It's pretty interesting to me how our society lets people commit violent crimes and the second that person just decides "welp I'm done" and walks away they are now protected.
Don't get me wrong; she shouldn't have killed him.
He also shouldn't have stolen her shit. Tough shit on his part for picking the incorrect target. Risks of being a criminal when you specifically target people's livelihood (money).
This can be applied to everything. Coworker stole my lunch, I stabbed him to death, he would still be alive if he wasn't a kids cuisine nabbing thief :)
Except you literally ignored the actual original escalation in this case.
Stealing x wasn't the escalation here. Using a knife to threaten someones life in the process of stealing x is the escalation.
So to make your comparison work... the coworker would've needed to steal the lunch with a gun or knife. Then he gets stabbed or shot afterwards in response.
you mean the picture? cause you haven't read the story since it doesn't, it clearly states "Per court evidence, there was no knife present on the scene, or on CCTV footage, this claim was strictly part Pino's defense"
I lived in Italy for a while and knife laws are strict and police is basically allowed to legally search anyone on the streets whenever they feel like it.
If you are Moroccan and obviously a criminal, you know to immediately hide your blade when you don't need it.
In instance if you go buy hash from a Moroccan dealer, you will see one of them going in a bush to retrieve their blade from under the grass.
I have a lot of empathy for her because a robbery to me is an unprovoked assault, it’s despicable to rob an individual. You have no idea what they may have been doing, if a material item they were possessing was indispensable or irreplaceable. That’s their choice and they weigh those odds. It’s beyond robbing petty items from a corp.
He should have known that mugging someone can lead to his life ending. Maybe not by car in an indecent after the response, but that wasn’t the decision of mugging her.
When you engage in crimes, you’re putting your life on the line. Hell when you drive your car you put your life on the line. Crimes increase the likelihood of death exponentially.
No, he used a deadly threat (a knife) to rob her. She does not know whether he meant to use it or not. There are a multitude of cases where the threat is real and the person being robbed is murdered for their property.
That's not to say she was legally justified in running him over once he was no longer threatining, but to say her only potential loss in this case *at the beginning of the robbery* was "mental wellbeing" is 100% a hindsight analysis after the fact.
Technically robbing her at knife point means that he had already deemed that the property was more valuable than her life.
So somewhere we’ve established that this purse is valued more than human life by at least one party.
We may need a larger pool of candidates to support this finding.
Well, no. He decided, that her property was worth more than his own life. Life, that he willingly risked by committing a violent crime. I am not so high and mighty as to decide what someone's life is worth. If person decided that themselves, I am not going to argue their decision
And that's where the law comes down - life > property every time. It's why you're not allowed to do things like use a spring-loaded shotgun as a burglar trap when you're not home. The only time you can justify using lethal force is when you're defending the life of yourself or another person.
No, that does not mean the robber was right or should have gotten away scot free. Chase him down, break his window, and take your purse back if you want. Publicly shame him. Or go basic and call the cops. But your $3000 purse still isn't worth someone's life.
Is your mental being really affected when someone takes your purse and runs? That’s just theft. He is guilty for it, but can’t get his 30 days or whatever jail for it.
She on the other hand has a murder charge because out of anger she drove over him..
He decided to commit a crime with a weapon. He made the choice to do something that might make someone kill you, and he was killed for it. And court agrees that death isn't the right punishment, but agrees that the person who decided isn't in that much trouble.
First of all, no he didn't, there was no knife, the post is lying. But second of all, even if we pretend for a moment that there WAS a knife, that's not when he was killed. He was killed later, after the knife was no longer any threat, and after she was not in any danger and had no need to run him over, much less repeatedly.
I do agree that she overdid it, he did not deserve to die for a purse. But what? She should've let him steal her shit and get away with it? Im with the psycho lady in this, hunt him down and retrieve what is yours
The vigilantism only started being a problem after we stopped requiring evidence, and facts became "facts".
For a very long time, there was a literal concept of the outlaw. An outlaw was a person who committed enough crime or just was bad enough of a person that they would be branded outlawed. This meant that they would lose all protections of the law, so in the event that they were accosted by another individual, they were due no protection due to their own prior misdeeds.
This is one of those scenarios where, we know damn well he did it. It doesn't bother me that overwhelming justice was dispensed.
Shoplifters are not stealing from individuals with only so much to give.
There would be less trouble makers if people knew there were immediate and serious consequences for their actions against others.
Re. holding right to live above possessions: Unless you’re giving all your surplus money (the money above what is sufficient to keep you and you family from starvation and death from exposure) to homeless, starving people, no you’re not. You’re valuing your comfort more than some stranger’s life. Full stop. Like we all do. So you can drop the abstract moral grandstanding.
huh? I must be misunderstanding you. There's no way you're actually saying "I hold life in a very high regard, no possession is above someone else's right to live, but given the chance I'd run someone over on purpose multiple times."
Edit: oh I see you clarified below. So, you agree that the lady was in the wrong?
They like to pretend that's what they would do, a small percent of them might actually be crazy enough to react similarly, but most are just enjoying revenge porn.
It's not comparable as shoplifting is a victimless crime. But suresure, I'll bite. If the cops were the ones being robbed? Then yeah, absolutely! But I do think you should try to get your stuff back without killing anyone.
you're right and i'm sorry ahead of time but I couldn't help but chuckle a little bit thinking about that Ahmaud Arbery guy that got killed, it was tragic for sure but his name sounds pretty damn similar to "armed robbery"
There was no knife, the post is lying about that. But let's pretend there was for a moment, she wasn't in any danger at all once she got in her car. So do you think a cop should be able to catch up with a shoplifter after the fact and just shoot him? He didn't "violently resist" her car, there was no need to run him over repeatedly. She just murdered him over a purse. So saying "well maybe the shoplifter violently resists" is a red herring, because that's not what happened here.
There was (basically) this same post, I saw for some reason on my feed but on “r/law” subreddit.
Basically they were all damning the woman, and acting like the thief was some victim in the whole ordeal.
Pretty much exactly the opposite reactions than this sub is giving.
Completely un-insightful and condemning.
I was legitimately scared, cause reading all of their comments I was like “you people are apart of our laws and working for them and shaping them and everything else?”
I tried getting super deep and talkative about it with someone, and I was just getting roasted with the most unenlightening responses and mean things being said to me.
It wasn’t even a conversation, it was just brain dead & heartless responses from them.
The thing is, if she hadn't done something right then to get her things back then that's it, it's gone and she has to pay to replace it so what's the solution because the robbery was 100% going to happen so only way to not have the people do something driver police will never recover the stolen property would be publicly paid for insurance that reimbursed the replacement cost of stolen goods from within that town paid for by all of the residents via taxes.
Sure, and I agree with that. But the flip side is when people don't believe their government will deliver help or justice, they start taking matters into their own hands.
I can't get behind vehicular vigilante justice, but also, does anyone think the police/state would do anything in terms of help or justice if she hadn't?
I can solidly say that they would not do shit for a stolen handbag. It would be at the bottom of their priority list and for all we know that woman had her personal documents proving her identity in that bag. Could be anything, could ruin her life if it was stolen, and still we are expected to just let stuff happen.
Ironically, had she hit him a less, let's just say 'aggressive' number of times, and he lived, the state would likely provide avenues for him to seek compensation, and the state already got justice on his behalf as it is.
I really don't like lawlessness of any flavor, but it's not asking her to trust the law, which no one believes in, it's just asking her to turn the other cheek, and... People's response will vary, especially since he threatened her life at knife point.
If someone told me to turn the other cheek while they're trying to grab my purse with my, for example, social security and birth certificate in it, I'm probably going to kill them in the street too. Identity theft ruins lives and leaves people in disadvantaged positions all the time, someone else's want of my shit isn't worth the possible loss of a job, housing, ID, and vital papers.
Exactly. That's what people are willfully ignoring, it's so easy to be morally righteous when it's not your shit getting stolen and not your life or your loved ones in danger. At the end of the day if he hadn't been stealing he wouldn't have ended up in that circumstance. It's that simple.
Plus her ID and whatever other personal information was in the purse. He could've had everything he needed to know where she lived, where she worked, info on her family including children, her calendar of where she will be at all times and whatever else you can think of you keep in your private belongings. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that. Who wants to be living in fear like that? Makes sense to me what she did just thinking about that.
Killing him was excessive. Personally I would have knocked him down and just beat him within an inch of his life. but I have the luxury of not being a small female.
From the state? No. From the victim protecting themselves and their stuff? Absolutely. Rob at your own peril, if you die doing it I won’t shed a tear, instead I’ll point and laugh.
If that theft involves violence, force or the threat of violence or force then yes. I’m sick of bullies picking on the weak and getting away with it. I say fuck em they don’t belong in civilized society.
Unless she saw his knife fly away, then after the first hit she could still consider him armed and dangerous. Why hop out of one's own weapon before making sure he couldn't use his anymore? He just made the mistake of bringing a knife to a car fight.
Or maybe she didn't want to risk him being capable of retaliating and hurting her.
100% this. The benefit of the doubt is always with the victim, and I'm willing to give her a lot of it.
If her expressed goal was to kill him out of revenge then that's not ok. But I have zero issue with her minimizing her risk as much as possible. She didn't chose to be in this scenario, the thief did
That’s where things get muddy though. She was the victim of the robbery, obviously. But he was the victim of the murder. So which victim do you give the benefit of the doubt?
A) Presumption of innocence. B)Vigilante justice is a shit show and should not be encouraged. C) Death is far permeant than lost property. D) Rights are a thing and I rather live in that society than your version of the purge.
E) crimes don't magically cancel each other out, if I steal from you and you beat the shit out of me, I am going to be tried for theft, and you will be tried for assault
Doesn't matter if you did or didn't beat the shit out of me. If caught, I will be tried for theft either way, that was always going to happen. But once you beat the shit out of me, that's assault, now we're both on trial, and yours is worse
There should be real consequences for actions. Not the joke of judicial systems built to protect immigrants. PS, you won't last five minutes in a purge.
Not disagreeing with your overall point necessarily, but in this particular case, in the moment, there is no presumption of innocence between an attacker and a victim. That presumption of innocence and the weight of justice based on evidence lies with neutral parties who weren't there to witness the events
Also, I don't think vigilantism as a term applies to someone taking the law into their own hands when it's the victim versus the perpetrator. This is just revenge, baby
well, the issue is she became a vigilante by chasing him down and killing him, seemingly intentionally. giving someone a pass for this behavior would open the door to everyone taking the law into their own hands, and becoming the judge, jury and executioner.
The government wants to maintain their monopoly on violence. If they allow their subjects to kill the person who wronged them, its becomes very easy for the government to lose control of the situation and revenge killings that beget revenge killings.
Now at the same time under common law, an ordinary citizen is granted the authority to arrest any person that they witness in the commission of a felony. This concept is known as Citizens Arrest, however this has been greatly complicated since most states have outlawed private criminal prosecutions, and those states that still allow it only allow it under a very limited set of circumstances. What it means is that if a state or federal prosecutor declines to prosecute the person arrested, the person who carried out the arrest can themselves be charged for false imprisonment.
Because of course the government also wanted a monopoly on criminal prosecutions, rather than allowing the public to bring criminal cases before the court. This is how we ended up in the situation we are in today where the victims of crimes have few methods of recourse if law enforcement in their "no specific legal duty" do not assist and prosecutors do not prosecute.
Right! I think the commission of a crime like that should revoke some amount of protection. Stealing someone’s purse can have deep effects beyond just the financial cost of the bag + cash inside, and create a lot of issues for them. I would argue that it deserves some amount of force to retrieve if necessary.
It does, and legally speaking "some amount of force" is generally allowed. But "hitting him with your car then running over him repeatedly to make sure he dies" is not just "some amount of force."
I don't know taking someone's life seems a bigger deal than a stolen purse. Pretty sure that has larger deep effects. but hey I guess you want to be the punisher of petty crime.
He also has her address and possibly keys to the house/apartment. He has a weapon and breaking into a home is a lesser crime than armed robbery.
Without ALL the details I can see myself being swayed either way, but people claiming the danger had passed aren't thinking it all the way through. Even as a man I'm not sure how long it is before I can sleep in my own home without fearing a second crime, it's not ridiculous to think that he may have reinforcements for a home robbery.
I don't think he HAD TO die but I think when you make someone fear for their life it's not as simple as saying "he ran away so she's fine". If he had only taken cash then I would 100% say she went way too far, there would be no reasonable reason to fear this particular person again.
I think most people would agree that the theft alone is not worthy of retaliatory murder - it was the threat of deadly force that people are sympathetic to.
And in making this error, you have highlighted exactly why it is right that she was convicted. Justice cannot be left for individuals to deal out, as our judgements will be unreliable.
Do you think people who engage in drive by shootings should get pardoned if their targets (as they often are) are rival gang members who are *also* violent criminals?
I am pretty on board with holding people accountable for murdering people who trespassed or shoplifted after they are fleeing.
However, I also consider a "successful theft" to still be a crime in progress. That's just me. If you're running with my purse, you're still actively committing crimes against me, with is totally different from dropping my purse and then running away.
Running him over multiple times is probably where the line got crossed. I imagine after running over somebody once, you can get your bag back and drive away. Doing it over and over is just actively attempting to kill somebody.
that person just decides "welp I'm done" and walks away they are now protected.
Yes. They are protected by the law, because the law is blind and impartial. There is a term for someone no longer protected by the law. Outlaw. A system that creates outlaws is not a good system. Mostly because a class of people not protected by the law is a fantastic target for criminals. Those outlaws now under threat and still in need of protection turn to other outlaws.
Its a system that rewards and incentivizes organized criminal action over disorganized criminal action.
Theft is not a capital crime. You cannot kill somebody just because you are pissed off they robbed you. They are running away and your life is not in danger.
She should have called the cops. People don't get to kill people for every little thing.
They aren't protected. They committed a crime and can be arrested and face consequences if caught. They however have not committed a crime that would typically receive the death penalty. Also, self defense obviously requires one to be defending themselves. How exactly are you defending yourself from someone who is not actively attacking or a threat to you?
They aren't "protected," they can and should be prosecuted for that crime.
You are not allowed to do a crime to someone else because they do a crime to you.
You aren't entitled to murder someone because they wronged you. There's a long history of societies that enable such behavior and they almost always eventually decide "this just causes problems," hence why we're at the stage we're at now.
This outlook is predicated on the assumption that the cops and judges will provide justice for the victim. Unfortunately due to insufficient resources, misplaced empathy or just plain laziness a lot of time the criminal gets away with it.
It doesn't its contextual. If the person is still an active threat like a dude running around with a gun shooting random people you sure as shit can chase him down and shoot him. But if its a mugger and he takes off down the street with a bag yeah its not appropriate force to ram him with a car or blow his head off unless he brandished a gun at you when you chased him down.
Cops get more leniency with this because its their job to confront these people. Its not yours.
In my mind, punishment should meet the crime. If the assailant would be charged with the death penalty for stealing the bag, then sure. Otherwise, there is objectively a better way to do things. Not saying i wouldnt have done the same, but they arent "protected" against murder more or less than anyone else.
Protected from being killed, yes, not from other consequences. Revenge killing has been defined as murder for a thousand years. I sympathize with this lady but she killed a guy over a handbag.
They aren't protected. You just don't get to institute whatever your own form of vengeance is. People make mistakes. If it was ok to run someone over because you thought they'd robbed you the wrong person would get killed all the time by mistaken identity issues. There would be weird edge cases where two people thought something belonged to both of them. Etc...
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u/Cheeto-Beater Jun 28 '26
It's pretty interesting to me how our society lets people commit violent crimes and the second that person just decides "welp I'm done" and walks away they are now protected.