Houston dad shoots, kills boy found inside daughter’s bedroom

[Jack Burton]

Some may think as you do but you are not correct in this. Some kids are just self centered self serving self righteous dipp-****s. Good family's can have bad kids. I have seen it and experienced some of these things myself. No parent is perfect. There is not always a traceable path to mis-direction. My wife has 3 sisters and a brother. One of the absolute best family's I have ever known. The oldest sister went off the rails a long time ago and despite all of our best efforts she chose to orbit another planet other than this one. My only brother took the same path. Total losers despite every effort from good parents.

We had a case in our church a few years back where the husband and wife were a great couple. Nice, easy going, and everyone liked them. Yet, the 16 year old daughter conspired with her boyfriend to kill both parents so she could "run away" with him. The boy actually tried to shoot the parents but the father was able to get to his own .38 and managed to kill the boy. It was tragic all around.

 

[LANShark42]

Tragic. I would like to think that I would have handled it better, but hard to know what you would do when stressed out and fearing the worst.

^^This

 

[Jack Burton]

Come on, the best part is living to tell the tale. I am sure the statute of limitations are up by now. Those girls' parents are prolly dead by now. You can tell us. We can keep a secret.

Let's just say that when I moved back to town after the Navy I found she was going to the same church as I was and married to a good friend. Awkward.

 

[Kutnupe14]

True, however that isn't this scenario. Someone who, by all the facts you know at the time, is an intruder in your house and who is non-compliant when you have them at gunpoint is not "merely reaching for something."

I also find it interesting that so many people assume rage is the motivation.

Theres too many details to left out to have a good opinion on this. Was his daughter in the room with the boy, or did they make contact before he entered the room, and the daughter said she didn't know who it was? I personally think anger played a role in this shooting. A 17 year old boy just happens to be in your daughters room, in her bed. I KNOW I'd be thinking. The demeanor of the daughter should also be taken into consideration. If a stranger was really in her bed, I'd expect she'd be serious distraught, much more so than someone she knew. And in a believed to be home intrusion situation, I find it odd, that apparently there was a conversation going on between the three.

 

[ghuns]

Awkward.

Yeah, had a few of those moments. Bumped into one in town with the wife and kids in tow. Pleasantries were exchanged. As we walked away my 5 year old son asked, who was that lady? My wife replied, just some whore your daddy used to date. 4 year old daughter asks, mommy, what's a whore? I said, WHO WANTS ICE CREAM?

 

[Slider]

UPDATE.

Update.

Charges unlikely for Houston dad accused of shooting daughter?s boyfriend, prosecutor says | Fox News

 

[ghuns]

Update.

Charges unlikely for Houston dad accused of shooting daughter?s boyfriend, prosecutor says | Fox News

Well, it IS Texas.

 

[KittySlayer]

Things that Bang in the night.

Bad things always seem to happen after midnight.

Your asleep and one child comes and says there is a stranger in the house in another child's bedroom. You go to that child's bedroom, the child denies knowing the person (and we can probably assume it wasn't a calm "gosh Daddy, no" denial), and you hold the person at gun point until you can evaluate what's going on and summon the police. He doesn't listen to your commands, becomes confrontational, and starts reaching for things.

Well in addition to the Birds and the Bees talk mom and dad should have had a chat with their daughter about home security and weapons in the house. Basically telling her, we lock the doors at O dark OClock. If you hear anyone coming into the house find a secure place to hide while mom or dad clear the house. No surprises so you don't accidently get mistaken for an intruder and shot. My son, who lives away from home now has very specific instructions, never enter the house without calling in advance. I regularly remind him and he gives me crap about being paranoid. There should be no surprises inside the castle. If the daughter is old enough to be spreading her legs for guys she is old enough to know the rules of the house and the danger of sneaking guys in the house.

While initial information indicates a tragic event, the brief article sounds like dad may have been in the right. Trouble is, even if it went down as reported (unknown intruder reaching for something) it may not come out that way in court. The only witness besides dad is a lying teenager and as her mouth starts running inconvenient facts(?) will be coming out of her mouth. She will be going in circles if she ends up on the stand and gets cross examined.

She should have chosen an away game that night so the only things going bang would have been the headboard.

 

[Kutnupe14]

Fyi, this is another instance of "dead men tell no tales." Of course, the kid was "reaching for something," that justifies the shoot.

 

[Kutnupe14]

So why hasn't the daughter been charged with something (I'm not sure what)? She gave a false statement that led directly to the death of a person, who was in the residence with her permission. Seems like there has to be something criminal there.

 

[ghuns]

Tragic story. Not enough facts. The one absolute fact in this situation is a young man is dead. Well, that and the street cred that this dad now has with would-be suitors of his daughters is off the charts. We know that too.

 

[venenoindy]

Any way I look at it to me is a tragedy, I wasn't the most wise young men but I knew better than sneak in at a girls house while the parents inside. We all made mistakes and will continue to do all our lives but like in this case it cost this boy his life, I have a boy and we will have a talk about this kind of situation.

 

[Jack Burton]

speaking of heartbreaking...

No charges against Connecticut dad who shot son | Fox News

 

[Mark 1911]

speaking of heartbreaking...

I can't imagine how totally devastating this must be. Had the father known who he was shooting at, he may not have shot at all. He may have let his son kill him rather than to kill his own son. What a terrible choice.

 

[sbz]

No I would have not shot the kid.

 

[Joe G]

Has anything been written about the "boyfriend" who was shot? His family's perspective? Did they know their son was dating the girl?

 

[2A_Tom]

Guns don't kill people. Dads with daughters kill people.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

If a stranger was really in her bed, I'd expect she'd be serious distraught, much more so than someone she knew.

This is a tangent, but one that's important. People don't always act like you'd expect them to, especially when a sex crime is involved. There has been an unfortunate trend in the history of law enforcement to discount rape victim's statements because they were "too calm" or "too compliant" or the like. I'd like to say this is all in the past, but recent events with another jurisdiction proved me wrong. Luckily IMPD was able to set it right, and the guilty party is in jail.

I had a woman report a carjacking. 3 months later she calls me and says it was actually a rape and then a carjacking, and for a variety of reasons (she felt like she'd been stupid in 'allowing it to happen', didn't want her parents to find out, etc.) but her friend wanted her to tell the truth. I believe her, but 3 months later there's nothing I can do with it. I remember she was extremely calm at the scene, like shell shock calm, but I chalked it up to the carjacking. She still doesn't want to prosecute for the sex crime because of the threat of having to testify, face him again, etc. I talked to one woman who was raped by two men who stated she simply stared at a church's steeple through the window during the attack because she knew she couldn't overpower them or summon help. Not everyone is in hysterics, some simply shut down or concentrate on surviving.

Please don't make the mistake of disbelieving someone who claims to be the victim of sexual assault, especially a date rape scenario, simply because their behavior doesn't conform to what you think it should be.

 

[LANShark42]

Guns don't kill people. Dads with lying daughters kill people.

FTFY

 

[HeadlessRoland]

Your assessment is neither fair nor accurate, and you're certainly not taking into account the differences between children. Know how I know you've never had to raise a child with diminished cognitive abilities? Those children don't necessarily "have the common sense God gave to turnips", as you so eloquently put it

Some kids are more prone to making poor decisions than others, regardless of their upbringing. Maybe those saying otherwise could see that if they weren't so far up on their high horses.

Yes, because somehow rather than critiquing her behavior and possible de-railing of her upbringing, I was actually insulting the mentally deficient. Of course. Next I'll proceed with the Down's Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome jokes, because those are so funny, right?

It's very easy to say 'bad seed' or 'it just happens sometimes' rather than to admit that as a parent, somehow, in some way, one has failed. Oh, it was some external influence. How convenient a claim! They hung out with a bad crowd, or kept making bad choices - who has ultimate control over them until the age of majority? Parents. Who decides who their children hang out with? Parents. Who decides the education their children will receive? Parents. Who decides what food their children will eat? Parents. Who decides the moral and religious instruction and influence upon their children? Parents. It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools and it is a poor parent who blames their child as incorrigible or unsalvageable or otherwise deficient in their behavior. Children don't have the ability to make informed decisions, which is why it is the job and role of parents to make those choices on their behalf. Castigating or blaming a child for having gone off the rails without one or many instigating influences is totally insufficient regarding solving or tracing the start of the problem.

Children don't go from being little cherubs in the cradle to total deliquent miscreants on the street overnight, they never have done so and never will. The path from good to bad isn't the flicking of a lightswitch. It the job and role of a parent to notice and detect and alter unacceptable behaviors before they become even more malfunctioning. Blaming outside external factors is just shirking responsibility. As a parent, there shouldn't be any external influences on one's child that one does not approve of as a parent, this is another job and role as parent. I don't buy the some-people-are-just-born-monsters theory. Do you think Adolf Hitler was evil? Undeniably, if we can resort to subjective terms. What about when he was a boy? Do you think he dreamed of Jews in the crematoria then? What about as a young man who envisioned himself an artist - when he painted landscapes, do you still think he had mass genocide on his mind? It's impossible to say for sure, but we know for a fact that his moral code, if he had one, was severely skewed and clearly a moral code that would have prevented the wholesale slaughter and genocide of entire groups of people clearly had not been instilled into him well enough.

Adam Lanza's father wishes his own son - who is admittedly a mass-murderer - had never been born. Much easier to do that and wish than to accept some personal role in his offspring going off the rails and sinking into mental illness and not noticing until it was too late. Much easier to try to wash the blood off one's hands by imagining that he had nothing to do with not noticing his son's illness or having any hand in his son's upbringing despite being one of the two most influential and present people in his son's life. Much easier to shirk responsibility than to admit that one has not done one's job properly. Admitting that would be hard indeed.

I won't say - can't say with certainty - that any parenting style is good or bad. But the results of that parenting people will ascertain as those offspring grow into adulthood. A tree is known by its fruits.