Man gets beaten by home invaders, comes up shooting

[Aesop]

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not arguing that they entered to collect for Catholic Charities.

As a rule, three armed men don't enter, and then take the time to leisurely beat the occupant, and then compound it by sitting around watching long enough for him to procure a weapon of his own. Especially if what they intended was to relieve him of a TV and stereo.

Until proven innocent, this was one crook shooting at three other crooks, motive and backstory unknown. The dearth of "Joe Smith, meek and mild everyman, was minding his own business when" kind of details one normally encounters are wholly absent from this story. When the police and media are this tight-lipped, there's mischief underlying, and they haven't gotten to the bottom of it yet.

When it turns out that three men came to administer a beatdown because Louie'd been skimming drug sales receipts, or had otherwise stiffed the gang or doublecrossed the big boss, or perhaps the local franchisees trying to get him to cough up where he kept the profits from his retail pharmaceutical endeavors on their turf, or some other such, I will be unsurprised.

The main police function in such instances is invariably to keep score, collect the corpses, and root for both sides, as long as nobody else gets caught in the crossfire.