Blaming the victim

The internet news stories are flying. A woman gets drunk and breaks into a home at 3:30 in the morning. Confronted by an armed homeowner and given orders to halt, the intruder continued advancing towards them while shining a flashlight in the homeowner's face, and was shot. After she was shot, she pulled out a cell phone and made a call. The female intruder is taken to the hospital, where tests confirm that her blood alcohol was 0.2%. The woman was identified as Zoey Ripple, a recent graduate of the University of Colorado, who pled guilty to shoplifting in 2010.

ABC story here.

The homeowners are a pair of psychiatrists. The female of the couple was stalked by an unbalanced schizophrenic patient, who ultimately had a restraining order placed against her. They live in a $3 million home, and were sleeping with the door open, and a screen in place.

In the comments on these articles, many people are critical of the homeowners for a number of reasons. Among these reasons:
- They are just rich assholes.- This reason is stupid. The posters who claim this are dick bags who think that having money means that you deserve whatever happens to you.
- The intruder was just drunk and had no intent to commit a crime. -Since when does being drunk excuse you from following the law? and whether she intended to commit a crime or not, she did. What she did is a crime.
- The intruder was a pretty female. Ah, yes. We all know that pretty woman are never criminals.
- She was a "good girl" and helped organize a campus coat drive last winter and spent the summer of 2010 teaching English to children in Guatemala. She was also a convicted criminal. "Real" criminals usually don't just begin their first day as a career criminal by robbing a bank, they start small. As the homeowner, am I supposed to do a background check before defending myself?
- The homeowners are at fault for leaving the door open. This sounds suspiciously like the "She wanted it, or she wouldn't be dressed that way." defense.

There are a host of reasons to not be so drunk that you do stupid things like commit felonies. She could have been robbed or raped. Instead, she chose to break into a home, and fail to heed the armed homeowner's warning, and continued to advance on him while blinding him with a flashlight. From the homeowner's perspective, he couldn't see if the intruder had a weapon or an accomplice with a weapon, nor could he possibly know what the intruder's intent or criminal history was.

This could easily be avoided if the girl had not broken into a house and charged an armed homeowner.

A tip to homeowners: Put a really bright flashlight on your home defense gun, so an intruder can't blind you with a light of their own. Had this been an armed person, the homeowner may well have been killed.