A Texas mother shot and killed a man as her three children were inside the home at around 10 p.m., San Antonio police officials said.
Authorities said the unnamed woman heard a man trying to break into her home on Thursday night. The man went into her home via the laundry room, which is adjacent to the South Side Lions Park, officials
told News 4 San Antonio.
The woman, said to be her in 30s, grabbed a gun and shot the intruder twice in the chest, police said. He was taken to a nearby hospital and was pronounced dead, they said, adding that no other injuries were reported.
The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s office identified the man as Roman Rodriguez, 41, saying he died from gunshot wounds,
according to KSAT-TV. When police were called, they found him sitting on a chair outside bleeding from the wounds, according to officials.
Local residents told local media outlets that they heard two gunshots.
“The first thing we heard was a gunshot and it was one,” one unnamed neighbor told ABC12. “And then maybe within a minute, a second one popped up.”
The homeowner reportedly won’t be facing charges due to the state’s castle doctrine, which allows the use of deadly force against an individual who unlawfully enters with force or attempts to enter a home, workplace, or vehicle.
According to state
law, “A person in lawful possession of land or tangible, movable property is justified in using force against another when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to prevent or terminate the other’s trespass on the land or unlawful interference with the property.”
In November 2020, a Democrat state lawmaker, Rep. Terry Meza, attempted to change the law to “require a homeowner to exhaust the potential of safely retreating into their habitation before deadly force in defense of themselves or their property,” adding that the current law emboldens individuals to “take justice into their own hands.”
At the time, Gov. Greg Abbott
wrote that Texas’s castle doctrine law will “not be reduced,” adding that “we won’t force Texas homeowners to retreat.” The Republican governor then described the proposal as akin to the 2020 calls to “defund the police.”
Last month, a sheriff in Florida, Santa Rosa County Sheriff Bob Johnson
called on homeowners to get firearm training to deal with possible home invaders, noting that if “somebody’s breaking into your house, you’re more than welcome to shoot them in Santa Rosa County.” He then joked: “We prefer that you do actually.”
