Whaley Bridge: Farmer held over burglary shooting death

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-68942085

by NaethanC

18 comments

  1. Seems like had these blokes not been breaking into houses they wouldn’t be dead or maimed

    Big boys games, big boys rules

  2. Another cheeky chappy on the local football team.

    I think we should have better self-defence laws for home burglaries. If you break into someone’s home, they don’t know what someone is there to do, they don’t know how far that person is willing to go. Break into a family home and you’re taking your life into your hands imo. Should honestly be thrown out unless there’s *incredibly* dramatic circumstances.

  3. 21st century’s Tony Martin right here. It’s a head scratcher thats for sure.

  4. Good old boys in blue fighting the good fight & keeping us safe 🙄 Oh shit there’s a child on an escooter!

  6. I lived on a farm for a while a few years ago, not that far from a city but quite isolated. You realise how vulnerable you are to people with bad intentions. A nearish place to me got broken into and an old couple were tied up and beaten. I didn’t have any weapons but if I lived there again I would.

  7. Jesus, fucking Reddit.

    There’s a dead guy and the most we can glean from the evidence so far is that it is the word of two people arrested for burglary vs the word of a person arrested for murder.

    But of course Reddit already has it all worked out.

    The property own could be released without charge for defending themselves from a gang of men out to kill them, or they could end up doing life for murdering someone they lured to their house and then claimed they were being burgled. That pretty much covers the scope of possibilities at the moment given what we know.

  8. A man is dead under suspicious circumstances. Police are duty bound to investigate and find out what happened.
    They are absolutely right to hold and question the man they suspect is responsible for his death while they uncover the facts. Charges may or may not be brought. We’ll find out in good time.

    The law on self defence in U.K. works well. I don’t recall any case of a householder being successfully prosecuted and convicted for merely defending themselves against an intruder.

  9. When an elderly man killed a burglar in with a kitchen knife in similar circumstances a while back he was arrested and questioned. Then released without charge.

    Arrests are normal when people have been killed. We should wait until charges are announced, if any, before deciding if the police are useless or not

  10. There’s going to be more to this.
    I doubt it’s a simple burglary of a farm.

    The timeline is odd. BBC suggest the burglary was 10 hours before the shooting.

  11. I grew up in a rural area not far from where the Tony Martin case played out. I note that the teenagers in that case were urban and not from the local area. I used to play out in the fields a lot as a kid and you always knew that the farmers have guns and you don’t fuck about. I was a little redhead and would get told by shotgun-brandishing farmers ‘mess about in my fields for too long and I might mistake you for a pheasant’. Having an ingrained awareness that there were plenty of gun licences around was just as much a part of growing up as knowing that you don’t wander out onto tidal marshes or enter a field with a lone bull.

  12. Let me translate:
    Man held for defending his property from 2 burglars

  13. I can understand the Police need to investigate the circumstances. Given the other alleged survivors / suspects are said to have been arrested on suspicion of aggravated burglary (definition – A person is guilty of aggravated burglary if they commit any burglary **and at the time has with them any firearm or imitation firearm, any weapon of offence, or any explosive**), then there maybe mitigating circumstances to shoot people to protect yourself, not just because they are breaking into your house.

  15. Ahhhh a local ‘cheeky chappy’ who is part of the local footie team. Wouldn’t hurt a soul. Wouldn’t sneak into someone else’s house uninvited and help themselves to someone’s belongings that they slaves away for years to buy.

  17. This is Tony Martin, all over again. He shot a kid in the back, during a burglary. He was convicted of murder, had his sentence commuted to manslaughter, appealed on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and served three years in the end.

    I doubt this farmer will walk away scout-free. But, we will see.

  18. In these cases it all depends on the sequence of events and threat to life/welfare. In the UK the pendulum has swung too far against the rights of individuals to defend themselves and their property.

    But.

    Even in gun-friendly US states such as Texas the circumstances under which deadly force can be used are extremely limited. If someone is forcing entry then you’re free and clear to shoot. However, you’re accountable for every bullet so you need to aim straight and true. If your stray bullets hit a neighbor then you could find yourself in a spot of legal bother.

    If the burgular is running away and you shoot them in the back, expect to be brought up on murder charges. If the scrotes are running away with your flat screen just call the police and insurance company. The immediate threat has gone so leave it to the authorities to handle.

    The vast majority of cases will make their way to the DA and, from there, a Grand Jury. The GJ will then decide whether to the case should go to trial. GJs tend to sympathize with victims of crime and not those with criminal intent.

    As for Whaley Bridge….if the robbing bastards were shot while forcing entry and/or were a threat to the farmer, then they fucked around and found out. But if the farmer shot when they were scuttling away, he needs to be prosecuted.

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