Man Who Shot Teen May Invoke 'Stand Your Ground'

There's 'no comparisons' to Trayvon Martin, his lawyer says
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 28, 2012 7:52 AM CST
Man Who Shot Teen May Invoke 'Stand Your Ground'
   (Shutterstock)

The man accused of killing an unarmed teen after an argument over loud music in a parking lot may invoke Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, his lawyer says. But "there are no comparisons to the Trayvon Martin situation," where the same defense was used, she adds, according to CNN. Michael Dunn is "not a vigilante," and he feels "devastated and horrified" by the death of Jordan Davis, 17, she says. She claims Dunn, 45—who had earlier attended his son's wedding and had stopped for a bottle of wine before going back to his hotel with his girlfriend—was defending himself because he heard "epithets that were extraordinarily threatening to him" from the car and saw a shotgun; police say no gun was found in the car, but Dunn's lawyer says "they may not have looked hard enough," WJXT reports.

Dunn "knows a shotgun when he sees one because he got his first gun as a gift from his grandparents when he was in third grade," she adds, describing the encounter thusly: "He sees ... a shotgun coming up over the rim of the SUV, which is up higher than his Jetta, and all he sees are heavily tinted front windows that are up and the back windows that are down, and the car has at least four black men in it." As for why Dunn and his girlfriend returned home even after hearing about the teen's death the next morning, he was "concerned with leaving the area because he didn't know if these gang members, what they were, who. He's in a strange town. He doesn't know if they're on their cellphones saying, 'Hey, come back and get this guy in the Jetta,'" she says. Davis' father says he was not a gang member. (More stand your ground stories.)

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