Texas-Book-Gun Law Armed And Educated - Flipbook - Page 197
B. What if the situation is not as I thought it appeared to be?
A third person and a “Good Samaritan” might not see things as
they really are. When a person elects to use force or deadly force to
defend a third person, it can all go terribly wrong.
EXAMPLE:
Peter, carrying a handgun under Texas Constitutional Carry, visits
his local big box store. He parks and exits his vehicle, whereupon
he witnesses a man struggling to get a handbag away from an
elderly woman. Peter, believing the elderly woman is a victim
of robbery, drops to one knee while drawing his handgun. Still
seeing the man pulling the handbag away from the woman, Peter
decides to protect the would-be victim of robbery and fires his
gun, striking the robber.
If there was in fact a robbery taking place, Peter’s use of deadly
force is likely legally justified, because if we put Peter in the
shoes of the third person (the elderly woman in the example),
Peter would be legally justified in using deadly force to stop the
robbery. Thus, the law will deem Peter’s belief that the use of
deadly force was immediately necessary as reasonable. But what
if there was no robbery?
In fact, what would happen if in the instant after Peter fires his
gun, the woman Peter sought to protect immediately turns to help
the wounded, suspected robber yelling “murderer!” at Peter while
screaming in fear and grief, “why did you shoot my son?” It turns
out that there was no robbery, just a son attempting to retrieve his
mother’s car keys because she has Alzheimer’s disease, and after a
frantic search he had found her wandering in the store’s parking lot.
How does the law deal with this scenario?
186 | CHAPTER EIGHT
