I'm curious how the reporterette knew this guy was just "garage hopping", ie engaging in petty theft, rather than something more serious. I'm also curious if this intrusion took place at night. All the reporting was in the daytime, giving the impression this was a daytime situation, but the picture of the guy looked like it was dark. She also said the garage was open. It's hard to believe this house had been hit several times yet they left their garage door open. I suspect this may have been why the homeowner was charged, as he apparently was. If you leave your garage door wide open to the street, it does seem somewhat questionable to open up on someone who strolls in. I'm not saying there aren't situations that would justify it, but it is different from kicking in the door or actually going into the house. Consider the Flroida statue quoted earlier. It requires a "forcible" entry, ie something more than sneaking through an open door or opening an unlocked door. Personally, I have a problem with that requirement. Who keeps their lanai doors locked all day when you are going in and out, yet who wouldn't consider it a deadly threat if some intruder came into your house using them? Tough situation all around. Young man is dead, homeowner's life is ruined and even if he gets off, he can probably never travel to europe for fear of being arrested. If he is acquitted here, I can't imagine a US state would extradict him to Germany over this, but in obama's America , who can say for sure.
It is a tough situation and frankly I don't have much sympathy for the dead kid. Don't break into someone's house is the lesson. Breaking and entering is not a prank. Filling a bag with dog crap, setting it on someone's porch and lighting the bag on fire...that's a prank. However, it appears the shooter set a trap,(see article below), and worse, fired blindly into the garage. My guess is the shooter is going to prison if those allegations prove to be true. Kaarma, 29, is charged with deliberate homicide in the April 27 slaying of Dede, who is from Hamburg. Prosecutors allege Kaarma and his live-in girlfriend set up sensors and a video monitor, then left their garage door open the night of the shooting in Missoula. Kaarma had been burgled twice before, and he told his hairdresser that he had stayed up for three nights waiting to shoot some kid, prosecutors said. The search-warrant request says Kaarma's girlfriend, Janelle Pflager, told a neighbor that someone had taken all the marijuana and pot pipes out of the garage in a previous burglary. Pflager also told the neighbor her husband smokes marijuana in the garage, and police found a glass jar of marijuana in his pantry the day of the shooting, the search warrant said. The night of the shooting, Kaarma and Pflager heard the sensors trip and saw a figure in the garage on the video monitor, prosecutors said. Kaarma took a shotgun out the front door and fired four shots into the dark garage, hitting Dede.
That explains a lot. It's odd that the TV reporter didn't mention the weed angle, only saying the kids garage hopped looking for booze. It's possible this german kid was the one who hit them before and knew they kept weed there. He looked like a big, tough guy and probably wasn't worried aobut encountereing the homeowner. Big mistake.
Well yea if what the cap posted is true, that changes the whole story lol. It's odd that in the report max linked, which was clearly biased against the homeowner, they didn't mention that he set a 'trap'.