Man shot dead in his tracks by homeowner

[Jered]

According to the neighbor, the homeowner opened the door and the guy barged in.

That's residential burglary.

[Greg]

According to the neighbor, the homeowner opened the door and the guy barged in.

That's residential burglary.

If you open the door to let the guy in, it hardly even manages to be trespassing.

[Jered]

According to the neighbor, the homeowner opened the door and the guy barged in.

That's residential burglary.

If you open the door to let the guy in, it hardly even manages to be trespassing.

Not really.

Any unlawful entry into a dwelling is residential burglary. Which is a felony. Which makes this a good shoot. It doesn't matter whether or not the guy unlawfully entering the dwelling is angry, stoned, or just dumb. It's a felony.

It doesn't matter if the door is standing wide open. If it's not your house, stay out.

[308Mike]

It's quite possible the homeowner may have thought he recognized the voice, but couldn't see the person at the door so he tried to crack the door open a bit to look. The suspect shoved the door open and charged inside, going past the guy at the door - so he was shot in the back after he went by, to protect the others inside the residence.

Bottom line - just because he was shot in the back (he could have also been bent over at the waist trying to tackle the homeowner, who then shoots him in the back), it does NOT mean the shooting might not be justified anyway.

Keep an open mind, but NOT so open your brain falls out!!

Just because he was shot in the back doesn't mean that it is unreasonable to conclude that he intended to commit residential burglary.

ATTEMPTED burglary (the banging on the door) is about all that's been firmly established. The rest is unclear. Could be homeowner knew the guy and they had a fight after the visitor showed up angry. Could be the homeowner opened the door and went outside to straighten out some jerk on his porch. Could be the guy got inside, saw a gun in his face, turned to hoof it and got blasted in the back and dropped dead in the yard. Or any combination of the above. Or none.

Don't get me wrong, I happen to think this is more likely to be a good shoot than not, but there's more than a little fuzziness here that lends itself to taking a second look.

Which I COMPLETELY AGREE!!!

We won't know until they make ALL the relevant facts/circumstances known to the general public (usually AFTER any and ALL trials/appeals).

[Greg]

According to the neighbor, the homeowner opened the door and the guy barged in.

That's residential burglary.

If you open the door to let the guy in, it hardly even manages to be trespassing.

Not really.

Any unlawful entry into a dwelling is residential burglary. Which is a felony. Which makes this a good shoot. It doesn't matter whether or not the guy unlawfully entering the dwelling is angry, stoned, or just dumb. It's a felony.

It doesn't matter if the door is standing wide open. If it's not your house, stay out.

So when you stop by your bud's place and go in when he opens the door, you're committing a felony?

[Jered]

If you open the door to let the guy in, it hardly even manages to be trespassing.

Not really.

Any unlawful entry into a dwelling is residential burglary. Which is a felony. Which makes this a good shoot. It doesn't matter whether or not the guy unlawfully entering the dwelling is angry, stoned, or just dumb. It's a felony.

It doesn't matter if the door is standing wide open. If it's not your house, stay out.

So when you stop by your bud's place and go in when he opens the door, you're committing a felony?

No...because that's not unlawful.

[Aesop]

Any unlawful entry into a dwelling is residential burglary. Which is a felony. Which makes this a good shoot. It doesn't matter whether or not the guy unlawfully entering the dwelling is angry, stoned, or just dumb. It's a felony.

It doesn't matter if the door is standing wide open. If it's not your house, stay out.

Uh, no. Not even within 100 miles of correct.
It's not unlawful to enter a door opened in front of you.
It's only unlawful if the homeowner says "Stay out" first, or words to that effect.
Entry into a house through the front door, even at 2AM, isn't instantly unlawful because the homeowner chooses to open fire on you after letting you in.

You have this tendency to assume all sorts of facts not in evidence, to skip ahead to the conclusion you want to reach, and it's going to get you into trouble if the day comes when you're the guy in the story.

The first rule of thumb with people banging on your door at 2AM is not to open it.
This one is far from cut and dried, and bears further looking into.

And if it transpires that the shots hit the victim in the back after the homeowner opened the door to him, the next of kin will sue for wrongful death in 0.2 seconds, and have one hell of a case, because they'll claim he was murdered after he turned to go. Not least of which because the body was found in the yard, rather than clawing at the bedroom door.
Ask the idiot who just ate a conviction for suppressive fire on a departing car how juries view those sort of petty little details.

The homeowner better be praying that the forensic evidence matches his story, and leaves no doubt that he was acting properly, or he's going to get far more than one story written about him.

And at this point the published story is more than a little fishy, and the only description of events is hearsay from a neighbor, not eyewitness testimony.

[Netpackrat]

Opening the door doesn't mean he did so to let the guy in. It's far more likely that he opened the door, in order to tell the guy to go away. The wisdom of responding in that manner to pounding on the door at 2AM is another subject entirely.

[Jered]

Uh, no. Not even within 100 miles of correct.
It's not unlawful to enter a door opened in front of you.
It's only unlawful if the homeowner says "Stay out" first, or words to that effect.
Entry into a house through the front door, even at 2AM, isn't instantly unlawful because the homeowner chooses to open fire on you after letting you in.

When did opening a door to one's house constitute an automatic invitation for every stranger to enter?

If I open the door for someone, and don't tell that person to stay out, is it acceptable for him to shove past me to enter? Uninvited entry into a house is unlawful, irregardless of whether or not a door opens. Typically, when one knocks on a door, and someone opens it, if it's not one's own door, one asks permission before stepping through it.

You have this tendency to assume all sorts of facts not in evidence, to skip ahead to the conclusion you want to reach, and it's going to get you into trouble if the day comes when you're the guy in the story.

Like I posted before, according to the neighbor:

According to Brower-Jones, Aceves continued pounding on the front door and when the homeowner opened it aceves lunged towards him.

The first rule of thumb with people banging on your door at 2AM is not to open it.
This one is far from cut and dried, and bears further looking into.

Poor decision making is poor decision making, not illegal.

And if it transpires that the shots hit the victim in the back after the homeowner opened the door to him, the next of kin will sue for wrongful death in 0.2 seconds, and have one hell of a case, because they'll claim he was murdered after he turned to go. Not least of which because the body was found in the yard, rather than clawing at the bedroom door.
Ask the idiot who just ate a conviction for suppressive fire on a departing car how juries view those sort of petty little details.

Did you read the law that I posted? If the state wants to prosecute the homeowner for murder or for some other nonjustifiable form of homicide, the state would have to show that under these circumstances, that a reasonable person would not feel that the dead guy was in the house for a legitimate reason. In Washington State, there's a presumption in the law, that if you unlawfully enter a building, you're doing it to commit a crime, and the act of unlawfully entering a building, specifically in this case, a dwelling, is a felony.

From the OP's linked article, according to the police, the confrontation took place inside the residence.

“Basically, (Aceves) was pounding on the door in the middle of the night,” Raymond said. “A woman went to call 911. The homeowner got up. (Aceves) made it inside. The confrontation took place inside the residence.”

Because everyone who is shot dies right away, right?

Of course, there's this little tidbit, too:

Ontiveros answered his door late Friday morning wearing rubber cleaning gloves and declined to talk about what happened.

Hmm...what would he possibly cleaning up the morning after a shooting? Hmm.

The homeowner better be praying that the forensic evidence matches his story, and leaves no doubt that he was acting properly, or he's going to get far more than one story written about him.

If they don't find evidence in the house, all it proves is that they didn't find evidence in the house.

And at this point the published story is more than a little fishy, and the only description of events is hearsay from a neighbor, not eyewitness testimony.

The prosecutor is still dithering:

But, evidently, their police chief is ignorant of state law. If dead guy would have lived, all that they need to charge him with residential burglary is evidence that he unlawfully entered the house, under state law, if you unlawfully enter a dwelling, you can be inferred to have acted with intent to commit a crime in it. In order to charge someone with burglary in the State of Washington, all you have to prove is that he entered a building unlawfully, by statute, unless he proves otherwise, he can be inferred to have acted with intent to commit a crime. The only element that they need to prove is that he unlawfully entered the house.

“At this point there is no indication that (Aceves) was a burglar,” Capt. Jim Raymond said at a Tuesday news conference.

That's not the question that the police chief needs to answer, though. He should be answering, "At the time of the slaying, was there reasonable ground to apprehend a design on the part of the person slain to commit a felony?"

Officials said during the news conference that Aceves was shot after he got “well inside” the house. They would not say how Aceves got inside. There were reportedly no signs of a break-in at the house on Savary Drive.

That would jive with the aforementioned cleaning gloves.

Aceves’ body was found near the front door, partly inside, said officials.

Which could mean that he crawled out or fell in some funky way.

Police were called to Ontiveros’ house at 2:30 a.m. by a woman, who said an intruder was inside the residence, Raymond said. When officers arrived, they found Aceves already dead.

And at this point the published story is more than a little fishy, and the only description of events is hearsay from a neighbor, not eyewitness testimony.

If you're interested I bet you could request a copy of that 911 call.

My money is still on no charges.

[Aesop]

When did opening a door to one's house constitute an automatic invitation for every stranger to enter?

If I open the door for someone, and don't tell that person to stay out, is it acceptable for him to shove past me to enter? Uninvited entry into a house is unlawful, irregardless of whether or not a door opens. Typically, when one knocks on a door, and someone opens it, if it's not one's own door, one asks permission before stepping through it.

So until it transpires that the victim actually did shove past, or that the shooter did not grant permission, let's stop well short of calling the entry unlawful just because it suits your assumptions, shall we? It's also not legal to hit the homeowner with a snowshovel, nor to ride elephants at the gallop across the threshold, but those behaviors are also no more in evidence in this instance than your unwarranted hypothetical suppostions. Which, once again, is where rests (or not) the entire merit of the homeowner's claims of justification.

You have this tendency to assume all sorts of facts not in evidence, to skip ahead to the conclusion you want to reach, and it's going to get you into trouble if the day comes when you're the guy in the story.

Like I posted before, according to the neighbor:

According to Brower-Jones, Aceves continued pounding on the front door and when the homeowner opened it aceves lunged towards him.

The legal term for that is "hearsay", mainly because the person making those statements is gossiping, not testifying about anything they know.
Their probitive value is nil, and their reliability is zero.

The first rule of thumb with people banging on your door at 2AM is not to open it.
This one is far from cut and dried, and bears further looking into.

Poor decision making is poor decision making, not illegal.

Right up until you discharge a firearm in the course of your decision making. Then it becomes a coroner's case, a very well may be illegal.

And if it transpires that the shots hit the victim in the back after the homeowner opened the door to him, the next of kin will sue for wrongful death in 0.2 seconds, and have one hell of a case, because they'll claim he was murdered after he turned to go. Not least of which because the body was found in the yard, rather than clawing at the bedroom door.
Ask the idiot who just ate a conviction for suppressive fire on a departing car how juries view those sort of petty little details.

Did you read the law that I posted? If the state wants to prosecute the homeowner for murder or for some other nonjustifiable form of homicide, the state would have to show that under these circumstances, that a reasonable person would not feel that the dead guy was in the house for a legitimate reason. In Washington State, there's a presumption in the law, that if you unlawfully enter a building, you're doing it to commit a crime, and the act of unlawfully entering a building, specifically in this case, a dwelling, is a felony.

From the OP's linked article, according to the police, the confrontation took place inside the residence.

Right, but you jumped to the conclusion that the entry was illegal. Unfortunately, there's nothing other than the corpse to make that case.
Which, cleverly, was found outside the house.
The only established facts of the matter are that Aceves is dead, and Ontiveros shot him, and why and under what circumstances are one helluva lot less than clear-cut nor beyond reasonable doubt, as Greg noted. If Crazy Anguished Relative of Dead Guy simply states to the cops for the record that Ontiveros knew Aceves, and owed him $500, the shooter is now the defendant, the police have a motive, and it's off to the races. And even if that were pure made-up nonsense, he'd play hell trying to prove he didn't know him when he gets to the courthouse. Think about how you would prove such a negative beyond a reasonable doubt.
(Hint: it's damned near impossible.)

“Basically, (Aceves) was pounding on the door in the middle of the night,” Raymond said. “A woman went to call 911. The homeowner got up. (Aceves) made it inside. The confrontation took place inside the residence.”

Because everyone who is shot dies right away, right?

Except what's left out of that is what transpired between opening the door, and the victim's death, which is the entire point at issue in whether this was a justifiable homicide, a negligent homicide, or murder. What we don't have is Aceves high on meth, wearing a ski mask, and trying to batter the door open with a sledgehammer or force it open with a prybar. We don't have him in possession of a weapon like a knife or a gun that would otherwise justify deadly force in response. We don't know what, if anything, was said or took place in the critical seconds between the door opening, and him dying on the lawn, which is only everything any reasonable person needs to know to make a reasonable decision, rather than jump to conclusions based on less than half the evidence.

Of course, there's this little tidbit, too:

Ontiveros answered his door late Friday morning wearing rubber cleaning gloves and declined to talk about what happened.

Hmm...what would he possibly cleaning up the morning after a shooting? Hmm.

Anything from his toilet, to evidence that things didn't go the way he stated, and anything in between.
I don't know what he was cleaning, and neither do you, and the reporter cleverly left out asking what or recounting what answer was given.
But thanks for demonstrating that no fact not in evidence can safely be left outside the range of your assumptions.

The homeowner better be praying that the forensic evidence matches his story, and leaves no doubt that he was acting properly, or he's going to get far more than one story written about him.

If they don't find evidence in the house, all it proves is that they didn't find evidence in the house.

If they don't find evidence of exactly the statements made by the homeowner to police in the house, it would tend to disprove any allegation that the victim was ever in the house, and possibly never tried to enter, or if he was inside, that it was by dint of any force or any unlawful or felonious design, and this rather quickly devolves to a murder investigation. Retaining counsel would be a good Plan B at that point.

And at this point the published story is more than a little fishy, and the only description of events is hearsay from a neighbor, not eyewitness testimony.

The prosecutor is still dithering:

But, evidently, their police chief is ignorant of state law. If dead guy would have lived, all that they need to charge him with residential burglary is evidence that he unlawfully entered the house, under state law, if you unlawfully enter a dwelling, you can be inferred to have acted with intent to commit a crime in it. In order to charge someone with burglary in the State of Washington, all you have to prove is that he entered a building unlawfully, by statute, unless he proves otherwise, he can be inferred to have acted with intent to commit a crime. The only element that they need to prove is that he unlawfully entered the house.

You're catching on. The one thing they don't have is any evidence of unlawful entry. The very fact you assume, and the turning point for everything in this case. And the one thing glaringly absent, at this point. So maybe you want to drop those assumptions, and wait for facts.

“At this point there is no indication that (Aceves) was a burglar,” Capt. Jim Raymond said at a Tuesday news conference.

That's not the question that the police chief needs to answer, though. He should be answering, "At the time of the slaying, was there reasonable ground to apprehend a design on the part of the person slain to commit a felony?"

When the chief of police states for the record that there's no evidence for your story of "justifiable" shooting, you'd better be speed-dialing your criminal defense attorney, because they generally only announce grand jury indictments after they put your handcuffs on.
It's also barely possible that he's talking at all because precisely as a number of us have noted, this doesn't smell right without a lot more corroboration.

Officials said during the news conference that Aceves was shot after he got “well inside” the house. They would not say how Aceves got inside. There were reportedly no signs of a break-in at the house on Savary Drive.

That would jive with the aforementioned cleaning gloves.

It definitely "jives".
What is doesn't do is jibe with any evidence that the homeowner made any credible resistance to letting the victim in, to include as little as saying "Get lost", and then executing him because of other reasons (motive, panic, general stupidity), given there are no signs of a struggle in evidence, nor any of forced entry.
Once again, someone pounding on your door at 2AM may be upsetting or annoying.
What it doesn't do is rise to a felony, nor deliver justification for shooting someone.

Aceves’ body was found near the front door, partly inside, said officials.

Which could mean that he crawled out or fell in some funky way.

Police were called to Ontiveros’ house at 2:30 a.m. by a woman, who said an intruder was inside the residence, Raymond said. When officers arrived, they found Aceves already dead.

And at this point the published story is more than a little fishy, and the only description of events is hearsay from a neighbor, not eyewitness testimony.

If you're interested I bet you could request a copy of that 911 call.

My money is still on no charges.

My money is on this dispostition depending on a lot of other necessary evidence to reach a conclusion based on logic and common sense, all of which such evidence, like the rest of us, you have none.

Since we're talking your hypothetical money, do whatever you like. One hopes you show a lot more sense with actual money, let alone when you're holding a gun and someone's pounding on your door at 2AM, and you're the next contestant in "You Bet Your Life". Just buying the chips from your defense attorney for decisions made in haste when you're sleepy, usually costs a minimum of $100K.

Your syllogism looks like this:

Homeowners shoot burglars.
Aceves was shot by Ontiveros.
Therefore, Aceves was a burglar.

Unfortunately, at this point, the PD's syllogism looks like this:

Aceves made no attempts to force entry.
Ontiveros shot Aceves.
???

When police are confused, the slightest thing tips this from curious anomaly to meat on the table for the local D.A., who is happy to let the accused demonstrate his innocence to the court, and who has a vested interest in undercutting all the assumptions you're hanging your decision on, and has a handy staff of investigators to build his theory of the case into sufficient motive and opportunity to get you a stretch in the greybar.

This is why good defensive shooting classes focus on when and why to shoot, and what to do beforehand and afterwards, a lot more than on how to hit the bullseye with one's rounds, because shooting the guy is the easy part of the equation, precisely as Mr. Ontiveros is learning.

Even if it turns out after the facts come in that he was correct.