Texas Self-Defense: Truck Thief Shot Dead By Owner :: 02/11/2015

I am not sure to call this a DGU, a bad idea or hail the owner as a hero.  But what I will say is that chasing someone down and shooting them, while they are in the act of stealing your truck could be a stretch.  I come from a state where deadly force is authorized by law when someone commits a felony in the presence of the slayer.

RCW 9A.16.050

In the actual resistance of an attempt to commit a felony upon the slayer, in his or her presence, or upon or in a dwelling, or other place of abode, in which he or she is.

I cannot say for certain that is always going to be the case, and while there is not a lot of case-law built around the law here in Washington State, there are many felonies that you would probably go to prison for killing someone over.  It would be the old adage of the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

So I am not going to call this a DGU, but would like to get some honest feedback from readers on this situation.  Sometimes being able to do some after action looking at a situation can help us learn from them.  I will freely admit I was not there, this was not my highly customized truck that was being stolen.  From what I am able to gather they took off after the stolen truck and actually began a rolling gun battle and ended up shooting the car thief driving the truck in the head, killing him.  While I am not always an advocate for using deadly force to protect property, I know this was in Texas.

http://gunssavelives.net/blog/video-truck-thief-shot-dead-by-owner/