Knock-knock, bang-bang

Over at ArfCom, I stumbled into this thread leading to a thread about the aftermath of a home invasion shooting (on XDTalk). Here's the first couple lines from the first post. Read the original posts; skim the comments as you see fit, keeping in mind that it's on the internet.

We are all ok thanks to my wife. There is no way to prepare for a phone call from your wife while you are at work that go exactly like this:

Me: Hi sweetie!
Wife: I need you home now, I just shot two invaders!
Me: On the way now! (end of call)

Part 1. "Home Invasion in Oklahoma: Mine"

Part 2. "Things we learned from the home invasion in Oklahoma"

Part 3. "I need to vent"

Got that?

One of the local news stations has a portion of the 911 call posted here.

I can not and will not presume to offer legal advice here. From a criminal legal standpoint, they appear to be in good shape. I don't know if Oklahoma precludes civil suits in justifiable self-defense, but it is something to be aware of.

One of the replies in Part 2 is this:

I was not happy with some of her questions to your wife, answers that could be used against her after the fact.

Please understand this: a dispatcher's job is to get as much information as possible. The more information we have, and the more accurate it is, the better-informed the responding officers should be. Our job is not to incriminate you, interrogate you, or judge you. We want to get you the right kind of help as quickly as possible. Giving our responders relevant information is part of that.

Yes, the recording of a 911 call can (and will) be subpoenaed as evidence in a trial. That said:

What you say on a 911 call will not change whether a shooting was justified or not.

Let me state that again to emphasize the point.

What you say on a 911 call will not change whether a shooting was justified or not.

What it COULD change is the perception of a prosecutor or jury (grand, criminal, or civil). Answer the dispatcher's questions concisely and honestly. I understand adrenaline. I know what it does. I've listened to more callers than I care to count with verbal diarrhea. Try to control it; the less filter a dispatcher has to do the better, and the easier it will be for a listener to understand things after the fact.

Either a shooting is justified or it isn't. Period.

Once the shooting is over, though, there's the rest of the situation to deal with. Read the posts up there again. The victim had to pack up their entire life and put it in storage in the space of twelve hours. In his words:

Our Life Before 21 Oct 2010

Two adults, two kids and one dog living in a 1300 square foot, four bedroom, one and a half bath home
[...]

Our Life After 21 OCT 2010

Two adults, two kids and one dog living in a 12 foot X 12 foot room.

They've received death threats. They've moved a couple times. The press plastered their names and address far and wide.

An armchair commando posted this about their choice to move:

You have two choices:

1) Refuse to back down, and not let low lifes scare you out of your home.
2) Move out of your home, fall into financial ruin, and vent about it on the internet.

Every man has to do what they think is right. I know what I'd do.

B. S.

He has to keep working in order to live. He can't be awake and at home 24/7. His wife can't be at home 24/7. Short of barricading yourself inside a fortress, there's no realistic way to handle this without moving.

An officer here was involved in a shooting earlier this year. The suspect died. The shooting was investigated and determined to be justified. Ten days later, the officer's house was burned down. He'd already sent his family away, for just that reason. And guess what? This was without the press posting his address and picture far and wide. He made it out with relatively minor injuries.

Trained SWAT officer. Unpublished address. Lost his house and nearly his life.

Relatively untrained citizen. Published address, face, and name. Chose to leave instead of risking more.

I have absolutely no issue with how he is trying to handle this, and I wish him and his family the best of luck.

Jay touched on this with a DGC post a few weeks ago. He also commented, "Instead, we have one dead goblin, one wounded - who if there is any justice will face homicide charges if there's any "commission of a crime" laws in place." Those laws are in place, and there are TWO goblins facing Murder One:

Police said Johnson and Kemp are charged with first-degree murder and burglary. The murder charge is being filed because a death resulted during the commission of a felony. All three suspects have had multiple contacts with law enforcement in the past. [KOCO News]

Reminder

Set the clocks back (last night, or this morning) and, more importantly, run around and change all the batteries in your smoke detectors and CO alarms.

It may save your life.

If your detectors are more than five years old, replace them. A basic battery-powered smoke detector will run $8-10 at most stores, and a CO alarm about twice that.

It's a good idea to have a smoke detector in every bedroom, the hallways outside sleeping areas, in the living room/den/office, and in the basement/cellar/utility room. There should be a CO alarm on each floor of the house.

If you're stopping by the local DIY MegaMart, there are a few other things worth picking up while you're there:
- an extra flashlight or two (Cheap LED lights are great, toss 'em in a drawer. Most come with batteries and are under $3 each.)
- a bulk pack of each kind of batteries you use; replace batteries all around the house while you're at it!
- a new fire extinguisher (one in the kitchen and at least one on each floor of the house; A-B-C class dry chem, preferably 5lb or 10lb)

If you are in a three-bedroom house, you should be able to do ALL of the above for under $200:
- 5lb ABC extinguisher (2): $80
- CO alarm (2): $36
- smoke alarm (8): $34
- cheap flashlights (5): $15
- extra batteries (AA, AAA): $20

Grand Total: $185

You've got enough left over for a pizza!

All kidding aside: Most of us have insurance on our homes, vehicles, life, health ... we carry guns, wear seatbelts, don't smoke, drink in moderation (unless it's a VC night), and are generally responsible citizens. We think nothing (or not much) of spending $200 on a case of practice ammo... so why would you quibble about spending that much on long-term protection for your home and family?

Oh those tricksy phishers...

A cautionary tale, for you denizens of the cyberworld.

I used to be a WoW player. I suspended my account last month because I realized I hadn't logged in for more than 20 or 30 minutes total in the preceding two months, and not much more prior to that. (All my characters and items remain, waiting for me to pick them up again - probably around the next expansion.)

Today, I got an email, ostensibly from Blizzard Support (@blizzard.sales.com - red flag), regarding a faction change for one of my characters. Oh really, says I? Perhaps my account got hacked after I suspended it - it's possible, if not necessarily likely.

I read further.

There's a link to a "transaction status" page... that goes to a domain outside blizzard.com (red flag). (I saw that before clicking, thanks.) One of the items they list is, "If you did not make this transaction, you should immediately check your account to prevent character lost." Character lost (red flag)?? There's another link, supposedly to worldofwarcraft.com, but hovering on it reveals it pointing to that same outside domain (red flag).

I pulled headers... "Mailed-by: hotmail.com" (red flag). Last I checked, Blizzard had their own mail servers. ;-)

Out of curiousity, I ran a WHOIS on the outside domain. Sure enough, comes back to "shun li, zhengzhou, CHINA" (red flag).

The first thing that really made me wonder, though: this was sent to an email address that was never associated with my WoW account (red flag).

Spammers, scammers, and phishers are getting MUCH more sophisticated, folks. This email had ONE error in grammar or spelling - one that could be easily chalked up to someone typing quickly without proofing. The links were masked, there is also a link to a legitimate Blizzard site, and someone who was not paying VERY close attention could easily have clicked through and given their password to ... someone in China.