Not Realizing How Unliked You Are...Yikes!

Last year, the small town I live in saw it's first "murder" in... ever?

Long story short...new family moves in, they're not exactly on the up and up. Their teenage son has a feud with a neighbours teenage son. It comes to blows one night. New family's teenage son goes home and his step-father has been drinking/drugging/generally being a douche, decides to go and confront the other teen at his home.

It's 3:30am, and the parents of the other teen don't know where he is. New family's step-father gets in an altercation with the other teens step mother and knocks her to the ground.
Surprise! The teen jumps out of the bushes with a knife, and stabs the drunken step-father.

The teens step-mother, a nurse, does her best to administer aid, but drunken step-father succumbs to the wound and dies.

The teen is arrested, charges of murder are laid.

One year later, today, all charges are dropped against the teen. Why? Because the man he stabbed was so widely disliked...that the prosecution couldn't find ANYONE to testify about his character and didn't believe any jury would convict the teen of. ..anything.

To rub salt in the wound, the majority of our town is attending a mock graduation for the teen, because they feel the family of the dead man somehow colluded to have him barred from his high school graduation, aged have even started a college fund for him.

Moral of the story...maybe? Don't move to a small town, dump your garbage all over the county; break into homes; keep vicious dogs who bite and then hide them when the dog catcher comes; let your teen and eight year old venture out after midnight to harass people going home from the pub; yell, scream, and generally be a nuisance; and then decide to confront someone for being a teenage douchebag , because if you get murdered...people will openly celebrate, even your neighbours.

Such a weird, weird situation.

Damn. That is one hell of a story.

Sometimes all someone ever does is crap all over every good thing that surrounds them.

Sounds like this guy also ruined a couple of kids.

Maybe it is good riddance?

a reply to: Atsbhct

Damn....dunno what to say really. Sounds like it woulda happened to drunk dude sooner or later...or the other way around. He seems like he was a real classy human being...i'm just glad it wasn't a story about how drunk dude killed the kid or the mom though.

a reply to: projectvxn

Maybe. The family is still in town, the kids still get in trouble, but the lady is quiet...and not getting screamed at every day.

That's just sad all the way around. No winners in this story. Broken lives for all. The teen who murdered the bully dad defending his mother will be haunted the rest of his life. An American small town tragedy. Sounds like a Lifetime movie. I hate Lifetime.

a reply to: Justso

Surprisingly, we're in Canada. I'm also in the "sad all around" camp.
I can't imagine being that family and seeing everyone in town practically rejoicing.
But, they're also my neighbours and tried to break into my house, so the sympathy doesn't run too deep.

The guy made his family miserable, right?
Then got wasted and went to look for a kid, to beat him up, right?
Then hit the mom of said teen?

He got what he deserved.

In my area of Indiana, mostly small conservative farm towns, no jury would convict the teen of murder. His mom was attacked, what's he supposed to do, watch his mom get beaten by this guy?

Every small town, there's always that one family who's like that.

a reply to: Brywilson2

So true, these guys also have the distinct disadvantage of being "new".

originally posted by: Brywilson2
The guy made his family miserable, right?
Then got wasted and went to look for a kid, to beat him up, right?
Then hit the mom of said teen?

He got what he deserved.

In my area of Indiana, mostly small conservative farm towns, no jury would convict the teen of murder. His mom was attacked, what's he supposed to do, watch his mom get beaten by this guy?

Every small town, there's always that one family who's like that.

Sometimes justice is served in the most unusual of ways

a reply to: Atsbhct

just WTF ??????????????????

since when did canadian law require " chrachter witnesses on behalf of the victim " ???????????

i realise that this case MAY have a strong element of self defence

but - as presented " hiding in a bush with a knife "

i would need a dammed good explaination of that to render a usefull opinion

a reply to: Atsbhct

Thanks for filling in the blanks to this story. It didn't make sense to me when it first happened last year,and I suppose still really doesn't make sense.
I haven't figured out yet how the justice system in this province works,or better yet,doesn't work.
A complex story to be sure,and with this new announcement to be continued I'm sure.

a reply to: Atsbhct

Where is this place? Sounds like someplace I'd like to move to. How are they with people who just want peace, quiet, and to be left alone for the most part?

Hiding in the bushes, knowingly waiting for someone, is pre-meditated murder.

Allowing this to be tried in its home town and not moved to a different venue, is a failure on the justice system.

The police should have been called the moment the man got on the premises of a home he was not domiciled out of.


This is why your society is a joke. It's high school en masse.

I suppose it could be seen as premeditated depending on what actually happened in the moment.

Was the teen just outside somewhere, then when he saw the step-father come into yard he went in, got a knife, and hid there to watch, and when things got physical he protected his own step-mother? I wouldn't call that premeditated murder. I don't think he knew the step-father would walk to his home at 3am to confront him.

This wasn't tried in our hometown, it wasn't tried at all, the prosecution dropped their case because they had a lack of confidence that anyone would convict the teen of murder.

We also live in the country, so police at 3am are about 40 minutes away at any given time depending on what else they're doing that night.

a reply to: Atsbhct

To be fair, in a court of law, one doesn't need character witnesses on behalf of the victim--character witnesses are generally reserved for the defendant as a way to appeal for a lighter sentence, trying to show that the defendant is a good person and a credit to the community (and that locking them up forever would be unjust).

In my experience, no judge allows character witness on behalf of a victim because it holds no relevance as it pertains to the facts in a case.

The more probable reason that the teen wasn't tried was because it probably was more of a case of a way to defend his step-mom from a drunken, angry man who had just shoved her to the ground.

Good moral to the story, though.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

Very true.