"Good Guy" Killed After Attacking Man Who Refused To Give Him Money for Drugs.

Have you noticed that their friends always claim that they are “good guys” once they assume ambient temperature?

A confrontation over money led to a fight that left a homeless man dead outside an Orlando convenience store Sunday morning.

Orange County deputies were called to a 7-Eleven on the 800 block of Lee Road near Interstate 4 around 5 a.m. Sunday in reference to a shooting.

Once at the scene, deputies found a homeless man in his late 20s in the parking lot with a gunshot wound to the chest.

Investigators said the man who was shot had approached a customer at the store, only identified as a man in his 40s, and asked for money.

When the customer said he had no money and tried to leave, deputies said the man who asked for money began punching the customer in his vehicle, at which point the customer pulled out a handgun and shot him in the chest.

According to the sheriff’s office, the shooter walked back into the store, told the clerk to call police and stayed at the scene until deputies arrived.

Investigators spent hours gathering evidence and said the shooting was justified based on surveillance video footage from the store.

Channel 9’s Roy Ramos spoke to a friend of the homeless man who said he was not armed.

“He never hurt anybody,” said the homeless man’s friend, who did not want to be identified. “He was trying to get hotel room money and trying to get by. He was a good guy.”

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A few observations:

  • in this instance, the fact that the attacker was unarmed is irrelevant 
  • he rather obviously was trying to hurt somebody
  • he wasn’t a good guy

The video report from the same news station tells a far different story that the print story, and instead finds a witness who describes the man as a very aggressive multiple drug abuser who would attempt to intimidate people into giving him money for heroin and crack. 

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Some people have it in their minds that a defender must only respond with matching force. That is, if you are attacked by someone using their fists, you should only respond with your fists, or if they pull a knife, then only then may you use a knife.

These same people seem to leave out the detail that the aggressors are typically stronger, often younger, and more psychologically predisposed towards deadly violence. Lawful defenders are generally behind the curve from the very start of a deadly force attack, and it is absurd to expect them to be able to defend their lives by playing a game of catch-up while always one step behind. They have every legal and moral right to take action to defend themselves.

We’ve discussed a similar case repeatedly, but it apparently deserves saying yet again: just because the attacker is unarmed, it doesn’t mean that a deadly force response was unwarranted.

It’s simply a shame that a certain tri-racial “white Hispanic” had to go through a long and costly trial when it was just as obvious from the outset that in that attack, like this one, the gun owner was put in a position where he had no choice but to fire in defense of his life.

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