If you can be convinced or confused into thinking everyone is out to get you including unarmed people walking away, you shouldn't be allowed to own a gun.

I feel like the obvious solution here is to have Uber disallow their drivers from delivering packages…

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Bob Lee said:

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BluHorseShu said:

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ATM9000 said:

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Bob Lee said:

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AJ02 said:

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Bob Lee said:

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barbacoa taco said:

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Bob Lee said:

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barbacoa taco said:

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and as the homeowner/victim, instead of going ape**** and murdering someone, you could easily have called the cops or just told the lady to leave your property. resolving this situation is pretty simple, you don't need to resort to killing. it's not a situation that warrants that.

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I'm going to assume this man's never been charged with murder before and, if that's the case, why do you think that is? I mean if he's such an unreasonable madman. Why do you suppose he's made it to old age without ever flying off the handle and killing someone?
It's easy to Monday morning QB. He should never have been put in that position in the first place.

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i don't know. i don't know anything about this guy. i'm just saying his actions were completely unjustified, and that's all that matters, regardless of whether he has a record.

he murdered an innocent person. even if some scammer did him dirty.

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But do you agree that if he weren't mistaken, his actions would have been justified? You still haven't answered that. If that lady really was the scammer, and he shot her, would you say he should be charged with murder? I'm not even saying his actions were just. As it turns out he should not have shot her. But he didn't know that.

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No, I don't agree his actions would have been justified, even if she were the scammer. I didn't see anywhere that the scammers were making threats to kill him. Only demanding ransom money. So either the guy knew it was a scam which is why he shot her (not a reasonable excuse to murder someone), or he didn't know it was a scam and thought she was there to pick up money (also not a reasonable excuse to murder someone). Only reasonable excuse is if you fear for your life or your family's life. Not because you fear you'll lose money.

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This thread is the best evidence I've seen for how the law informs our consciences.for better or worse. I think it's warped society's understanding of Justice.

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Warped society's understanding of justice?

If you own a firearm, it should be your accountability to bat 100% when it comes to using it responsibly and correctly. If you see it differently, then your sense of justice is pretty warped.

All of your hypothetical questions and caveats are nonsense.

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Bingo. We have the right to arm ourselves. It doesn't come with the right to say "oops" when we use the weapon poorly. The responsibility to use a gun is just as important as the right to have one. If you can't use it responsibly, you get the consequences. I do feel for the guy and obviously the poor woman. Whoever the scammer is that set this up should get the death penalty.

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Who was wronged in all of this, and who's responsible? Is justice served by locking up the 81 year old man and throwing away the key? It's easy to say knowing what we know, he shouldn't have shot her. What did he know? Guy calls him. Tells him he's holding someone hostage for a ransom. If he doesn't pay he'll kill him and his family. Lady shows up to collect the ransom. He kills her. F16: "throw the book at him!"

All I'm saying is that he was also apparently wronged, and he doesn't deserve to be charged with a crime that will effectively end his life.

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He may have been wronged, but he passed up a lot of other options before pulling out a gun and shooting someone. If someone is calling and threatening him over a ransom, he should have called the cops. If they're calling about someone supposedly in jail and wanting bail money, then he should have called that person. He could have done a multitude of nonviolent things to confirm it was just a scam or get the police involved.

He didn't.

What he did was engage the scammer and shoot the innocent person they hired to pick up the money. He was under no threat in a situation he had a large hand in intentionally and needlessly creating. Being the target of a scam does not absolve him off the consequences for how he chose to react to it and the murder he committed.

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Do we know for a fact he never called the police? He was being threatened and harassed it sounds like for at least the couple weeks leading up to the point the Uber driver came to steal his money from his perspective.

You're shining a light on a very truncated version of a whole saga. What if he did call the police? What if they were dismissive? It's reasonable to think based on what's being reported that he was frightened and confused, didn't know what the scammer was capable of. If he let her go in his mind, that would not have been the end of it. The events on the video didn't happen in a vacuum.

The easy part for me is the scammer deserves the worst. It's not clear to me what the old man deserves, but I see potential for a ton of mitigating factors that would greatly diminish his culpability in my mind.

ds00 said:

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If you can be convinced or confused into thinking everyone is out to get you including unarmed people walking away, you shouldn't be allowed to own a gun.

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This makes it sound like he was delusional. Someone really was out to get him. And she was unwittingly there as a pawn in the whole operation.

There very well may be many factors at play. However, the law is pretty clear on the fact that shooting and killing an unarmed person who poses no physical threat is murder. Unfortunately for him just about any sentence is basically a life sentence. Unfortunately for her she is dead.

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Do we know for a fact he never called the police? He was being threatened and harassed it sounds like for at least the couple weeks

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where you seeing it was a couple weeks?

on the 911 call, he says he had been getting calls that morning.


we can all empathize with the old man because of dementia issue, but there is no way someone can watch that video tape and conclude this was a good shoot.

BMX Bandit said:

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Do we know for a fact he never called the police? He was being threatened and harassed it sounds like for at least the couple weeks

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where you seeing it was a couple weeks?

on the 911 call, he says he had been getting calls that morning.


we can all empathize with the old man because of dementia issue, but there is no way someone can watch that video tape and conclude this was a good shoot.

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I don't remember, but it could have been someone postulating on social media honestly. It would make sense if it did though. I think it would be surprising if this escalated to someone in his driveway to pick up money inside of a few hours.

per this article, it was same day: https://www.thecut.com/article/loletha-hall-uber-driver-murder-scam.html

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According to the Clark County sheriff's office, on March 25, Brock received calls from someone claiming his nephew was in jail. The person on the phone threatened to kill Brock and his nephew if he didn't pay a $12,000 ransom. Police say that around the same time, Hall received an Uber request from someone involved in the scam to pick up a package from Brock's home.

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obviously, article could be wrong.

BMX Bandit said:

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per this article, it was same day: https://www.thecut.com/article/loletha-hall-uber-driver-murder-scam.html

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According to the Clark County sheriff's office, on March 25, Brock received calls from someone claiming his nephew was in jail. The person on the phone threatened to kill Brock and his nephew if he didn't pay a $12,000 ransom. Police say that around the same time, Hall received an Uber request from someone involved in the scam to pick up a package from Brock's home.

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obviously, article could be wrong.

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Not just the same day, but basically simultaneously. Would be pretty presumptuous of the scammer to think the guy had $12k stashed at home somewhere, if he had any expectation the scam would work. There was also some reporting that the scam evolved over time, like initially the scammer feigned some official capacity before ultimately it just turned to a ransom situation. Who knows. But watching the video it's clear the guy was utterly convinced the lady knew something.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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BQ78 said:

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This happened to my father 5 years ago (without the shooting). Fortunately I called him that day and heard about it and stopped it before he handed over the cash. Called the police. They aren't interested in this kind of crime and that was before police department defunding.

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Local cops don't have the technical ability or resources to do anything about it. You're looking at having to coordinate interstate or international assets to track some of this stuff down and prosecute it, and it's really expensive to do all that for what amounts to minimal benefit. You might not even be able to anything if they're in a foreign country. IIRC, the burner phone the scammer was using was traced to Canada. He could maybe be caught, but at what cost? Then you have to extradite him to prosecute him. There are simply more criminals here locally doing more dangerous things that require less effort to stop.

IMO, this is becoming a national security issue, and agencies like the NSA and FBI should be the ones proactively pursuing this.

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I was thinking about this too. The fact it's as pervasive as it is, and with such limited resources that makes it hard to catch them it should mean that when we do catch them they get the death penalty. Raise the stakes.

lol, FBI pansies main directive is not to protect you. Hence 81yo man has to shoot one of those involved with the threat of killing a family member.

Bet if the video had sound some clarity about her leaving without $12k to prevent murder of his child.

If Joe Biden is too old to be indicted, so is this old man.