Check the video:
According to North Miami Police officials, 21-year-old Pamario Rolle was minding his own business and eating his food inside Licking Miami – located at Northwest 125th Street and 7th Avenue – when 24-year-old Henry Poumier-Cristo stood up and began striking him Tuesday night.
Police say surveillance video showed that Rolle said nothing to Poumier-Cristo to instigate the altercation. But, after being hit and leaving the area, Rolle returned with a firearm and shot Poumier-Cristo outside the restaurant.
Surveillance Footage Shows Shooting Outside North Miami Restaurant
(1) You are attacked by somebody with an obvious advantage (Disparity of force) and respond in a defensive manner(2) as you are trying to escape (3) which you do, break the fight and manage to produce your weapon (4), The attacker sees the weapon and decides to leave the scene (5) and at this time the event that forced you to go for your weapon has ended. You are no longer in fear of death or grave bodily harm. Any action here can be either interpreted as either “making sure the attacker left” or “Giving chase” (6&7.) If nothing else had happened, I am amost sure (IANAL) no charges would have been brought, but Ego reared its ugly head and you shot an unarmed fleeing man (8) and now you arrested and charged with aggravated battery with a weapon.
Our only satisfaction when using deadly force is that we stopped an attacker from being able to kill or maim you or an innocent person. If the attacker stops or runs away, we are no longer withing the protection of the narrow window of Self-Defense and any use of Deadly Force is illegal and in the case above, just trying to soothe a bruised ego.
Yup.
This guy screwed up, big time. Irony: if he’d been in possession of his firearm in the restaurant, got assaulted, pulled his irons and shot the guy while being attacked, he’d probably be home free.
This is the exact point and scenario I brought up in my post “The point at which the muzzle should clear leather caught on security camera.”
Rolle was attacked without provocation. He retreated, and it looks like Poumier-Cristo started to follow him. At the moment when Rolle pulled out his gun, he was in the right. The second he chased down Poumier-Cristo he was in the wrong.
It looked to be – until Rolle went after Poumier-Cristo – a legitmate DGU without a shot fired.
And you don’t have to convince me that prosecutors are assholes who don’t care about justice, only about boosting their reputations with convictions. I know that.
It takes a lot of maturity to really understand the law, and get the emotions out of the way. There was a time in my life when I would have chased an attacker down, etc… Age, and being afraid that “He deserved it” would not be a good excuse have calmed me down a lot.