In August 2019, three stupid teenagers in Dayton, Ohio, snuck into a man’s garage and climbed into the car they found there. They were looking for a dark place to smoke pot in. The survivor later said they thought the car was “abandoned.”
The homeowner came outside with a gun, and according to the survivor’s testimony, fired into the car “without warning.” He would later claim he was afraid the intruders “were going to come into his house.”
His lawyer tried to justify this by invoking Ohio’s recently-passed “stand your ground” law mimicking a controversial Florida law that critics argue encourages vigilantism. The judge disallowed that defense on the technical ground that the law wasn’t in effect when Victor Santana (photo), the defendant, killed the teens.
By any reasonable interpretation, “stand your ground” shouldn’t be a hunting license anyway. And going hunting is what Santana did when he left his house with gun in hand to confront the trespassers. Did he not have a phone? Why didn’t he call the police and let them handle it? Are we so indifferent to human life in this country that we’ll let vigilantes freely take it?
Make no mistake, the kids were messing around where they shouldn’t have been, but kill them for that? Is that where we are now as a society?
The jury said no. They convicted Santana, 66, of murder and other charges. He’ll now likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. (Read story here.)
The moral is let the cops handle situations like this. Reach for the phone, not a gun. Unless you’re in immediate peril, which this guy wasn’t, you use a gun at your legal peril. And that’s as it should be. Human life shouldn’t be this cheap. Santana is guilty and deserves his punishment.