Monday, January 02, 2006



Wisconsin: Police treating shooting at club as self-defense: "A shooting that left one man dead and another critically injured in a bar early Saturday is being treated as a self-defense case, police spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz said Tuesday. LaCharles Hester, 27, was killed and another man, 23, who was not identified, was wounded in the chest by a bartender .... The bar owner was trying to clear the bar when Hester pulled out a gun, fired into the ceiling and pointed the gun at the bartender and other people in the bar, Schwartz said. The bartender, 36, who was not identified, drew a gun from his holster and shot Hester in the back of the head, she said. The 23-year-old man then tried to take the gun away from the bartender and it fired, hitting the 23-year-old in the chest."


Idaho: Smoke shop clerk fatally shoots masked intruder : "Joseph Kalani Hatchie, 47, facing medical bills and eviction from his family's rental home in Otis Orchard, Wash., just east of Spokane, on Monday kissed his wife goodbye before leaving to drive his brother home. He then allegedly put on a gray ski mask just before 8 p.m. and walked into Lew's Smoke Shop in this northern Idaho border town and pointed his son's unloaded pellet gun at the clerk. The clerk reached under the counter and pulled out a .40 caliber semiautomatic and shot Hatchie 10 times, according to police. Lew's Smoke Shop had been robbed twice before in the last five years, according to the Kootenai County sheriff's office. On Tuesday, the department displayed the pellet gun - designed to look like a Walter P-9 semiautomatic - alongside real weapons. "We wanted to do this display just so you understand what this poor clerk saw last night and, in that split-second, what decision he had to make," sheriff's Capt. Ben Wolfinger said. He said the county prosecutor will determine whether the shooting was a justifiable homicide or if charges will be filed against the store clerk, who has not been identified."

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