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Florida sheriff says 'Stand Your Ground' law prevents arrest in fatal shooting in parking spot dispute

Markeis McGlockton, 28, shoved Michael Drejka, 47, to the ground during the argument Thursday at a Clearwater convenience store and then was shot and killed when Drejka, from a sitting position, pulled out a gun he legally owned and opened fire, shooting McGlockton once in the chest.

McGlockton, of Clearwater, shoved Drejka after he came out of the store and saw Drejka arguing with his girlfriend Britany Jacobs, 25, who was parked in the handicapped parking spot. Drejka, also of Clearwater, confronted her because she didn’t have a permit to legally park there, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

A Florida sheriff says the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law prevents the arrest of a man who fatally shot another man last week during an argument over a handicapped parking spot. “He told deputies that he had to shoot to defend himself. Those are the facts and that’s the law," Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said, according to WFTS-TV. “No matter how you slice it or dice it that was a violent push to the ground.

Jacobs told WFTS that Drejka was getting away with murder. “How is this 'Stand Your Ground' law?" she asked. "It’s not! Markeis pushed him, how does that justify a bullet?”

“What’s relevant is not whether this guy’s a good guy, nice guy, or whether he’s a jerk, or whether he’s a thorn in people’s side and what he’s done, whether it’s three weeks ago, three months ago or three years ago,” the sheriff said. “What’s relevant and the only thing we can look at here is was he in fear of further bodily harm."

Gualtieri announced Drejka had been cleared Friday. His decision led to a small protest at the store Saturday, Fox 13 Tampa reported

I was talking about the need for the Democrats to find a young, smart AND charismatic candidate years ago. Neither of the major US parties seems to have a gift for bringing young candidates up through the ranks. I think it's a horrible gap.

In criminal law, the duty to retreat, or requirement of safe retreat, is a legal requirement in some jurisdictions that a threatened person cannot stand one's ground and apply lethal force in self-defense, but must instead retreat to a place of safety...Other states apply what is known as the castle doctrine, whereby a threatened person need not retreat within his or her own dwelling.

In Erwin v. State (1876), the Supreme Court of Ohio wrote that a "true man", one without fault, would not retreat. In Runyan v. State (1877), the Indiana court rejected a duty to retreat, implying it was un-American, writing of a referring to the distinct American mind, "the tendency of the American mind seems to be very strongly against" a duty to retreat.

Nancy LeTourneau
‏@Smartypants60
Bernie Sanders suggests that a party that was led by Barack Obama for 8 years represented the one percenters.

I have no problem discussing Sanders' “progressive” policies, but statements like that are a lie and are unconscionable.

Your take (or emotional response) re Warren is very different from mine.

Bernie Sanders will be 80 years old and 2020 and he looks MORE like a bum than red Skelton's old Freddy the freeloader character. He is not a viable political candidate for anything.

Had Enough Therapy?

Anyone with any sense of reality, anyone who was willing to judge the effectiveness of policy in terms of the outcome produced, would have long since abandoned the radical leftist cause. Communism counts among the greatest policy failures in human history.

What human mind would think that we should resurrect it? The answer is clear: a mind that has been deformed by the American educational establishment. Having long since abandoned the goal of teaching anyone anything, American educators have turned their classrooms into indoctrination mills. They no longer teach anyone how to think. They tell students what they must and must not believe. As for judging policy in terms of past successes and failures, it is forbidden. Rational and empirical thought is banned. You are required to believe the right beliefs, adhere to the correct dogmas.

Being seriously undereducated they cannot grasp most of the material. Their professors cannot either, so they do not feel that badly. But, when something arises in class or in the culture at large that they do not understand, they stand forth, like buffoons, and declare that they have been triggered, that their feelings are hurt. Anyone with a minimal sense of shame would know better than to advertise such weakness, but in America's educational establishment, what with its transvaluation of values, it counts as strength.

This system has given us the mindless stupidity of the Democratic Party’s new poster child: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Rarely have we seen such an ignorant politician, someone who functionally knows nothing. But, she is merely a symptom. Today’s young people, having had their minds deformed by radicalized pedagogues, do not know how to think, have never learned the habits necessary to hold down a job and seem increasingly incapable of competing in the world markets.

She won popular vote in 2016, after all.

She won popular vote in 2016, after all.