Around two years ago, Shannon Edmonds was asleep in his quite Clearlake home next to his girlfriend with both his girlfriend’s sons asleep in the next room. All of a sudden he is awakened by the sound of breaking glass. The sliding glass door to his living room had been broken and three armed men are in his house with guns drawn.
His girlfriend’s son, Dale Lafferty, 17, run into the living room to see what is going on and he is immediately stuck in the head with a baseball bat by one of the assailants. Another assailant fires a shotgun towards the bedroom spraying glass and wood causing injury to his girlfriend. This family went from being peacefully asleep to being in imminent danger in a matter of minutes.
Shannon grabs his 9mm handgun and decides to fight back to protect himself, his home, and his family. He shoots and kills two of the intruders and the third intruder flees from his home empty handed.
Among the dead are Rashad Williams, 21, of Clearlake and Christian Foster, 22, of San Francisco.
The third assailant, Renato Hughes Jr., 21, of San Francisco was apprehended a few hours later.
Shannon’s 17 year old step-son, Dale, has critical injuries and had to be airlifted to the hospital where he spent several weeks in a coma recovering from his head injuries.
The three assailants were after the 3 pounds of medicinal marijuana that Shannon had due to being a medicinal marijuana patient and caregiver.
So is Shannon the victim or the crime here?
Many people argued that Shannon should be charged with murder even though he only killed the two intruders to defend himself and his family inside his own home. Others disagree.
Some say that this killing is a racial matter, but I mainly think that’s because Shannon kind of resembles Ed Norton from American History X, however he looks more like the reformed Ed Norton with longer hair who is no longer racist than the skin head version. So I don’t think that racism played a role here. He was simply defending his home and family.
The friends and families of Williams and Foster are outraged and thought that Shannon Edmonds should be charged with murder. How dare he kill those boys for breaking into his home, assaulting his family, and threatening their lives! I really don’t understand their arguement here. These guys committed an armed robbery, with guns, assaulted someone’s son with deadly force and threatened the lives of an entire family. They got what the deserved in my opinion.
By breaking into that home, they forfeited their right to live and put their fate into the hands of whoever owned that house. A person’s home is private property, their own part of the world, where they can be safe and secure from the outside world. Breaking into the house especially brandishing deadly weapons puts the occupants lives in danger. This gives them the right to use deadly force to protect themselves and their property.
The families can argue all they want, but they are missing the real issue at hand. They should have stayed on top of their sons to prevent them from going down a road of crime when they were younger, but now it is too late and there is nothing they can do about it. They are dead. But rather than admitting that they fucked up by raising a couple of pieces of shit, they want to point the fingers at everyone else.
Rashad’s mother, Sheila Burton, says the following about Rashad Williams:
At 15, Rashad Williams had everything going for him. A standout athlete, he was attending an expensive private high school and his efforts for a victim of the Columbine massacre had landed him on national television and won him a proclamation from the mayor of San Francisco.
At 21, Williams is dead, shot two weeks ago while allegedly breaking into a Clearlake home with two accomplices.
However she fails to mention:
Rashad Williams had been arrested 18 months earlier by Orinda police in connection with a bank robbery.
There was a clear behavior pattern here among those three guys that the families ignored and failed to do anything about. In my opinion the families who want Shannon tried for murder are more guilty for doing such a poor job controlling these guys growing up and setting them on the right track then Shannon who was just defending his family as any man should.
With the current medicinal marijuana laws in California the police are no longer the biggest fear to those who possess the substance. No city, county, or state law enforcement agencies can interfere with anyone posessing or using marijuana from medicinal uses. Many doctors out there will write prescriptions for medicinal marijuana to anyone for just about any condition out there. Medical Groups like Medicann charge only $100-150 for a visit and will write prescriptions for just about anyone. The biggest fear today in the marijuana industry is being robbed, attacked, or killed by someone that wants to steal your marijuana.
Just a week ago, Maximiliano Izquierdo Martinez, 20, of Windsor was shot dead after trying to break into a Rincon Valley house to steal the almost 300 lbs of marijuana that were grown and processed there.
Maximiliano Izquierdo Martinez, 20, of Windsor and two friends, Jose Luis Quiroz Jr., 19, and Antonio Pulido, 24 came to the Rincon Valley house on Beech Avenue with the intent on robbery. The occupants in the home fought back and, ultimately, several shots were fired. Martinez was hit and died of a gunshot wound at the scene.
This is another so-called tradgedy where a couple of low-life criminals got what they deserved. The families can mourn this terrible tradgedy, but they should not be able to cry victim because these guys were killed committing an armed robbery.
All three men suspected of invading the house have extensive criminal backgrounds.
Izquierdo was released in March from San Quentin State Prison after being sentenced in December on drug charges. At the time of his death, Izquierdo was living with his parents and younger sister in Windsor, and was the father of a 3-year-old child.
Pulido was convicted in April 2006 of felony gun possession, three years after a conviction for carrying a concealed weapon with a gang enhancement. He has served two prison terms, according to court documents.
Quiroz was convicted of felony burglary in the spring, less than a year after being convicted of misdemeanor possession of a deadly weapon. He was given three years’ probation.
All three were class acts.
Under California law regardless of who fired the shot that killed Martinez, his two friends, Quiroz and Pulido, could be charged with murder because they were committing a felony when the homicide occurred. Renato Hughes Jr faces a similar fate and is being held responsible for the death of his partners who were killed in the Clearlake robbery.
California has a felony murder rule, or a related theory called the provocative act doctrine. Both of those legal theories say a defendant can be held responsible for murder committed during the commission of a felony even though they didn’t actually commit the killing.
Therefore the surviving perps will be facing murder charges due to the death of their associates.
I don’t know if I agree with this doctrine. I believe that the surviving perps should face armed robbery and attempted murder charges, but I don’t know if they should be held responsible for the murder of their associates since they didn’t actually kill them, they just helped to start the shoot out which led to their deaths.
With the pass of proposition 215, violent crime and robberies have replaced the police as the biggest threat to marijuana-growing and dispensing activities. The value of the product and the amount of money involved with these marijuana-growing and dispensing operations is very enticing to the criminal element who also want to profit due to the lax laws regarding medicinal marijuana use and distribution.
Growing marijuana may seem like a good idea due to many due to the lax laws in the area making your chances of being arrested slim to none, however this sort of activity is too attractive to the criminal element who jump at the opportunity to rob, attack, or even kill anyone with large amounts of the product.
I would not be surprised if these crimes surrounding medicinal marijuana get worse and worse as time goes on. However, if the supply increases and more dispenseries open the value in the area will greatly decrease and this will make stealing this product much less appealing.
What do you think about medicinal marijuana? What can be done to improve the system? Should it be totally outlawed or made even more readily available?