For those of you who are curious, here is the original vigilante on vigilante shooting post I wrote, from earlier this month. It is worth noting that unlike Florida, Utah while too pro-gun in many respects, was sane enough as a state to limit castle doctrine and shoot first laws to a person's home. They still give more permission to shoot people to less regulated, less accountable, less trained civilians than they do to police but at least they restrict it to a person's own property. But this is after all still Utah, which has an interesting history when it comes to gun loving conservative older men and much younger or underage women, not unlike the conservative culture of perversion I wrote about here in Grand Marais, Minnesota. It appears Utah is not so different from rural Minnesota.
This conviction does not justify the man who went to jail for taking his gun and leaving his home to go looking for this self-appointed neighborhood watch captain and then shooting him. It does argue for his belief that this gun violence victim and his buddy weren't following the car full of girls because they were behaving illegally, as they claimed, but rather that he had a fetish for young teenage girls.
That the gun shot victim tried to blame HIS victim for his conduct is characteristic of a certain mentality that blames the victim instead of the legally and morally responsible adult bad guy taking the responsibility for his actions. What the following AP story fails to mention is the gun violence victim now in a wheelchair had LEFT his neighborhood where he claimed he was fulfilling his neighborhood watch duties, to follow aggressively the car full of young teenage girls.
You can read the story here, from the AP:
Utah man paralyzed in neighborhood watch shooting convicted of sex with neighbor girl, 17
SALT LAKE CITY — A 39-year-old man paralyzed in a Bluffdale neighborhood watch shooting faces up to 15 years in prison after he was convicted of having sex with a 17-year-old neighbor girl.
A jury found David Serbeck guilty on Thursday of three felony counts of unlawful sex with a minor. Sentencing is May 25.
Serbeck denied the accusations, saying the teen, who is now 22, had a crush on him and wanted to impress her friends.The alleged victim testified she was 17 when she and Serbeck had sex three times in his Magna home in 2007.
Serbeck denied the accusations, saying the teen, who is now 22, had a crush on him and wanted to impress her friends.
Serbeck was shot and paralyzed in July 2009 by Reginald Campos, who suspected Serbeck of aggressively following his teen daughter in an SUV while patrolling the neighborhood. Campos was sentenced to up to life in prison. ****************** I wonder if Campos and Serbeck will be serving their time in the same prison. That could be awkward.
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