A Del City Man is dead after police say the intoxicated man tried to enter the wrong home and was shot and killed by the homeowner.
Reports say Gary Dewayne Hooks, 36, was intoxicated Saturday night after having attended a funeral earlier in the day. Hooks and his wife went to a friend's house, but his wife reportedly told him to stay in the car and sober up. Instead, after his wife went into their friend's home, Hooks left the vehicle and wandered to another home.
When the homeowner opened the door, he reported that Hooks became aggressive. A neighbor says the homeowner, in fear for his safety, retrieved a gun and told the man, "I have a gun. Safety’s on but if you don’t go out the door, safety won’t be on."
The homeowner said that the stranger at his home was behaving aggressively, and he fired in self-defense. Hooks died of his injuries at a local hospital.
Police did not arrest the homeowner, saying the shooting appears to be in self-defense. They will present their report to the District Attorney, who ultimately decides whether or not charges will be filed in the fatal shooting.
Oklahoma has fairly permissive gun laws, and the state supports both the Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground laws.
The Castle Doctrine is based on the belief that a "man's home is his castle," and thus, citizens have the right to feel safe in their own homes. According to 21 O.S. 1289.25 of the Oklahoma Statutes:
A. The Legislature hereby recognizes that the citizens of the State of Oklahoma have a right to expect absolute safety within their own homes or places of business.
B. A person or an owner, manager or employee of a business is presumed to have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another when using defensive force that is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm to another if:
1. The person against whom the defensive force was used was in the process of unlawfully and forcefully entering, or had unlawfully and forcibly entered, a dwelling, residence, occupied vehicle, or a place of business, or if that person had removed or was attempting to remove another against the will of that person from the dwelling, residence, occupied vehicle, or place of business; and
2. The person who uses defensive force knew or had reason to believe that an unlawful and forcible entry or unlawful and forcible act was occurring or had occurred. . . .
The law goes a step further in subsection D, where it allows a person to use lethal force in self-defense outside one's home:
D. A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
Use of force must be commensurate to the perceived threat, and lethal force may only be used in protecting one's personal safety rather than in protecting property itself. Furthermore, once the threat has been neutralized--an intruder attempting to flee, for example--the use of deadly force in self-defense is no longer appropriate.
Image credit: Paretz Partensky
