Case of Texas Man Who Killed Next-Door Burglars Goes to Grand Jury
A grand jury will decide next week whether to issue a homicide indictment for a Texas man who confronted and fatally shot two burglars breaking into a neighbor’s home.
The case has set off protests for and against the man, 61-year-old Joe Horn of suburban Houston, who called 911 and threatened to shoot the men before he rushed outside with his shotgun, the New York Times reports. The operator advised Horn not to shoot or go outside, saying, “Ain’t no property worth shooting somebody over, OK?”
Horn was white, the two men killed were black, and the burglarized neighbor was Vietnamese, raising issues of race. After demonstrations, the city council preliminarily approved a ban on protests at private residences.
A law that allows Texans to use deadly force to protect their homes without retreating doesn’t apply to those who protect neighbor’s homes, the Times says, but the Houston Chronicle cites a law allowing deadly force to stop burglars from escaping with stolen property.
A spokesman for the suburban Pasadena police department, Capt. Bud Corbett, told the Times that Horn may have seen the men as the threat. The fact that an arriving officer said the two men “received gunfire from the rear,” is not necessarily conclusive, he said.
