jmra wrote:The only way I would consider leaving the scene of a crime is if my safety dictated it or my last name was Kennedy.
That is funny!
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.