8/30/18 WLS:
WINTER HAVEN, Florida -- After a heated text message exchange with his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Jason Boek followed an Uber he thought was giving her a ride home. Driving along a dark stretch of two-lane road in central Florida, Boek swerved his pickup truck early Tuesday morning in front of the rideshare car. Uber driver Robert Westlake slammed on his brakes.
They narrowly avoided a crash and stopped in the middle of the roadway. Then, Boek jumped out of his truck and quickly walked toward Westlake's Hyundai Elantra.
"You know I got a pistol?" Boek said, holding an object in the air. "You want me to f****** shoot you?"
Bang. With one shot, the Uber driver killed him.
The fatal confrontation, captured on Westlake's dash camera, was what the Polk County sheriff called a "classic 'stand your ground' case," referring to the controversial Florida law that grants immunity to people acting in self-defense.
"This is a justifiable homicide all day long. You have the right protect yourself," Sheriff Grady Judd said Wednesday. "This was the intent of the law."
No, he had a cell phone. Bluffing is bad. The next time some gun control crazy insists the Stand Your Ground Law was passed to make it easier to shoot black people, ask them, "Why are you trying to protect misogynistic stalkers?"
Another instance of Tuco's law: "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk."
ReplyDeleteI agree: bluffing is bad. It got this angry man killed.
ReplyDeleteI watched the video and it wasn't clear to me that he only had a cell phone, and that he may have been reaching for his waistline even as he made his threat, which certainly sounded serious. His actions were reckless: swerving in front of the Uber and slamming on his brakes indicates that he was angry, unbalanced, and possibly murderous.
This was a "good shoot" as far as I can tell. If this angry boyfriend hadn't done what he did, he wouldn't have ended up dead; I hope it serves as a warning to others.
There have been entirely too many people who hesitated and were murdered as a result, so I'm glad this Uber driver (and his passenger) wasn't one of them.
The FL "Stand Your Ground" law is a good one AFAIK, and this is a good example!
The FL "Stand Your Ground" law is a good one AFAIK, and this is a good example!
ReplyDeleteNo, it is not. All "Stand Your Ground" does is remove the duty to retreat while in a public place you are legally entitled to be. It is legally analogous to the Castle Doctrine which removes the duty to retreat when in your home (and in some states, your automobile, place of business, curtilege).
What most people refer to as a Stand Your Ground law is a law of self defense immunity, where a person who legally and obviously uses self defense is immune from criminal and in some cases civil prosecution. Such a law was passed in Florida as a separate statute at the same time a Stand Your Ground statue was passed, so many think SYG automatically incorporates immunity.
See Andrew Branca's comments on his blog, Law of Self Defense - and at Legal Insurrection on this case in particular..