Police: 2 teens killed trying to break into home

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

SAN MARCOS, Texas — A man shot and killed two teenagers and wounded another when they tried breaking into his home early Friday, police said.
A fourth teenager was arrested and is expected to be charged with aggravated robbery.
Three of the four male teenagers who tried breaking into the home were armed, one with a handgun and two with pellet guns that looked like more powerful weapons, San Marcos Police Chief Howard Williams said.
One of the three college-aged people who lived in the rental home opened fire on the teens with a .40-caliber Glock pistol, killing two 16-year-olds and wounding another suspect. A 17-year-old suspect fled the scene but was captured and arrested after returning to the scene to check on his friends, police said. He's expected to be charged with aggravated robbery, Williams said.
The wounded suspect was taken to Brackenridge Hospital in Austin with non-life threatening injuries, Williams said. Officials say the wounded suspect is also expected to be charged.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6603195.html

[kelly1mm]

1. Looks like they tried to rob the wrong house - woopsie. nt

[Ilsa]

2. I wonder if those teens have parents that cared about them. What a horrible

tragedy, but I'm glad the homeowner is safe. He'll probably have nightmares for most of his life over this.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

4. I'm sure they do.

Look at the parents that beg for mercy for torturers, murderers and rapists.

[JonQ]

18. The most evil people in history

all had parents, that's kind of a universal thing.

And apparently in this case they weren't very good parents, so they should feel horrible for inflicting their child on the world.

[The Fountainhead]

3. Four less criminals running rampant

:sarcasm:
Oh, the poor, innocent criminals. If only society had let them get away with just this one crime and then they would have reformed!
:sarcasm:

I'm glad that he was able to defend himself (and family?). While I will not dance on any graves, at least the bad guys were the ones that ended up dead.

[rrneck]

5. Society failed them

long before they committed that crime. It's a pity they had to suffer in no small part because of our failure. More's the pity someone had to shoot them for it.

Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[oneshooter]

7. I'm sorry that they had to pay a large price

for their stupidity.
I take insult at rrneck's post, "It's a pity they had to suffer in no small part because of our failure."

I had nothing at all to do with their upbringing, there for the failure had nothing at all to do with me.

Oneshooter
Livin in Texas

[rrneck]

9. No insult was intended.

We are all responsible for each other. That's why we're trying to get decent health care, better schools, and a more fair economic system so we won't have to shoot people as a last resort. We are all citizens of this country. We vote, we pay taxes, and we have a say in how it is run. Just because it isn't run the way we want doesn't excuse us from our responsibility toward our fellow citizens. An awareness of that responsibility is what drives meaningful change.

It's true indeed that you are not directly responsible for them, but our country failed those boys, and that country is our responsibility.

[PavePusher]

13. While I agree with you in large part,...

sometimes people just make bad, stupid choices, even when all the benefits to taking another path are clearly visible, and when they've had all the benefits society could possibly offer them.

[rrneck]

14. Sure.

The Menendez brothers come to mind. And of course there's Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold , two kids who had every opportunity in the world but somehow managed to screw up large and the whole world asked, "why?". The best explanation I read on the subject said basically that their parents treated them like furniture. That sounds plausible to me, but I really don't know. And that's the point. I don't know. And now none of us will ever know because they're dead.

It's a lot easier to brutalize someone if we dehumanize them first. A large part of being human is our ability to remember the past and anticipate the future. It could well be argued that our ability to process that information and adjust our actions accordingly is the cornerstone of our humanity. If we decide that someone lacks the ability to learn and change from what they learn, we dehumanize them. And that makes them easier to kill.

We aren't perfect, therefore no social system we design can be perfect. Anyone that believes that if we just got rid of all the guns that violence will end or that the only way to achieve a polite society is to adaquately arm people is advocating an oversimplified utopia. But just because our efforts to create a just and peaceful society fail we should never be willing to consider any human being anything less than a human being. And every human life has worth because every human has potential.

There is another important part of being human. We have a highly developed theory of mind. We are able to consider not only what we might do in the future, but we can also consider what others might do. If we discard our ability to consider the potential of others, are we not dehumanizing ourselves?

We shoot to stop, not to kill; and we should never shoot to judge.

[Euromutt]

17. Beautifully put (n/t)

[one-eyed fat man]

22. why is it so hard to accept?

Some people simply CHOOSE evil. They deliberately, willfully, eagerly wish to steal, beat, inflict harm on their fellow man. Their parents didn't beat them. Their siblings didn't abuse them. Their classmates didn't ridicule them. They do not suffer from hormonal imbalance, chemical dependency, poverty or anything except they are vicious predators who revel in the degradation and humiliation of others.

NOBODY MADE THEM KICK IN SOME STRANGERS' DOOR AND ATTEMPT TO ROB THEM AT GUNPOINT!

Their Momma didn't fail them. Society didn't fail them. They, doubtless, thought it would be easy, fun and cool. They expected to get the loot and laugh later about how scared their victims looked, assuming they intended to let them live. They did it because they WANTED TO DO IT.

Instead, they got what was coming to them. End of story.

[rrneck]

23. Yes, they certainly got what was coming to them,

but why did they make a whole string of disastrous choices that led to a disastrous end? There has to be a reason. What could it be?

[one-eyed fat man]

28. Simple!

The assholes thought it was a good idea at the time! People do not need a reason to be unreasonable. Regardless, they had a choice. No one forced them commit a crime. They weren't trying to feed their starving families. They weren't throwing off the shackles of their oppressors. Apparently they had absolutely no moral compunctions about stealing, robbery or assault, so that leaves as the most benign rationale, they were seeking a thrill.

Skydiving would have been a better choice, but it's not the one they made.

[gorfle]

26. Well said.

Well said.

[stray cat]

16. Were the kids starving and abused without anyone intervening?

or were they like many just greedy and willing to take from someone else?

[rrneck]

20. Starved for what and how were they abused?

What made them greedy? I don't know, I wasn't there.

What happens to anyone between here:


And here?:


A person doesn't have to be starved and beaten to be damaged. Just ignoring them can do it. Any society that ignores people until they fuck up and then punishes them for it is not a just and fair society. They made a mistake when they tried to rob a guy that could shoot back. We made a mistake by letting them fall through the cracks until somebody had to shoot them.

The question should not be, "how evil were they that they deserved to die?" It should be, "How did we let it get this far before anybody noticed?"

edit to attempt clarity

[GreenStormCloud]

21. The book "Beggars and Thieves" addressed that.

Almost all street criminals come from homes where they were neglected and often abused. Criminals usually have criminals for parents. He makes a very strong case for greater intervention in the very early years and taking the babies out of homes like that.

Considering the evidence of Freakonomics, I tend to agree.

[ZombieHorde]

6. Welcome to DU.

[rrneck]

10. Gaaaaaaa! Now that's a picture. Where the hell did you find it? nt

[JonQ]

19. Jesus christ!

that's f-cked up.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

8. Welcome to DU.

[GreenStormCloud]

11. We have already had a long thread on this one.

shareunited started it as a complaint about guns http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=252388&mesg_id=252388

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

12. Imagine that.

[proteus_lives]

15. Shocked I tell you, shocked.

[57_TomCat]

24. That was a simple...

catastrophic failure of the victim selection process.

Whatever the reasons, the thieves made piss poor decisions and were properly admonished for their errors. Fortunatly those that made better decisions were not harmed in the dust-up.

[Piwi2009]

25. Myself, I want to know the reasons why they chose this path

People think looking for an explanation means looking for an EXCUSE. Personally I want to know why they did this--that horrible word, "understand." There are reasons even if we don't like them or agree with them. I don't see knowledge as a bad thing.

[GreenStormCloud]

27. Wrong address.

Castro, the uninjured teen, has said that they were looking for the house of a drug dealer with the street name of "Harry Potter" and were going to steal his hydroponic marijuana.

Police found no evidence of any drugs at the house, and they have no intel of any super marijuana being grown or sold at the house.

Big oops!

[Hoopla Phil]

29. kick

[Endangered Specie]

30. and THIS is why "high" capacity magazines should be legal...

4 robbers with weapons in your house, 10 rounds may NOT be enough, and most of us don't carry spare mags around the house.

This particular Glock takes a 13 or 15 rd magazine STANDARD.