I perosnally know if an incident that is similar.karder wrote:
I am not a lawyer and don't know much about lawyering so always keep that in mind. Still it seems that if you have to shoot someone, staying on the scene and waiting for the police would be the right thing to do. I can see the wisdom in not giving a statement of any sort without legal representation, but it seems to me that leaving the scene would only muck things up. Maybe if the shooting is questionable, mucking things up is a good tactic, but if you did everything right and it was unavoidable, why cloud the circumstances by leaving?
There is a guy in my industry that I am professionally acquainted with who is not exactly an upstanding citizen and is always mixed up in something he shouldn't be. He is a slim ball in other words who used to be a very heavy drinker and always speeding home from the bars after last call. I only casually know the guy and was told the story by a co-worker I know well who worked closely with him. I was told this incident happened in Florida.
Almost two decades ago this guy hit and killed a pedestrian while driving drunk, and fled the scene. When he got home he called his attorney and told him what happened as there were a lot of witnesses and he figured the cops would track him down fast. His attorney told him to start drinking at the house and that he would call the police. The police showed up and arrested him. Later his attorney argued that this guy was not driving drunk and that he left the scene because he got scared and had a PTSD (or whatever they called it 20 years ago) type experience which cause him to panic and flee home a couple of blocks away. Once he got home, he started drinking to calm his nerves and that is why he had alcohol in his system. There were a lot of other issues (the guy he ran over was homeless and also drunk) but at the end of the day, he ended up with probation and did no jail time. It was very shady and dishonest and sadly, this guy didn't seem to learn a darn thing from the experience except to keep a lawyer on speed dial.
When I was a reserve officer I came home to find a car stuck on the embankment past the end of the driveway. The driveway at my house was actually a closed street that didn't go all the way across the property to connect with the street behind it.
The neighbor behind me was in her yard and stated she had already called the police. When I asked about the driver, she said he had tried to get the car off the embankment, but had no luck. That was probably due to the fact the rear wheels were about 3 feet off the ground and the nose of the car was on the street behind my house.
I asked where he was, and she pointed to the neighbor's house across the side street. I looked over and saw a guy I knew sitting on the porch. I walked that direction and saw he had a bottle and he picked it up and took a big swig from it. As I got closer I could tell it was a bottle of Jack Daniels. When I got to him I could tell he was intoxicated. I asked him about the accident and he said 'I got so upset that I had crashed my car that I came over to Jeff's house (the neighbor and mutual friend), asked for some Jack and started drinking. Jeff's wife stated that he DID get the booze from them, but would never say if she thought he had been drinking prior to getting the bottle.
Needless to say I knew that he had not drank enough between the time the accident happened and I got there that he was that inebriated, but it sure gave him an alibi to keep him from being charged with DWI.
