The homeowner who fatally shot a 20-year-old University of South Carolina student who tried to enter the wrong home on the street he lived on Saturday morning will not face charges because the incident was deemed “a justifiable homicide” under state law, Columbia police announced Wednesday.
Police said the identity of the homeowner who fired the gunshot that killed Nicholas Donofrio shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday will not be released because the police department and the Fifth Circuit Solicitor’s Office determined his actions were justified under the state’s controversial “castle doctrine” law, which holds that people can act in self-defense towards “intruders and attackers without fear of prosecution or civil action for acting in defense of themselves and others.”
This is true, and nuance is key.
But at the same time, at least in my college town, the houses on and around campus, certainly within 2 miles, were generally
Quite often used as rentals for college kids, VERY few families actually lived there, in fact i never remember seeing families in them.
Working class adults were more or less segregated further off campus, largely due to the riffraff.
So yes, it would be a bit different now as I do not live near a college campus. But if i did, and it was often that there were drunk college kids, the witching out after the bars let out would usually be times when ruckus was occuring. So situationally, i would be much less likely to use a gun in a case like that. I would likely have it on me while I assessed the situation but much less likely to use it.
Thats just me though. And FWIW i did live in houses off campus in my later years, and much of the same bullshit would occur. Maybe it was just a different time. I was not much of a partier, and took some hard sciences so often I was leaving the library when the drunks let out. And some of the shit they would pull…Lets just say I would never live near other college kids again.