EDEN, Texas (AP) — A West Texas man accused of fatally shooting two sheriff's deputies was angry they were in his yard trying to catch a dog and he told them he would open fire if they didn't leave, a witness said.
“They walked up towards him, rushed him, and he pulled a gun, and shots were fired,” David Hutchings told the
San Angelo Standard-Times.
Whether he shooting is justified or not is hard to tell from the article.
But unless the officers had a warrant, Mr. Nicholas was well within his rights to demand that they get off his property.
And according to a witness,
“They walked up towards him, rushed him, and he pulled a gun, and shots were fired…”
Not sure exactly what was meant by
“…rushed him…”, but that sounds to me like an aggressive, offensive move, which, combined with the fact that those doing so would be presumed to be armed, would very possibly have given Mr. Nicholas reasonable cause to believe he was being attacked, that he was in danger of being killed or seriously injured by that attack, and therefore justified in the use of deadly force to defend himself.
This does seem like a rather absurd escalation from a minor intrusion to a deadly shooting, but my sense, off the top, is that Mr. Nicholas is not nearly as far in the wrong as he is being made out to be.