Less than two months after Charlotte police shot and killed
an unarmed man who was trying to find help after having a car accident,
a woman is dead in Michigan under similar circumstances, shot in the
back of the head while reportedly searching for assistance late Friday
night.
Renisha
McBride, a 19-year-old from Detroit, is presumed to have been asking
for help when she knocked on the door of a Dearborn Heights home at 2:30
A.M. on Saturday. McBride's family says McBride had been in a car
accident and her cellphone was dead. Rather than offering shelter to
McBride, however, the homeowner came out and shot her in the head with a
shotgun. The buckshot entered McBride's head from the back, according
to statements from her aunt,
as the girl had already turned to walk or run away from the home.
Police reports say the teenager was found dead on the home's front
porch.
While the initial stories
around McBride's death dubbed it a "possible case of self-defense gone
wrong," today police sent a request to the Wayne County Prosecutor's
Office asking for charges to be filed against the unnamed resident who
shot McBride.
"He shot her in the head ... for what? For knocking on his door," McBride's aunt told the Detroit News. "If he felt scared or threatened, he should have called 911."
Michigan's self-defense act,
which bears a resemblance to Florida's infamous stand-your-ground law,
says that an individual "may use deadly force against another individual
anywhere he or she has the legal right to be with no duty to retreat"
as long as that person "honestly and reasonably" believes deadly force
is necessary to prevent imminent death, great bodily harm, or sexual
assault.
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