Discussion of the Houston Taco Shop Shooting

I don’t do YouTube videos analyzing violent incidents. There are enough of those, some good, some not. But several people have asked me about the video of the shooting that occurred earlier this week during an armed robbery in a Houston, TX taco shop.

The defender used some good tactics before he drew his pistol. He feigned compliance and directed the robber’s attention (and gun) away by throwing some cash on the floor. Then he drew his pistol surreptitiously and waited for the right moment.

His initial shots, when the robber was standing, were clearly justified. It does not matter that the robber’s back was toward the defender, nor that the robber’s gun was not real. The robber was in the process of committing a violent felony armed with a weapon that appeared real. Yes, the "backstop" was compromised, there was an innocent patron beyond the robber, potentially in the line of fire. This is a judgement call. But at such close range it was reasonable for the defender to have confidence that he will place his shots into the bad guy and not miss and hit the innocent - as he did.

The shots into the robber after he fell to the ground may or may not be justified. It is hard to tell from the video, but if the gun was still in his hand or within reach, if he was still moving, reaching for the gun, or trying to get up, it may have been reasonable to believe he was still a threat. It would probably have been preferable at that point for the defender to cover the bad guy and give verbal commands (“drop the gun”, “stay down”, “don’t move”, etc.) and only shoot again if the bad guy moved in a threatening manner.

The final shot was not justified, in my opinion. The bad guy was down and not moving and the defender had picked up the bad guy’s gun. If it was intentional, it was a coup de grace, essentially an execution. Someone suggested it was accidental, a negligent discharge, perhaps caused by a cross sympathetic reflex in the defender’s gun hand as his other hand gripped the bad guy’s gun. Even if that were the case, he is still responsible for that shot. Once the bad guy was down and the shooting was over, the defender’s finger should have been off the trigger and his gun pointed in a safe direction. Maybe this makes a difference in the charge, for example, between murder and manslaughter. But it doesn’t absolve him.

The defender also left the scene. An aggressive prosecutor may try to characterize that as “consciousness of guilt”.

Some have asked about/commented on legal questions turning on whether the robber was already dead when the unjustified shot or shots were fired. In my opinion these are “law school exam” type questions of interest only to lawyers (or wannabe lawyers).

The lesson here for the armed citizen is simple. We shoot to stop the threat and stop shooting when the threat is neutralized. Once the threat is neutralized, any additional rounds expose the citizen to criminal jeopardy whether the charge is murder, manslaughter, desecration of a corpse, whatever.

Whether or not the defender is charged will depend on the grand jury and the prosecutor. It’s Texas, so he has a chance. If the members of the grand jury are citizens who are sick of crime they may well not indict. But a “Soros prosecutor” may well see this as an opportunity to demonstrate why “ordinary citizens can’t be trusted with firearms”.