PIAT: Joe Horn again

Sick sick sick sick sick. All kinds of colors coming out of me, including the patent-pending Neon Brown. Blog neglected. Never again*.

Commenter "gr8tfuldaniel" pointed out that Joe Horn spotted the two crooks breaking into his neighbor's home, not his own. I knew that, but only learned it after I wrote the essay I reposted on the 5th. I neglected to edit; I just copy and pasted. My bad.

This adds an element of him-haw complexity, but doesn't really change how I feel about all that happened. Here's the squinty dimension, from this NYT article:

“I had no choice,” Mr. Horn said when he called 911 back. “They came in the front yard with me, man.” Captain Corbett said that a plainclothes officer had pulled up just in time to see Mr. Horn pointing his shotgun at both men across his front yard, that Mr. Ortiz had at one point started to run in a way that took him closer to Mr. Horn, and that both men “received gunfire from the rear.” That fact, alone, however, was not necessarily conclusive, Captain Corbett said. “It tells an investigator something, but not everything,” he added. “They could still have been seen as a threat.” [from now on, "Emphasis Added" gets abbreviated as "EA". I have faith you can keep up]

I've had cats run past me when I'm louder than they'd like. My first thought is usually "what are you thinking, running towards me to get away from me?" followed closely by "I guess it worked, though". If Ortiz really did just happen to pick an unfortunately circuitous escape route, something like CatRun must have been going on, but I can't picture a terrain situation where a straight "away" isn't the best direction to run from a gun. Maybe there was some bravado involved, maybe Ortiz's initial charge was a feint. Since they were from Columbia, I doubt it (the "whut!" shoulder shake is hella American).

Compounding this, I think Horn was (not trying to be flippant this time) playing deputy, too. His excited "move, you're dead" was a mangled "stop or I'll shoot", constituting in Horn's mind a de facto citizen's arrest.

And you know what? That's good enough. Did they deserve to die? Not really, but they didn't exactly deserve better, you know? It's not great that it happened, but it's sure as hell OK that it happened. And everyone involved in the issue who feels that way has conducted themselves exemplarily, which is awesome. Right wins this time.




*I should write for Ellen, I'm such a card.