Prosecutors say that 18-year-old William Innes, who was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of 68-year-old Annette Pershal, sent the text to a group that includes his co-defendant, 19-year-old Ryan Hopkins, reported KNSD-TV.
Sadly this is all too common. I recall at my University one the frat houses got in trouble for the very same thing… i. e shooting a local homeless person everyone knew with a pellet gun. He wasnt injured thankfully, but this being the 90s there was far less outrage than you’d expect from the student body.
Same, one of the frats allegedly used to do this to keep the homeless from sleeping out on their property. Never witnessed it, but I did hear stories. Could have also just been bs, but it was definitely unsettling to hear.
And now we will spend millions of dollars on this trash while homeless people get jack shit.
Amazing how this system works!
I didn’t even know that you could kill someone with a pellet gun
Hit the jugular vein, you can.
She was shot 3 times, one of them puncturing the aorta
That’s crazy, I wasn’t aware they were that strong. I only ever had cheap bb guns that would barely fly 5 ft.
Wow, that was some penetration.
Jesus
There’s some pretty powerful air rifles out there. The one from the article appears to be a varmit air rifle (at least that’s what I would call it). Here’s a review I found:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ghNp27YgJd4
And another one that shows the targets they’re hitting up close:
Having done a fair amount of homeless outreach in my time, this is the reason why folks who have been on the streets for a while are so vulnerable to paranoia. If you don’t have a place to live in America, you’re under threats of assault like this all the time, from both everyday citizens and the cops. That constant fear and need to always be looking over your shoulder eats people up from the inside out.
I wish folks would realize this when discussing the homeless problem and the associated behavioral issues. Even if you’re not crazy when you hit the streets, a couple of months out there will either make you paranoid or make you dead.
They think you’re expendable when you’re homeless; an easy target that nobody will miss. I heard about some farmer jerk who would recruit drifters to buy cows at auctions, then plug them to absolve himself of guilt. After law enforcement found the bodies, they gave the dude the death penalty, but it took a long, long time before he was charged with anything. Can’t say the motherfucker is missed.
Judging by the posts I see on nextdoor people with homes are ridiculously paranoid too.
I had to delete that app because it made me hate my neighbors.
Might as well change the Next door’s tagline to “A Karen’s wet dream” for providing a place for crazy people to soapbox and flip their shit over little things
My neighbor started a thread because she didn’t recognize an AirBnB guests car.
He is “a good kid with a warm heart” he lawyer says.
His lawyer needs to be Locked up with him.
The trigger puller was Innes but that line was about Hopkins. He’s being charged because he supposedly drove Innes there.
I’d also argue that at 19 he is no longer a “kid”.
The driver is as guilty as the trigger puller.
I didn’t say he wasn’t, I was just clarifying the names involved and who that line was about.
a good kid with a warm heart
is a good way to describe a psychopath if you never actually dealt with one.
Because good kids with good hearts definitely launch unprovoked deadly attacks against the vulnerable /s
But he wasn’t meaning to murder, this good kid was just trying to quell their boredom by causing bodily injury to people they they perceive as less than a person. /s I’d bet money that if this kid isn’t charged, they’ll become a cop.
Lawyers have a job to do, and it’s provide the best possible defense, to even the most disgusting of criminals, because our justice system relies on everyone having a right to an adversarial defense.
This is not a defense. This is pandering to media.
Sorry but managing media is part of defense.
It’s in his client’s interest to speak kindly of him in the media before jury selection. He’s still doing his job.
Sure, his job just happens to perfectly match his personality of being a lying asshole.
I mean…. In the USA you’re entitled to a vigorous defense.
Vilifying the lawyer isn’t going to do any good. He’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing.
This kid, if he did it, is a shitbird. The lawyer is doing what they’re supposed to do.
I’m not a lawyer but I went and checked the ABA because I was pretty sure the term “zealous advocate” was in the duties and responsibilities. Here’s what I found on the ABA site, “As advocate, a lawyer zealously asserts the client’s position under the rules of the adversary system.”[1]
Lawyers, especially defense lawyers, get a lot of hate for being zealous about even the most vile client’s defense, but I promise that if anyone reading this ever needs a lawyer you’ll be glad as fuck that they are duty bound to not half ass your defense.
You all keep acting like he was forced to take the case. He wasn’t. He did it for the money, knowing full well what a scumbag his client is. I’m not about to sympathize with someone who’s making a fuckton of money by literally shilling for an actual psychopath.
Say you were accused of killing a baby. A news article ran that said you texted, “Lol about to go eat some babies!” You look like an absolute psychopath. Do you deserve representation?
Going further you know you didn’t kill the baby. The message was an unrelated tasteless joke about religion. You’ve been convicted in the court of public opinion by the aforementioned article about your deeds though. Do you think it would be fair to you, in an adversarial justice system, to not have the absolute best representation? Do you think, in those circumstances, that you should only be allowed to hire a lawyer that will half ass your case?
Warm like brimstone warm ffs
I don’t even know what to say, just completely disgustingly unhinged behavior. The dehumanization of the houseless needs to stop.
In my city something similar is going on, three homeless people have already been stabbed while sleeping at night. I honestly don‘t understand the depravity humans get up to.
Look up “brazen bull” and you’ll get a better understanding of just how shitty our species really is.
I went looking for more info and found this much more comprehensive article.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/07/san-diego-teens-arrested-killing-woman-pellet-gun
These people are monsters. Imagine knowing that someone is living in absolute misery on the streets and saying to yourself, “I want to target them and degrade them even further while causing them physical pain. Sounds like fun!”
