MONTANA MAN GETS 70 YEARS IN GERMAN EXCHANGE STUDENT'S DEATH

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

BY LISA BAUMANN

MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) -- A Montana homeowner was sentenced Thursday to 70 years in prison, with no parole for at least 20 years, in the shotgun killing of a German exchange student who was trespassing in his garage.

A Missoula jury convicted Markus Kaarma, 30, of deliberate homicide in the case that caused an outcry in Germany and brought scrutiny to the state's law allowing the use of deadly force in some situations to protect home and family.

Kaarma shot 17-year-old Diren Dede, who was unarmed, last year after he was alerted by motion sensors in his garage. Witnesses said Kaarma fired at the teen four times.

Dede's father, Celal Dede, said of the sentence: "It is justice. I am not happy. My son is dead."

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_EXCHANGE_STUDENT_SHOT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-02-12-14-17-42

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Good!!

[sharp_stick]

2. Good

it's exactly what he deserves.

[christx30]

3. Glad this guy is going to prison

for setting a trap for this kid. But the cops should have done more to stop the burglaries. When the cops can't or won't help, people will take it upon themselves to fix the problem, with disastrous results.

[Aristus]

4. Good.

From now on, if Shotgun-Boy wants to attack someone with a weapon without warning, he'll be in a good place to do it. Better study up on spoon sharpening, Rambo...

[candelista]

5. Not good.

This reminds me of the Tony Martin case in England.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/apr/20/tonymartin.ukcrime3

These kinds of rulings make it illegal to defend yourself or your home against criminals, which is a fundamental moral right.

[RationalMan]

6. Are you a Christian?

Then I suggest you understand the meaning of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth".

That is the concept of proportionality. In this case the taking of a life was NOT proportional to protecting ones "crap". Crap is crap and it will be given a monetary value. A life is a life and you cannot place a value on a life.

I don't care if this nutcase had had several burglaries in the past. That did not give him the right to kill someone simply to protect his "crap".

I am glad this guy got 70 years and as he is an old fart he will die in prison. Good riddance to refuse.

[candelista]

7. That's none of your business.

But I'll tell you this: Christianity rejects the eye for an eye doctrine as supplanted by the new doctrine of love and forgiveness preached by Jesus, who explicitly rejects "an eye for an eye." See Matthew 5:38-48.

The other issue about what you so delicately refer to as "crap" is irrelevant. Anyone who enters my garage at night without permission is a danger to ME personally, and not just to my property.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

9. Utter BS.

Anyone who enters my garage at night without permission is a danger to ME personally, and not just to my property.

Like the Alzheimers patient who strolls in? Or the person who injured their head in a nearby accident and wanders onto your property, or even some drunk?

My 80+year old grandfather managed to wander off onto other people's property several times at night, not only unarmed, but usually naked. If he'd wandered into your garage, he would have been zero danger to you, and had you shot him, I'd be happy to see you go to prison for decades for murdering him because you felt a person wandering into your garage was automatically a 'danger' you had to use lethal force on.

The ONLY excuse for lethal force is to prevent the use of lethal force on yourself or another.

[candelista]

10. Your naked grandfather should have been in a secure facility.

Your family's failure to do this put your grandfather in serious danger.

[Fumesucker]

14. "Secure facilities" are expensive

Not everyone is wealthy enough to afford that sort of care, not by a long shot.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

15. Yeah, we're evil people for not having had the presence of mind to have been born in the 1%.

He was in a 'secure facility' for as long as we could afford it. And my father probably took years off his own life with the time and effort he spent working on his father's behalf even when we couldn't afford 'a secure facility' any longer.

[Skittles]

21. serious danger from gun humping paranoid assholes

[DisgustipatedinCA]

25. Have your self-protection fantasies to your heart's content

But don't let them control you--as has just been shown, we put murderous fucks in prison for a long time, which serves to keep our society safer.

[Aristus]

28. So candelista is on record of being in favor of murdering naked, cognitively-impaired

grandfathers, I guess. That says it all, I suppose...

[DisgustipatedinCA]

29. Inalienable garage-freedom fantasies.

I actually have an appreciation for seeing posts like that. Those posts immediately let me know who I'm dealing with, and I make a point of not hanging out with folks like that.

[Judi Lynn]

16. +1. Thank you. n/t

[Maedhros]

12. Correction:

YOU THINK that anyone that enters your garage is a danger to you. Thankfully, the law disagrees.

I swear, some gun owners seem to be ITCHING to "defend themselves."

[liberalhistorian]

22. My stepfather had dementia

(Lewy Body Dementia) and was prone to wondering the neighborhood before we fully understood what was going on with him. He didn't even realize he was doing it and certainly meant no harm to anyone; he just finally died last week after a very long ten years.

I can just imagine what would have happened had he wandered into your garage, with your gung-ho old west attitude of shoot first, no questions asked and not even trying to determine what was happening. Because there may be legitimate reasons for it and you can kill innocent people. And when you do, if you have done so with no apparent threat and with no attempt to find out what was happening before firing off your metal phallic symbol, I really hope you are held as legally accountable as this shooter was.

[psychopomp]

27. Do you bleed?

My friend just lost a friend. His friend was killed during a home invasion. Sorry to rain on your parade, but dangerous criminals are a fact of life in the USA.

What the heck was the guy doing in the garage in the first place? Ripping that family off?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

8. Absolutely good.

What you're completely getting wrong is that the murdered kid was NOT a criminal, just a confused person.

When you shoot an unarmed person who intends you no harm, you are not 'defending yourself or your home against criminals'.

So 'these kind of rulings' have no impact on what you fear.

[candelista]

11. "A person who intends you no harm"?

And how is one supposed to discover this intent without exposing oneself to danger?

And BTW, what was this kid doing in the guy's garage?

[A Simple Game]

13. You are right there was a person who intended to do harm.

That person was the one that used a shotgun at close range to shoot at someone four times.

Four times is intent to kill, not to scare someone off or to protect "crap."

You should read up on this story, this was a setup. Plain and simple, he intended to murder the kid.

[Bugenhagen]

18. 1 yes, 2 ask them, 3 bleeding/dying

This isn't a self-defense case. This is a premeditated ambush murder with a built in rationalization. The guy wanted to shoot someone to death, and he thought he could create a technicality to do so.

The shooter is, in my mind, a filthy human being.

[LiberalArkie]

20. I would have bet that 1 shotgun blast in the air would have been enough.

The the man could have called the police. It is evident he wanted blood.

[christx30]

24. He had called the police about recent burgleries.

The cops just shrugged their shoulders and said that they couldn't do anything. If they had done their job, the kid would be in jail, and not dead.
The kid could have avoided dying by just not going into someone's garage uninvited.

[Kaleva]

19. He had purposedly left the garage door partially open.

He had motion detector sensors installed in the garage and waited up nights with his shotgun.

You are confusing hunting fellow humans with defending one's home.

[freshwest]

26. Puts it in a different light than a home invasion. Wonder if he was there to ask directions?

After all the light was on and the door was open. He could have thought he'd get a friendly face to tell him where he was. That is putting the best spin on the thing.

That's what happened to the Japanese exchange who was killed in a guy's front yard because he didn't know what the homeowner meant when he yelled FREEZE! Not everyone watches television and movies.

Years ago I got lost in a small town on my way to pick up a friend who worked at a nursing facility, long after midnight. I went to the first house I could find with a street light on, but not a porch light, after driving around in circles as her directions weren't good and this was before cellphones.

I knocked on the door and stood back on the sidewalk in the light from the street light and apologized, but asked if he could call the cops or someone who knew the area, please?

I was exhausted and had to make a very long road trip that same morning. My knock woke up an elderly gentleman and he listened to me, then called the cops who drove ahead of me to show me the way.

I guess nowadays I'd have gotten my head blown off for being on the sidewalk. It wasn't the first time I went to a stranger's house to ask directions, either, way out in the country where it was miles between homes and businesses.

[Lurks Often]

23. Sorry, you are wrong on this

The homeowner deliberately set a trap for the kid, leaving the garage door partially and leaving a purse in plain site. Nor is there any evidence that the kid presented a threat to the homeowner.

Yes people have a right to protect themselves in their home from criminals, but this is not what happened in this specific case.

[1Greensix]

17. No death penalty

No death penalty in Montana?? This was cold blooded murder.