Tigh Croff

The man was tired of being victimized. Who wouldn't be?

Three break ins in the past week, and a fourth incident erupting in his back yard, Croff had been a victim one time too often.

During Monday's early morning hours two men entered his back yard. Croff, a licensed gun owner, chased the two men out of his yard and into the cold night. One of the men, a 53 year old loser, finally stopped his flight, turned, and taunted Croff. "What are you going to do, shoot me?"

The man, an unarmed 53 year old Herbert Silas, received his answer full in the chest, and died.

I am not a big supporter of vigilante justice, particularly after Silas had already fled the premises of Croff and was obviously no longer an immediate danger to the homeowner. Perhaps Croff deserves the 2nd degree murder charges he now faces.

Still, there is something systemically (to utilize a particularly popular word today) wrong with a neighborhood or city when a homeowner can in effect plan on being burglarized on a weekly basis with no recourse. Such victimization without any hope of police intervention would drive the best of us into a state of frenzy; frenzy enough to finally say enough is enough.

I certainly don't applaud the death of Silas, but I have difficulty, given what few facts are available, in condemning Croff. A man's property, whether owned or rented, should remain his property, and a 53 year old man ought to know enough that to trespass on another man's property is at least a stroll on thin ice.

Perhaps if a few more Detroiters were legally armed there would be fewer predators running the streets looking for this week's victims, and perhaps too there might be fewer burned out vacant buildings serving as evidence that a once great city had lost its will to survive.