The law is clear, "The robber pointed the gun at him and demanded his wallet" constitutes an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the actor. He would be totally justified in responding with deadly force.RSX11 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 11, 2019 11:41 am I was reading a news article about a recent armed robbery in Houston, and it made me wonder about a point in the law. A guy was loading groceries into his hatchback when he noticed an armed man was standing next to him. The robber pointed the gun at him and demanded his wallet, which he handed over. The gunman then took off.
Use of deadly force law says you can use deadly force to prevent the imminent commission of an armed robbery. If the victim chose to pull out a gun and shoot the robber in the back right as he was leaving - does that occur during the "imminent" part of the armed robbery? Or would it be considered to be part of attempting to recover property after the commission of the armed robbery? I figure he'd be good one way or the other, but I wondered which part of the law applied in this situation.
Now the bigger question is - hmm, how was his situational awareness? Uh, non-existent. Was it smarter to do what he did? Probably. Once the guy ran off, the imminent threat is gone. Thus it would be hard to justify shooting the robber in the back as he fled. The time to shoot him was as he was going for his wallet to hand to him, or to shoot him as he handed it to him. But we can't second guess the actor's behavior since we were not there.
How much training did he have? Where was he carrying his gun? Could he have drawn and put two round center mass on the robber? Who knows, we don't. Maybe he did the smartest thing based on what you have told us.
Situational Awareness - that's why it's taught as part of the LTC Curriculum.