Seen today in the New York Post:

Teen allegedly kills man wrongfully accused of sexually assaulting his sister

A teenage boy fatally attacked a man after the teen’s younger sister told her brother that she was sexually assaulted by the man on a public bus in Utah — an incident that investigators say never happened, according to reports.

Police say the 16-year-old girl told her 17-year-old brother that she was sexually assaulted aboard a Cache Valley Transit District bus around 3 p.m. April 23, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

The brother immediately sprang into action and tracked down 62-year-old Michael Fife — the man his sister accused — as the man was exiting the bus in the city of Logan, according to the news outlet.

The teen then attacked Fife, who suffered head injuries and was beaten unconscious.

Fife fell to the ground and was left lying on the sidewalk as the teenage boy fled, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Later that night, the boy’s sister reported the sexual assault to police, who discovered that surveillance footage from the bus showed that the assault never happened.

“Logan Police detectives reviewed the video footage of the alleged assault,” authorities said, according to the news outlet. “The video showed Mr. Fife walking past the girl, but no sexual assault occurred.”

Fife died from his injuries four days after the attack.

The Logan Police issued a press statement on their Facebook page that gives more details.

The more I look into these one punch kills, the more I see this trend.

Now, I am not a medical expert or a coroner, and this is not a scientific study by any means, but it seems that in quite a number of these cases, the victim loses consciousness with the punch and falls and hits their head on something hard – e.g., concrete or cement – and that impact does enough damage to be fatal.

Also, many of these deaths take days to occur as swelling of the brain and brain damage are not immediately fatal but respond poorly to treatment.

Going through the comments left online, it seems that a lot of people believe that the girl that made the false accusation should be charged in the death of Mr. Fife as well.

I wholeheartedly agree.

I will also say this.  It is time that the law is changed.

I am going to start writing my state legislature in Alabama, and I encourage others to do it in your states as well.

We need to alter disparity of force laws.  I have covered too many of these one punch fatalities.  When a grown man takes a swing at your head, that has every potential to be lethal.

The punch may kill you, or you fall down and crack your skull on the sidewalk and that may kill you.  Either way, you die.

It time that the law recognize that a punch isn’t like in the movies where the hero blacks out just in time to wake up for plot advancement.  A punch in real life lands a person in the hospital where they take a couple of days to die as their brain swells and dies from choking off its own blood supply.

Considering that, it is not unreasonable to respond to a man trying to clobber your skull with his fist, by shooting him.

The law needs accept that.

Let’s change disparity of force laws to recognize how dangerous its is when an angry man takes a swing at your head.