Castleton Square Mall shooting update: Mistake over identical car (fox59.com)
To flip the table on our regular car-jacking headlines…
This story was originally reported as a “mall shooting” incident. As details have emerged, it is now being reported as a case of mistaken vehicles. A young man and a teenager exited the mall and went to enter a white Chevy Impala, when an occupant inside the car opened fire through the window. It turns out that the two people trying to enter the vehicle had also arrived in a white Chevy Impala, and had simply walked up to the wrong car by mistake. (I would wager most of us have made a similar mistake at one point in our lives.)
I anticipate that the shooter will try to claim self-defense. There may be grounds for that, as state law allows lethal force to defend an occupied vehicle from illegal entry. However, since it was originally reported as a “mall shooting” and the deceased is a teenager, I think the shooter will have an uphill climb in court. More importantly, regardless of the legal outcome, this person will have to live with the fact that he killed a kid simply because they had identical cars.