Fox News: "Convicted felon shot, killed by homeowner during Tennessee home invasion: cops"

Disclaimer: I'm not your attorney and this is not intended as legal advice. If you want legal advice, you will need to hire your own attorney.

         The article reports that the homeowner, Brent Bishop (44), and his wife were victims of a home invasion by Terry Adams, Jr. (27), and an accomplice. The two perpetrators apparently entered through the back door into the kitchen and struck the wife in the face. When Bishop entered  the room, he was struck in the head with a blunt object, and then forced to turn over 3 long guns and a pistol to the burglars. The two burglars then left the house. Bishop retrieved another handgun and went to look for his wife (who had fled) and encountered the two burglars in his back yard, and fired shots at them, fatally wounding Adams.

       Bishop was hospitalized with a head fracture.

       Interestingly, Adams is believed to have burglarized Bishop's home on February 6 in which a flat screen TV was taken. Undoubtedly it was during this robbery that Adams learned or suspected that Bishop owned some firearms. The article also reports that Adams had prior convictions of auto burglary, attempted burglary, felony theft and aggravated assault, and "had been arrested in July 2017 for felony meth possession for resale and unlawful gun possession by a convicted felon and was being sought by authorities for two probation violation warrants."

       Normally, I would advise against chasing a fleeing felon because there is too great a risk of the criminal turning and shooting you (see my post from earlier today in which I mention a mugging that resulted in the victim being shot), and you generally will have no self-defense excuse for shooting a felon fleeing the scene of a crime. However, in this case, I believe it was appropriate because Bishop's wife had fled out the back door and, to his knowledge, may have been in the back yard and in danger from the two burglars.

       The article provides few details about what happened in the back yard, but it was interesting to me that the burglars were still there. Where they loading the weapons or readying them for use? It is possible that Bishop thought they were going to use the weapons they had taken from him; and he certainly knew that the two offered a threat of violence against him--they had already injured him with a weapon. Consequently, I suspect that Bishop will probably not be charged (provided, of course, that he was not prohibited from possessing the handgun he used).

       Another point I would like to make is the ease with which the criminals entered the house. Based on the description in the article, the back door was probably unlocked. I see that often--even people that are very good about locking their front door seem to think that a back door doesn't need to be locked because, after all, their back yard is fenced, or some similar reasoning. My practice is to keep both front and back doors locked, even if I am home, unless there is some reason for them to be unlocked (e.g., the kids playing outside, going back and forth through the door repeatedly, etc.).