A Fayetteville, North Carolina man will not face charges for a fatal shooting that took place back in June after prosecutors determined he was acting in self-defense. 

The ftal shooting happened around 2 p.m. on June 3, when a homeowner discovered a man in his backyard who was apparently trying to steal some pipes on the man’s property. 

Under North Carolina law, defense of property is not cause to use lethal force, but if you’re defending yourself from the threat of death or great bodily harm you can use lethal force to do so. And according to prosecutors, it wasn’t the theft that led to 64-year-old Jasper Collins being shot. It was the fact that he tried to run the homeowner down with his car. 

“I shot at a guy,” the resident said in the 2:09 p.m. call. “He tried to run me over with a car, (he was) in the back of my yard stealing my pipes. I shot his tires out and shot at him.”

Cumberland County Assistant District Attorney Rob Thompson said the investigation found that the shooter reacted in self-defense.

“The shooting was justified,” Thompson said Wednesday. “The shooter could have legally shot the deceased earlier than he did, but it kept getting worse and worse.”

Thompson said that the violence had escalated leaving the homeowner no choice. 

“It was really more of a self-defense issue,” Thompson said. “Some of the things that the deceased did before, gave the shooter an absolute right to, what we call, perfect self-defense.”

I really wish the prosecutor would have elaborated on the things that Collins did before he was shot, but unfortunately Thompson didn’t provide details about what led up to the shooting or why he believes that the armed citizen could have legally shot Collins before the 64-year-old tried to run him over. I may be reading between the lines, but it sounds like Collins had already threatened the homeowner before he got behind the wheel of his car. 

If Collins had simply tried to drive away instead of using his car as a deadly weapon he’d not only likely be alive today, but probably wouldn’t be looking at jail time for trying to steal the pipes from the armed citizen’s yard. Unless the pipes were valued at more than $1,000, Collins would most likely have been charged with a misdemeanor, and so long as the 64-year-old didn’t have an extensive criminal history he probably would have been sentenced to nothing more than a short term of probation for the non-violent offense. 

We’ll never know why Collins chose to escalate his crime from a property offense to attempted murder, but that was a fatal mistake on his part. The homeowner had every right to be in his own backyard, had no duty to retreat under North Carolina law once Collins threatened him, and was legally entitled to use deadly force to protect himself after Collins threatened him. The only question I have is why it took prosecutors and police five months to conclude that the homeowner’s actions were justified when Thompson’s comments suggests the evidence was overwhelmingly in the homeowner’s favor.