So is this McDonald's employee a hero or a criminal

[karl]

Man enters your house after dark, hits you, you retreat, grab a fireplace tool and hit the intruder. You hit the intruder after he has fallen to the ground. Your internal video system captures you doing this.

Are you guilty of a crime in Texas? (remember you could have just opened up with your shotgun and would have been within your rights)

What about if its during the daytime? Does anything change?

Your a bank teller, a man jumps the counter and hits you.....

Strange man comes into your office at work and begins beating your receptionist, she screams for help....

Completely different. He ran away, crisis averted. It damages one's ego, but let the justice system handle it. A place of business is not your castle. The moment he retreated the threat was over. The fact that he would have been justified in defending himself is irrelevant because of his choice to run away.

[Medic218]

Man enters your house after dark, hits you, you retreat, grab a fireplace tool and hit the intruder. You hit the intruder after he has fallen to the ground. Your internal video system captures you doing this.

Are you guilty of a crime in Texas? (remember you could have just opened up with your shotgun and would have been within your rights)

What about if its during the daytime? Does anything change?

Your a bank teller, a man jumps the counter and hits you.....

Strange man comes into your office at work and begins beating your receptionist, she screams for help....

Completely different. He ran away, crisis averted. It damages one's ego, but let the justice system handle it. A place of business is not your castle. The moment he retreated the threat was over. The fact that he would have been justified in defending himself is irrelevant because of his choice to run away.

Lots of different opinions on this one..........Let me throw in another angle on the situation. Once he had them beat down on the floor and he continued beating them in the head with an iron rod, he started inflicting some serious damage ......even to the point of endangering their lives. Now, suppose you had just walked in at this point, unaware of how it all got started, with your concealed weapon and, seeing someone being attacked on the floor with an iron rod, you react to save her life by shooting the MickeyD's employee. Would that be a justified shooting?

Good question but I would think so.
Now how about this...how about you were there when it all started and you saw the events unfold from the first bad decision to the last one. Would you still be justified?
I don't know for sure but I'm leaning towards yes. Reason being is that the idiot women in this video were being whooped up on something good and were just cowering on the floor and taking it.
Even if they started it and with everything else that happened in the video(employee retreating and reemerging with a weapon) I would have given him the first couple of whacks since they were probably still aging him on but once they are on the ground and still taking the beating I think it becomes a defense of 3rd party situation....but I could be wrong. I don't know how the justice system would look at this.
Then, after its all said and done.....the women need to be read their rights too and, at least the one that slapped the employee, get hooked up on assault charges.

[bayouhazard]

Did the victim beat some sense into the attackers? If not, then he should have hit them a lot more.

Who has the sig quote here about the value of a good beating?

[philip964]

So this is really the Oklahoma Pharmacist without the guns involved?

And your business is not your castle, so you have to give the intruder/ lawbreaker/ attacker sanctuary after they go down?

And If you have a bad temper, you need to avoid situations with intruder/lawbreaker/attackers at your business.

[Jumping Frog]

The women didn't know they were starting a fight under felon rules: their rule for fighting is "get in, get busy, and get out."

Kind of bit off more than they could chew.

[bayouhazard]

And If you have a bad temper, you need to avoid situations with intruder/lawbreaker/attackers at your business.

Maybe the lowlife criminals should avoid situations with "victims" who will give them the justice they so richly deserve. Make no mistake. They deserved every bit of REAL JUSTICE the received from the people they attacked.

[Divided Attention]

Completely different. He ran away, crisis averted. It damages one's ego, but let the justice system handle it. A place of business is not your castle. The moment he retreated the threat was over. The fact that he would have been justified in defending himself is irrelevant because of his choice to run away.

My understanding is that anywhere you are legally is your "castle" in Texas and you have the right to defend yourself without retreating. Not that retreating is not sometimes the best "defense", but the "Castle doctrine" does not just apply to one's home.

That being said, once you "stop the threat", then the defense against prosecution is no longer in effect. Any moves made after that are assault.

[boba]

Mess with the bull
Get the horns

[karl]

Completely different. He ran away, crisis averted. It damages one's ego, but let the justice system handle it. A place of business is not your castle. The moment he retreated the threat was over. The fact that he would have been justified in defending himself is irrelevant because of his choice to run away.

My understanding is that anywhere you are legally is your "castle" in Texas and you have the right to defend yourself without retreating. Not that retreating is not sometimes the best "defense", but the "Castle doctrine" does not just apply to one's home.

That being said, once you "stop the threat", then the defense against prosecution is no longer in effect. Any moves made after that are assault.

My point exactly.

So this is really the Oklahoma Pharmacist without the guns involved?

And your business is not your castle, so you have to give the intruder/ lawbreaker/ attacker sanctuary after they go down?

And If you have a bad temper, you need to avoid situations with intruder/lawbreaker/attackers at your business.

You're missing the part about him running away. If he stayed and used force to neutralize the threat (which I doubt would be easily subdued in his situation) he would have been justified in my opinion.

[KingofChaos]

Lots of different opinions on this one..........Let me throw in another angle on the situation. Once he had them beat down on the floor and he continued beating them in the head with an iron rod, he started inflicting some serious damage ......even to the point of endangering their lives. Now, suppose you had just walked in at this point, unaware of how it all got started, with your concealed weapon and, seeing someone being attacked on the floor with an iron rod, you react to save her life by shooting the MickeyD's employee. Would that be a justified shooting?

Given these circumstances, most likely, BUT you shouldn't just jump into random situations shooting. Unless you watched the situation unfold and know all of the details, you shouldn't just assume you know who the BG and victim are and start shooting.

Some examples, You come upon:

An older woman(60's) and a young male are in the parking lot of Wal-Mart and the youth is pulling on the womans purse. You think it looks like a robbery, and shoot. The male is her attendant and was merely trying to keep the older woman with Alzheimer's from running off.

You're at a local park by your home, and a white adult male you do not know is forcibly putting a small black child into his van. The little girl is kicking and screaming and trying her hardest to get away. You decide to shoot the man, because it looks like a pedophile in commission of aggravated kidnapping.It turns out you just shot the child's stepfather.

You come upon me, a male in his early 20's dressed in baggy sweatpants and a t-shirt, with my weapon drawn on a middle aged woman dressed professionally. She's currently begging me not to shoot her. You reach for your carry weapon. Unfortunately, the woman just attempted to rob me at knife point, and from you angle you can't see the knife on the ground next to her. You break concealment, and I see you reaching for your waistband so I turn and fire 4 rounds COM into you, thinking that you're her accomplice.

In the first two scenarios, you could very likely get no billed for the shooting, as you had reason to believe that the crimes were taking places, but how do you think you would feel about yourself afterwards? And what if you don't get no billed and have to go on trial for the shootings. Even if acquitted the cost would be no laughing matter. In the 3rd scenario you would be seriously injured,perhaps fatally so. I'm not trying to say that you should always be hesitant to use your weapon, but if you simply come upon a situation without knowing any details a loud "HEY WHAT'S GOING ON" is probably best before shooting anyone. To be fair, maybe I should also do some yelling of my own in the last scenario before firing, but hey, code red...

And to play devil's advocate, the women were behind the counter and out of the view of the camera once he started striking them on the ground. Who knows what they could have done to make him hit them again. Maybe they reached into their pockets and produced knives? I know it's not terribly likely, but I do think it's important to note that we have no idea what they were actually doing once he started hitting them again.

[Purplehood]

Ex-Felon working at McD's?

I probably don't watch enough TV to know (ha, ha on me for using TV as a source), but I would imagine that a basic survival trait in prison is to definitely come back and dispense hurt and pain on someone that has attacked you just as soon as you possibly can...
Too bad for the obnoxious idiots that think they can abuse anyone at the counter. I know I would get fired working at McD's and having to put up with that. Pretty sure I wouldn't take the same measures, but as Chris Rock likes to say, "I understand".

[knotquiteawake]

That dude was not just a "felon." Thats way too light of a label for him. He was a MURDERER, he went to prison because he shot and killed a classmate in High School. The video shows his coworkers trying to stop him after the women are on the ground. So, assuming that they see what he sees, they believe the threat from the women is stopped yet he continues to beat them. One of these girls has a fractured skull! He definitely needs to go back to Prison. He's clearly not learned his lesson. The video to me looks like he's trying to kill them, not keep them back, not keep them from hurting him, he moved way past that. The good news is that if he is 31 and he just spent 10 years in prison for murder, then he was likely an adult when that murder happened so the Jury will get to hear about that (if he was a minor I'm assuming the jury would never know that he had committed murder in the past).

[philip964]

The jury will only hear about his convictions during punishment phase assuming he is found guilty.

My understanding he was attacked because the customer gave a fifty dollar bill and he is required to by company policy to check it with the marker pen, they objected to that.

McDonald's may have to defend him, or risk suit from him, for not defending him.

What if this had been a convenience store and the customer jumped over the counter. Would we have been so critical if the clerk then shot and killed the person? Or are we back to the Oklahoma Pharmacy and the extra shots while on the ground?

[pcernuch]

i'd hire him. if you go looking for trouble, dont be suprised when you find, or when it finds you.

god bless.

[Katygunnut]

My understanding he was attacked because the customer gave a fifty dollar bill and he is required to by company policy to check it with the marker pen, they objected to that.

I was at an In-N-Out Burger once and the guy used the marker on a $10 bill I gave him. I was more amused than angry. It made me wonder about the neighborhood (I was on a business trip and didn't know the area well at all).