Here we go again. A story broke a few days back about a 19 year-old woman being shot in the head by a homeowner:
It was shortly before 1 a.m. Nov. 2 and Renisha McBride was involved in an accident with a parked vehicle in Detroit.
More than two hours later and six blocks away, she was shot in the face by a man who told police he thought someone was breaking into his Dearborn Heights home. The 54-year-old homeowner, according to police, said his 12-gauge shotgun discharged accidentally.
What happened during the hours between the accident and McBride’s death on the front porch of a home in the 16800 block of West Outer Drive remains a mystery. New details surfaced in the controversial case Monday, raising more questions about the 19-year-old’s death.
Typically whenever there’s a shooting like this people immediately jump to one side or the other. This incident is no exception. Individuals typically aligned with the social justice movement, including Al Sharpton (who I’m told is a reverend but as an ordained minister I am unable to comprehend his status as a religious leader due to what he’s said and done historically), are calling for the shooter’s head and claiming this incident is a clear case of racism. I’ve already heard several individuals who are typically aligned with the gun rights movement jumping to the conclusion that the homeowner was in the right and that this case has nothing to do with racism.
Let me remind everybody that we have no idea what happened. We don’t have access to any of the information collected by police except for the little tidbits fed to us by the press. The press tend to get more details wrong than right during the early days of a story so we have to take anything we’re being told with a grain of salt. In other words we know nothing. Until we know something it’s a bit premature to jump to conclusions about who was in the right and who was in the wrong.
Instead of exploiting this incident politically let’s step aside and wait until all of the evidence has been brought to the table.