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Looks Like The Right Call To Me
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 11:59 pm
by Lord Jim
Father who beat daughter’s alleged attacker to death won’t be charged
A grand jury in Texas has decided not to indict a father who beat to death a man he found allegedly sexually abusing his young daughter.
"Under the law, deadly force is justified to stop a sexual assault," Lavaca County District Attorney Heather McMinn said on Tuesday at a press conference announcing the grand jury's decision. "All the evidence presented by the sheriff's department and the Texas Rangers indicated that was in fact what was occurring when the victim's father arrived at the scene."
McMinn added: "The substantial amount of evidence showed that the witness statements and the father's statement and what the father had observed was in fact what had happened that day."
Jesus Mora Flores was beaten to death on June 9 in Shiner, Texas, after the 23-year-old father allegedly discovered the 47-year-old Flores in a pasture on the family's ranch on top of his 5-year-old daughter with his pants and underwear down. (News organizations, including Yahoo News, are not naming the father in order to protect the identity of his daughter.)
A witness who saw Flores—a Mexican who legally worked at the ranch—"forcibly carrying" the girl into a secluded area of the property alerted the father, who followed his daughter's screams to the pasture, pulled Flores off her, and "inflicted several blows to the man's head and neck area."
After beating Flores, the father called 911.
"I need an ambulance," the father told the dispatcher, according to 911 tapes released by police. "This guy was raping my daughter and I beat him up and I don't know what to do. This guy is fixing to die on me, man, and I don't know what to do."
"Come on! This guy is going to die on me!" he continued during the frantic, five-minute call. "I don't know what to do!"
Emergency workers, as well as the daughter's grandfather and aunt, tried to revive Flores but could not. Lavaca County Sheriff Micah Harmon said he found the distraught father crying, saying that he had not intended to kill Flores.
"He's a peaceable soul," V'Anne Huser, the father's attorney, said. "He had no intention to kill anybody that day."
The case has sparked a debate about whether the killing was justified.
"There are those ... who feel that as abominable as the actions of Flores were, he did not deserve a death sentence delivered through vigilante justice," Diane Fanning wrote on Forbes.com. "If I found a half-naked man on top of my 5-year-old daughter, I might not have the strength to kill him. But I do know I would jump on his back and try to rip his eyes right out of his head."
A Time magazine reader even suggested "lifetime free passes to Disneyland" should be awarded to the father for protecting his child: "Touch a kid. Die. Done."
Local residents in Shiner—which has a population of about 2,000—supported the father, too.
"I think it was a good decision," Lamont Matthews told the Victoria (Texas) Advocate. "I would have done the same thing."
"The father has gone through enough," Gail Allen, another resident, told The Associated Press. "The little girl is going to be traumatized for life, and the father, too, for what happened. He was protecting his family. Any parent would do that."
"It's sad a man had to die," Michael James Veit said. "But I think anybody would have done that."
"In our opinion," Huser said Tuesday, "the story is over."
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/fat ... 42957.html
When I first read the headline I wasn't sure how I was going to come down on this, (The headline doesn't make it clear that the attack was in progress, and it also makes it sound like there was a vicious "beating" not just two or three blows...a really sensationalized headline) but if the forensic evidence supports the "several blows" account, that along with the 9/11 call would create enough reasonable doubt regarding the intent to kill to pilot
The Queen Mary 2 through.
Add those factors to an incredibly unsympathetic "victim" (a man in the process of raping a five year old) and I can't imagine that there's a DA in the country who would want to take this case to trial....
Re: Looks Like The Right Call To Me
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 12:05 am
by Gob
I hope the kid is going to be ok. Apart from that, natural justice has won out as far as I can see.
Re: Looks Like The Right Call To Me
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 5:05 am
by BoSoxGal
We've all seen cases where just one or two punches have caused serious bodily injury and/or death. I don't think this father could have been expected to react any other way but using force to end the rape of his child in progress.
I would have made the same call as the prosecutor; at the same time, I'm chagrined at the calls from some for lifetime passes to Disneyland, etc. There is nothing to celebrate in this event.
Re: Looks Like The Right Call To Me
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 6:10 am
by Gob
bigskygal wrote:We've all seen cases where just one or two punches have caused serious bodily injury and/or death.
If I caught someone doing that to a five year old Hatch, it would not have stopped at one or two punches, only the inability to stop hitting him from sheer exhaustion would have stopped me.
Re: Looks Like The Right Call To Me
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 4:57 pm
by Andrew D
bigskygal wrote:I would have made the same call as the prosecutor; at the same time, I'm chagrined at the calls from some for lifetime passes to Disneyland, etc. There is nothing to celebrate in this event.
I agree.
The Israelites escaped Egypt with the help of God, who parted the waters of the "Red Sea" for them. The Israelites gave thanks to God. And God said to them "My creation -- those whom I created as an act of love -- are drowning in the sea. And you rejoice to me?"
However just one may think that this is, there is no cause for celebration.
Re: Looks Like The Right Call To Me
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 7:17 pm
by Rick
I hope the little girl retains her sanity.
As has been pointed out by another elsewhere, she not only has to get over the indignity of sexual assault at a young age but then had to endure watching her father kill a man in front her.
Re: Looks Like The Right Call To Me
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 9:42 pm
by Grim Reaper
On the bright side "I killed the last man who touched my daughter" will work wonders when she starts dating in the future.
Re: Looks Like The Right Call To Me
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 9:57 pm
by Scooter
If the objective is to get her to join a convent.
Re: Looks Like The Right Call To Me
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 1:01 am
by Jarlaxle
Andrew D wrote:bigskygal wrote:I would have made the same call as the prosecutor; at the same time, I'm chagrined at the calls from some for lifetime passes to Disneyland, etc. There is nothing to celebrate in this event.
I agree.
The Israelites escaped Egypt with the help of God, who parted the waters of the "Red Sea" for them. The Israelites gave thanks to God. And God said to them "My creation -- those whom I created as an act of love -- are drowning in the sea. And you rejoice to me?"
However just one may think that this is, there is no cause for celebration.
There is one less subhuman polluting the human race. That alone is reason to celebrate.
Re: Looks Like The Right Call To Me
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 2:16 am
by loCAtek
bigskygal wrote:I'm chagrined at the calls from some for lifetime passes to Disneyland, etc. There is nothing to celebrate in this event.
It's a misguided comment certainly, but it may not have been offered as suggestion to celebrate anything. Long before the Disney advertising campaign to reward yourself for victory; "Where are you going? ... I'm going to Disneyland!"
...many people thought a treatment to childhood trauma was to give the child an experience that was as strongly positive, as the traumatic event was negative.
As was used after the 1979 Chowchilla bus kidnapping; after the children were rescued and returned to their families, some were taken a trip to Disneyland by their parents, who thought this would counter any potential PTSD, a yet undiagnosed condition in those days. It was the follow up research involving those children, that would later determine that those individuals would still develop Stress Disorder symptoms.
For some reason, it's still a popular misconception that a 'good' time, can cancel out a 'bad' one; the Time magazine reader may have been offering what he thought, in his uneducated opinion, was the best solution for healing.