Exercising the Right
Mother Evicted for Using a Gun to Stop a Burglar
Fox4, the Fox affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth, reported on December 22 about a wild incident in Fort Worth involving a single mother living in federally subsidized housing who was evicted for using a handgun to avert a burglary. Twenty-five-year-old Aleah Wallace, a mother of four, had had her federally subsidized rental unit burglarized multiple times when she wasn’t home. Fed up, she purchased a handgun for self-defense. Someone then tried breaking in around 1:15 a.m. on December 14, while Wallace and her kids were home. Wallace called the police, who came to the apartment but did not find the burglar.
Less than two hours later, someone once again tried entering her apartment, through the daughter’s bedroom window. Wallace immediately grabbed her handgun and fired through the window, hitting the suspect and mortally wounding him. Police were called back to the apartment and found the deceased suspect at the scene. Law enforcement later determined that the suspect was only 14 years old. Wallace explained she wasn’t aware of the suspect’s age at the time of the shooting, only that she was in fear for both her life and the lives of her children. In an interview with Fox4, she explained, “I had to think about my babies…. I didn’t know that he was 14 when he was on the other side of that window. All I knew was that somebody could come in here and hurt me or my kids.”
If the shooting had occurred within the apartment, it would be an open-and-shut case of justifiable homicide due to the state’s castle doctrine, but since the shooting occurred while the suspect was standing outside the apartment, it has been referred to a grand jury. Wallace will likely escape prosecution, though, due to Texas’ strong “stand-your-ground” self-defense laws.
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