose of personal and home protection,” according to police.
While the woman was on the phone with police, Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door "and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob," at which point the male resident fired the shot through the broken window that struck Donofrio in his upper body, according to police.

Under those circumstances, I don't blame the homeowner for using a gun to defend himself and the other female resident. This guy was literally breaking into their home. If it had been me, I would have been terrified and very thankful to have a gun on hand for defense. I'm sure a lot of people here will protest to the shooting, but I would urge them to really think about what they would have done in such a situation. I don't know what Donofrio's reasons were for trying to break into the home, but they hardly matter; the fact is, he did try, and the residents of the home had every reason to think they were in danger. If we had multi-shot stun guns that could reliably incapacitate an intruder, I'd say he should have used that rather than a lethal weapon, but current stun guns aren't that reliable and only fire once before needing to be reloaded. That a life was lost is sad, but I agree that no criminal charges should be filed in this instance. However, I'm not saying that I entirely agree with the Castle doctrine on which this is based, as I'm not intimately familiar with it, but the general notion of being able to use lethal force to defend oneself against a home intruder I do agree with on principle.

I do not agree with the castle doctrine. It's too easily used to justify lethal force when retreat is an option, however self-defense is a valid justification and from the description given I think that's completely plausible. An unknown person breaking the glass and potentially armed could be a threat. It sucks that a guy who possibly did nothing wrong has to defend himself in an investigation, but we should have a high bar on lethal actions for civilians and cops (the standard should be higher for cops).
- I actually don't hate castle doctrine tbh, which is commonly confused with the more controversial "stand your ground." I frankly do not see "a duty to retreat" from one's own occupied dwelling in the event of an intruder, in my opinion that duty dissipates the second forcible entry has been made to my home.
  The common thing I hear is "they usually just want your TV," but A) The best way to steal a TV is to push a cart, trust me, especially if you still have a 24hr walmart, and B) if you have to rob people of their TV who are also probably living paycheck to paycheck, at least have the common decency to not do so while they're home and scare the shit out of them. For all they know you could be a rapist or a murderer even if just out of opportunity or "no witnesses," even by accident with poor gun safety from robbers. Tbh it's hard for me to agree that some poor family should have to flee their own home or hide in a closet if someone else decides to enter it unlawfully.
- An unknown person breaking the glass and potentially armed could be a threat.
  That's a valid statement.
  It also demonstrates a wider problem: gun proliferation is so incredibly high that the default assumption is always going to be "that person might have a gun," and this will always prompt a much lowered threshold to use one's own gun in return.
I can’t tell, did they announce at all or just fired the moment he broke the window??
Surely this could have been avoided by asking questions first…. What the fuck
- Idk man, I'm liberal as hell and even I have problems with that line of logic. Man's smashing up their house, putting myself in the invadees shoes I'd be worried about warning the home invader(s) and making them use their weapons.
  I'm not saying I think everything is fine and dandy in this situation, mfs are using guns way to much in America. But since the occupants had a gun for self defense AND their home was being broken into, I find it hard to blame them for defending themselves.
- Could have been avoided? Maybe. But at some point the onus is on the person breaking into your house to...idk, not do that? Like there's a spectrum between what you can do, what you should do and what you have to do and asking some questions first is certainly something you can do. Maybe even something you should do, but protecting your family from someone who is breaking into your house is something you have to do. This isn't Ralph Yarl who got popped twice for standing on the porch, or those girls who were still in the car and backing out of someone's driveway when they got clipped. Dude tried to break into the house by kicking the door in, that didn't work, so he tried a different way of breaking into the house which would have worked had he been left to it.
  I'm usually pretty firmly against preemptive violence as self defense but this seems rather cut and dry to me. I would have done the exact same thing the homeowner did here, and I think that it's doubly good that the homeowner wasn't charged.
I agree with you, I do. It should be legal to protect your property. The problem is when you have a gun, everything looks like a shooting. If you didn't have a gun, how would you handle the situation? You could leave. You could lock yourself in an interior room and wait for the cops. You could fight them Kevin style. All of those options, at the end of the day, would give you a better chance of not killing somebody.
- It's not about protection of property to me. I don't care about that. I care about people having the right to use all reasonable options for defending themselves against violent attackers. And to your point, might this person's death have been avoided if the occupants of the home had fled or hid somewhere? Certainly. But should they be legally required to do so? No, not in my opinion. Reason being, I don't think the impetus should be on victims to take their attackers' well-being into account when it's the attackers that are creating the problem in the first place. Telling a person who is scared for their life that they need to fight the impulse coming from their amygdala to fight back against a violent attacker is totally unreasonable. If a person is coming at me with their fists and I have a gun, I don't think I should have to refrain from firing my weapon and take the hits my attacker is throwing, just to make sure he doesn't die. What if I die? What if I lose an eye or get my face scarred up? What if he takes my gun and shoots me? No. No, fuck that, if someone is attacking me, they've given me permission to defend myself in whatever way seems reasonable to me, and I'm not risking my own life or even just serious injury because someone else has anger management problems. They're the problem; they're the threat to society; if they die, yeah that sucks, but it's their fucking fault, not mine for defending myself against their violent behavior.
  I'm so sick of people having all this empathy for violent criminals, and way too little for their victims. You want to tell other people to react in a calm, collected, pacifist manner when they're being attacked, to risk their own lives and wellbeing for the sake of their attacker's? Tell you what, you get yourself attacked somehow when you're not expecting it and demonstrate how cool, calm, and pacifist you are under fire; you show the rest of us how easy that is. You do that, and maybe I'll consider what you have to say, but until then, you're just a hand-wringing, pearl-clutching bystander who has their priorities messed up and doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about.
- Those other options also put you at a greater potential for being harmed yourself. Your goal should always be to not get harmed
- You could fight them Kevin style...would give you a better chance of not killing somebody.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm53BnikXTI
The guy at the door was not an immediate threat to life or limb, save his own. Firing a gun was not justified without threat, IMO. But I guess in the USA you can murder people to save your property (not your life).
- Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door "and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob,"
  How much more "immediate" do you need? A complete stranger is trying to break into your home to do god knows what is the epitome of a clear and immediate danger to me.
  What would you have done? Opened the door and welcomed them in?

I love not living in america

It's glorious.
- The U.S. spends a tremendous amount of its energy on paranoia, checks and balances, and being remarkably resistant to large-scale changes of the status quo, particularly with respect to rights attendant to private property.
  In the current period of bullet trains, wind farms, and unisex bathrooms, it is incredibly inconvenient, even dangerous in its own right. It looks like an operating system bug, but only because it is holding up a feature that the real owners of America don't like advertised.
  There is a reason the dollar is still the global reserve currency- because the entire system was set up to make private property despot-and-revolution-resistant, and the smart money knows it.
  The world is heading into a major demographic shift that is going to hit everybody's social model like a brick through a plate glass window- too many pensioners and not enough taxpayers, and no one has built the roomba that cooks and cleans for grandma yet. We will get to watch a preview in China and Russia quite soon. The pitchforks are going to come out again, and politicians will blow with the wind.
  But if you own land/stuff in America, you will still own land/stuff in America.
  I'm not saying it is right, or just. It is simply some useful perspective on what such an awkward, irritating, distributed, recursive system might have been designed for, because it certainly wasn't designed for speed.
  The term "storm canvas" comes to mind, and with it a reminder to keep an eye to windward.
Just for curiosity's sake, if it was the middle of the night and someone started pounding on your front door and yelling, then tried to kick your door in, then broke your window, reached in and started trying to unlock your door from the inside, what's the civilized non-American response to that?
- You engage them in conversion, explain to them simply they are at the wrong house, and keep pushing that point
  Source: I had this situation happen to me at uni, explained to the side he had the wrong house, showed him the house number, and he calmly left.
- Phone the police, and then shout back asking what he wanted.
- Talk to the person
  Call the police and tell the person the police is coming
  Block the person from coming in
  If he comes in anyway use tools like baseball bat, hammer or kitchen knife to defend yourself
- You can bang on a reinforced steel door all you want until the police comes.
Amd we love not having you, too many imigrants already. If its so bad, why people keep trying to get in?
- But there's one thing in which America is homogenous - school and mass shootings.
We love not having you!
We love not having you
- We hate having these garbage laws to protect rooty tooty point and shooty more than our actual citizens
- Perfect.

Goddamn, the United States really is a shithole country, isn't it? It's obvious that shooting was the homeowner's first resort, because this was a drunk guy who thought that it was his own house. Any sign that it was not, like lights going on, or yelling, would have at least made him pause in confusion.

But yeah, Americans be like killing somebody before even issuing a threat is totally justified.

From the article, it's clear that their first resort was to call the police when he was banging and kicking on the door. The woman was on the phone with the police when he broke the window and attempted to open the door through the broken pane.
While the woman was on the phone with police, Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door "and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob," at which point the male resident fired the shot through the broken window, striking Donofrio in his upper body, police said.
- Hush, your ruining the narrative.
- Sounds like a justified shooting. If it were legal where iived I'd shoot at that point.
Drunk guy who broke the window trying to get in. Maybe it wasn't clear this person was probably harmless and they panicked. Not sure why the people asleep in their home world be expected to flash the lights or whatever you are thinking is a normal middle of the night response to someone breaking into your home.
IDK, I don't like guns for this exact reason. Too easy to end a life out of panic. But the drunk has the bulk of the responsibility here IMO.
I am sorry but .. if I am at home with my wife and kids and drunk stranger aggressively bangs and kicks the door, doesn't stop when asked, smashes a window and reaches in to get in - I will probably also have my gun ready if the police doesn't show up fast enough. Some people get super aggressive when drunk - some get confused and silly. There is definitely a difference.
Not American, I live in Europe. No I am not right wing.
- None of the articles I've seen have said whether the residents said anything before shooting. If they didn't, they absolutely should have.
- Yeah, because drunk, unarmed people are such a threat, that you have to just shoot him.
  As if in every other country we don't have drunks...
  Especially drunk people are mostly no threat. Even my grandma always said "oh, a drunk man has no strength"
  It kinda sounds hyped up and hysterical from the outside, to be honest
  Edit: ah, missed that you aren't from the US. but still, you would shoot a drunk guy, just because you feel threatened?
  There are so many possibilities to defend yourself, I can't see a gun to be necessary - or even justified
Wow. Just wow.
I'd type up something of substance but I know you can't read so it would clearly be a waste 🤦‍♂️
- You clearly are an idiot. I mean like you have zero understanding of anything other than cyberpunk paid expansions. You are a hate filled individual and you have only been here for 3 weeks? My lord are you alone? scared about who and what you are? A big sad fat turd?

Any other developed country and there wouldnt be a death involved.

Genuinely curious if you had someone smashing your window and trying to enter your house forcefully what your response would be.
- Phone the police and tell him to fuck off? Maybe hit their arm with a bat or something. If I was alone I could even just leave. Not immediately execute them.
- Well where I live there aren't nearly as many guns so the person breaking in would be less likely to have a deadly weapon and it would be a bit less risky to just call the police and hide, or comply with the (assumed) robber, or I'd feel like I'd have a better chance with using a blunt weapon like a bat to protect myself and drive them off, which would be less likely to kill someone. But where I live there are also a lot less robberies in general.
  Doesn't guarantee nobody would have died if the same thing happened in a place with less gun violence, but it might have reduced the chances. Even if people get into the same kinds of confrontations, if there aren't guns involved the chances of everyone surviving a violent encounter goes up by a significant percentage. Less guns in a country over-all means less chances for a conflict to have a gun involved.
- I dont have any guns so probly hiding and calling cops. But also I dont live in any other developed country, Im not blaming the homeowner for fearing for his life in the country with more guns than people. If we were somewhere else, not only would the homeowner not have a gun, anyone trying to break in would be much less likely to have one.
- probably depends on if guns are involved or not.
- I'd leave.
Going to call bullshit on that.
The drunk kid smashed a window and kicked the door repeatedly. This wasn't a quiet kid accidentally wandering into a room.
- Hard to shoot someone who's made an honest mistake when you don't have a gun...
- This is the US mentality. Yeah, kid was very dumb, kid was in the wrong. Kid should probably be arrested and spend some time in jail to learn his lesson. Nope, death penalty.
People are so damned anxious to use their damned guns
- They are. The amount of people who confidently say they'd shoot before attempting to communicate has me terrified; like they want a reason to escalate the situation.
Yeah, the states has the same accidents as anywhere else in the world, but they sprinkle a little gun into the mix.
I'm in a developing country and such things don't happen here. Some months back an upstairs neighbour of mine tried to enter into my house when i was inside. He was trying his key and then rang the doorbell and i opened it and he was very confused. Then he looked at my house and realised he was on the wrong floor, said sorry and went away. These things happen if all the apartments look the same. No one needs to die for such small blunders. What's more disturbing is the amount of people here justifying shooting the kid because he broke a window and was forcing his way inside. They don't realise they wouldn't have to fear other people so much if there were no guns available in the first place. I'm sure I'll get a lot of replies that gangsters don't obey rules and what not but isn't that the same in every other country without guns? Maybe Americans like to kill people a lot. No wonder their entire country runs off war and destruction.
- They don’t realise they wouldn’t have to fear other people so much if there were no guns available in the first place. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of replies that gangsters don’t obey rules and what not but isn’t that the same in every other country without guns?
  Home invasions happen in countries that have strict gun laws. I've lived in a bad apartment complex (one apartment was a trap house, a neighbor was stabbed on his way home from work, several vehicles were stolen and mine was vandalized), and a neighbor tried to get into my apartment late one night. I didn't own a gun at the time, but I absolutely would have stabbed him with a kitchen knife if he had broken a window and stuck his hand inside. Instead, I asked him if he was okay and explained that he was at the wrong apartment.
- In this case, the person was literally breaking into the house, broken window, reaching for the doorknob. The homeowner had every reason to think their home was being invaded. And given how violent crime can get in the states, unfortunately shooting first in such a situation does make logical sense.
  The situation sucks, but this case might be more on the system than the shooter.
- You don't need a gun to kill someone, it's creepy enougth to assume the intruder has 'just' a big knife
- That type of thing happens in the US as well. It doesn't ALWAYS end with a gun. I'd say most of the time it doesn't.
  This person broke a window though and was actively forcing themselves into the home. That's a pretty big difference from "trying a key and ringing the doorbell."
  It's always going to be a judgement call, for a different intruder theirs would've been the right call. It's not even about guns, there are knives, drugs, etc. They're all relevant and the kinds of people that are breaking windows can be dangerous.
  I forget all the details but a former neighbors son had an extremely traumatic experience when he was out with a trainee as a paramedic and a guy hopped up on some concoction of drugs incapacitated him (I think by throwing him against the wall) and then the dude spun around and beat the trainee's skull in with some object.
  Just because you haven't heard of it... doesn't mean it doesn't happen in your country, but I hope you're right. Idealistically you're definitely right, this sort of thing never should happen, but sometimes there's no good answer; you just do the best you can with the information and situation you're in.

- Eh, I could see someone getting drunk enough to get into the headspace to do that. You're drunk, you're at what you think is your house, but you can't get your key to open the door, so you just decide to break a window and deal with the fallout in the morning.
- I've been that drunk. I didn't manage to kill myself or induce anyone else to kill me, but it's really just sheer good fortune that it worked out that way.

If someone is breaking into your home, you should defend yourself and your family with whatever means is available. The amount of people here saying you should have a polite conversation or comply with the robber's demands (even if that demand is to harm you) is bizarre.

Its not bizarre. Its called reasonable force
- So, defending yourself is only valid once you're actually in the process of being killed? A bit too late at that point. Someone physically breaking into your home is a valid reason to use force in response.
~~No one was actually breaking into their home though. Literally nothing would have happened to that home owner if he had been less trigger-happy and tried to comminucate with the kid.~~
- Donofrio repeatedly knocked, banged and kicked on the front door "while manipulating the door handle" while trying to enter the home.
  Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door "and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob"
- He broke the glass and tried to open the door from the inside. If I were inside that house, I'd certainly feel threatened.
- But he literally broke a window and reached around to open the door from the inside. After trying to kick the door in.
  It's a tragedy, but the homeowner was 100% justified.
- That is completely incorrect and shows you didn't read the article. The guy physically was breaking the door open.
- The problem is you can't judge people's actions on what we know after the fact, you have to look at what the person knew in the moment, and for the residents, it sure seemed like someone was breaking into their house, and it's not reasonable to expect to have a dialogue with a burglar.
- No one was actually breaking into their home though.
  He very LITERALLY broke into his home. Are you delusional?

usa_anthem_kazoo_earrape.mp3 playing in the background. This shit is abnormal in the rest of the world.

No wonder Americans are so infatuated with the second amendment!

Good - one less idiot walking the earth.

While the woman was on the phone with police, Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door "and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob," at which point the male resident fired the shot through the broken window that struck Donofrio in his upper body, according to police.

He wasn’t “trying to enter” he was literally breaking into the home.

I would’ve let off more than one shot at that point.

Good - one less idiot walking the earth.
A college student gets drunk and makes a mistake, and you gleefully execute him for being an "idiot". He doesn't get a trial by a jury of his peers. He doesn't get to explain his story. A frightened home-owner hopped up on adrenaline and his righteous belief he can blow away anyone who scares him just executes him on the spot. That's a terrible system of justice.
Americans are nuts.
- Makes a mistake? That's one hell of a mistake, he was litterally breaking and entering. Just because he was drunk is he no longer responsible for his actions? He chose to go get shitfaced and then he went and tried to break into a home when the residents were home in a castle doctrine state. The only more reliable method of getting shot that I can think of is walking around the woods in a deer costume durring hunting season.
  Also how about we stop victim blaming the home owner here. Yes it would have been better if the guy had lived. There's no question there. But the residents did exactly what they should have with the information they had at their disposal. They called the cops first but, when the dude broke the window and it became aparent that the police would not get there in time, they did what they needed to do to protect themselves while minimizing the chance of them being harmed. Letting a clearly agitated and potentially armed assailant actually enter their home just on the off chance that assailant was actually friendly would have been beyond stupid. The homeowner not mag dumping on the guy actually shows far more restraint than we typically even see from our police.
So you wouldn't have tried talking first? Like they didn't either? Seems nuts to me
- Spoken like someone who's never feared for their life or more importantly, feared for their partner's life.
alright, everyone take a standardized test, if you fail, you're executed.

Well, I guess South Carolina is going on my list of places that are too dangerous to ever visit.

Probably a good idea if you tend to drunkenly break into homes in the middle of the night
- I don't, but I also don't want people to think they can just shoot me with no repercussions.

In this case dude tried to kick the door in, then he broke a window, reached in and started trying to unlock the door. What would you have done?
- What would you have done?
  Not shot someone.
- Dude I'm with you. There's a ton of shitty gun owner stories but this isn't really one of them.
  He wasn't just "oh excuse me, wrong house" - he broke the window trying to unlatch the door. Pretty sure if I had a I bat I would have broken his arm, if I had I knife I would have stabbed him. Not saying shooting is necessarily a proportionate response but anyone who says they wouldn't be scared shitless is a liar.

for all the non-Americans, here are the things you don't understand about why we say it was justified.

Mental illness is rampant here. The high productivity expectations have a serious toll on people. There aren't enough doctors to be even close to handle the scope of it. Many doctors offices are getting bought up by large companies who can and do pick the most lucrative clients.

Our justice system releases mentally ill people who are clearly dangerous because they haven't committed a big enough crime YET.

And people don't look out for one another much anymore. Combined with a misguided sense of independence, drunks are left to do things that friends in other countries would put a stop to.

This is why we fear random people, this is why drunk people manage to get into circumstances uncommon elsewhere. This is why we say the shooting was justified. We all think about how badly it could have gone if he didn't shoot, and it wasn't just a drunk guy at the wrong house.

As an American I'm thoroughly unconvinced
- Same, this sounds like what the homeowner/killer is going to be telling himself the next day to rationalize it (if he even thinks about it that deeply).
- America is a big place. Maybe your area is better. Or maybe you aren't aware of it in your area. But the number of neighbors in my area who have had mentally ill people (probably homeless) come to thier door sayimg they live there or what not is pretty high. And I am out in the suburbs. Combine that with the yearly stories of a mentally ill person with a history of random violence arrests who kills someone and it's no suprise people fear. A large part of the population lives in areas like this or in cities. But not everyone for sure.
Mental illness is rampant here.
All the more reason why you guys shouldn't have so many guns.
- true, but that ship has sailed.

Kid accidentally enter wrong home this was Not Justified. Mother fuckers the law needs to be repealed and done over then.

Shooting someone just for entering or knocking on your door isn't an excuse to shoot to kill someone. Should at least give person a warning.

I hope that homeowner never finds peace again and better be glad it wasn't my kid.

He didn't just accidentally enter the wrong home, he was forcibly breaking into the home when he was shot. Even breaking a window to open the door from the inside.
Tragic as he was likely just intoxicated and confused, but understandable that the homeowner would use force to defend himself
While the woman was on the phone with police, Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door "and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob," at which point the male resident fired the shot through the broken window that struck Donofrio in his upper body, according to police
- Glad breaking and entering is now considered worth a death sentence.
You have to judge it from the perspective if the person living there. They hear someone banging on their door, trying to get into the house, breaking the window and forcing their way in. They had absolutely no reason to believe this was a simple misunderstanding, and every reason to believe their life was in danger.
Go read the article before you comment.
This wasn't a kid knocking at the wrong door in the middile of the day.
This was a 2 AM and break in where the guy busted a window to get at the door handle. This is WAY MORE than just knocking or a misunderstanding. I would agree that mistakes or even simple burglary don't deserve the death penalty, BUT... if he was aggressive enough to be smashing things in the middle of the night after banging on the door and windows, then what would he also be aggressive and mistaken about when he got inside? At a certain point being concerned for your own safety is legitmate and we crossed that line awhile ago.
He mightve thought he was trying to enter his house. However breaking a window and reaching for the lock is a good way to get either shot or arrested for b&o even if he is drunk as a skunk.
Hey doofus did you even read the article? He was breaking into the home. Maybe read the fucking article before spouting bullshit, next time.
Bro banged on the door and broke a window to try to get in. He was literally forcefully entering a locked house, he didn’t just wander into an unlocked door by mistake.
No telling what the kid was trying to do or would have done if he got in. Home owners have to assume the person trying to kick in the door and breaking a window is there to do harm. Justified self defense to anyone with two brain cells to rub together.
- By all accounts he thought he was entering his own home, thought he was breaking his own windows, etc. Seems to me like a little more dialog and this kid's still alive and a broken window is the worst part of the event. With castle doctrine laws the way they are mistakes and misunderstandings are much more likely to become fatal.