The Story

Imagine being the victim of a home invasion and doing everything you can to defend your home and your life. The attackers kill someone close to you and unfortunately, you take the life of one of the home invaders. Things are bad and about to get worse. Police charge you with a crime.

Man Charged with Crime After Defending Home

How can this happen? How can the police charge the resident with a crime after doing what any one of us would do in the situation? Well… to know why we need to know the full story.

It all starts when the invaders enter the home and attack those in the home, a man and a woman. Throughout the attack, the invaders have guns and threaten the residents. The parties all knew each other and this was a premeditated attack on the man and woman in the home. The woman was killed during the attack and, one can assume, this is what caused the man to wrangle a gun from the attackers. The victim was able to save himself and caused harm to the attackers. Again, this all seems within his rights. However, it was what he did after the attack that led to the criminal charge.

The victim hid the gun from the police and was charged with tampering with evidence and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Original story reported by Yahoo!

What Can We Learn?

You may be wondering why I decided to share this news story with you. What can you learn from this when you are not a felon and you would not hide evidence. I know, it seems a little farfetched. If you know your laws and defend your home legally, you should not have to worry. You need to do your research so you know what you can do in self-defense and prevent being charged with a crime. A great resource to learn the do’s and don’ts is Massad Ayoob. He has some great articles and videos on this very topic. Here is a recent video by Mas on how to interact with the Police following a self-defense shooting. If you have to harm someone in self-defense be honest about it and don’t hide evidence or self-defense tools from the police. Being a law-abiding citizen who is educated will make all the difference.