I used to knock doors back in the 1990s raising money for Jump Rope for Heart. Not once did I have to worry about being shot. And that was in Texas! Also in 1999 I was a door to door sales man for Orange Solve. Again never had an issue For fuck sakes my grandfather sold life insurance door to door. We used to have door sales man and not mention religious people who would go door to door. Not once did you hear stories like this.
I blame fox news. They have made these people so fucking scared. Life was more dangerous back in the 70’s-80’s for a kid.
Guess that’s what they want to go back to. I hope this man gets life in prison. Goddammit I am sick tired of these fucks ruining and destroying our world. Fucking piss baby.
Removed by mod
That’s scary and so fucking crazy. We can’t fix these people. We need to one cut off Fox News and any right wing media, then we need to pump billions into education.
We also need to lock all these people up in institutions until we can deprogram them.
What state was this?
Should have called the cops and said they were brandishing.
In Louisiana in the early 90s a Japanese foreign exchange student was shot during a Halloween party when he accidentally knocked on the wrong house in costume. When he walked away, the home owner came out with a revolver and yelled ‘freeze’. He didn’t understand what that meant since his English was poor and he walked towards them and was then shot. He probably also thought that he DID go to the right house and as it was Halloween it was probably a gag.
The home owner was acquitted, but it caused an international incident.
My mother told me about an incident where a ethnic Chinese man (or woman? can’t remember what I heard) in the US was going through the trash looking for those bottles/cans that you can sell for money (you know those that says 5 cent / 10 cent if recycled?), so there was a kid in the house who their parents left alone at home armed with a fucking gun and he started shouting at the man to leave, but he didn’t understand English, so the kid shot and killed the man, claiming to “feel threatened”. The shooter being a kid means there were no charges.
That conversation basically set the atmosphere (as in, the mental picture that I have) of what America was like. Its probably one of the reasons why I (as someone who is also ethnically Chinese) have this self-imposed restriction of never going to a republican area or any racially homogenous areas (particularly those all white suburbs / rural places)
I never looked it up, but let me know if you found an article that matchs what I was told.
Never heard of this. Of course I was kin the early 90’s.
Thanks that sucks, fucker got away with it. And his house brother killded himself in 2023. Fucking monsters still have not paid out the judgement they owe. I hope they had a rotten life after that. Living in a trailer park to good for them.
It’s crazy to me they can just not pay a cent of the judgement. As of a 2022 article, the only amount paid out was by insurance
Couldn’t find anything about their lives
The article says the shooter has paid $100,000 of his own money and insurance has paid the same amount.
Jesus Christ he shot a Japanese kid dressed as John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever.
I hope they’ll lock up all of fox news, oann, etc as well as these lying fucks are the reason for people’s minds being so fucked up
What color is your skin, though?
I’m white but I worked with people of color knocking doors we never ran into these issues in the 1990’s.
i dunno. I have a friend who’s asian, sold door to door in DFW in the 90s and regularly had guns pulled on him.
Really? What was he selling?
i legitimately don’t remember. it was 30 years ago.
Protection.
I canvassed door-to-door in Ohio in the mid-80s for a public interest org and I also never feared for my life. Although one time I had knocked on one door and was actually leaving the property when the homeowner opened his door and let his doberman out. This thing barked at me and seemed to be trying to bite me but I was able to keep my clipboard in front of his head. Anybody trying to defend themselves from a dog should try using a clipboard.
However, I’m white. I had a friend from Sri Lanka who was working the same job and his experience was a bit different. One time he was walking down a road and heard a noise behind him, turned around and saw a car approaching him with a guy sticking out of the passenger window holding a baseball bat.
Holy shit that crazy. When I did door to door always had an uneventful experience. Even when I canvas here in Oklahoma it was meh. Guess other benefit ot being white.
This is different from just ringing doorbells. The article doesn’t say it and glosses over the fact that this kid was doing it for TikTok. The fuckin stupid ass TiKtOk ChaLLeNgE is to go up and kick the shit out the door as loud as you can, then run away after terrifying whoever is inside.
It’s no excuse to shoot, but it’s not a simple “kid rang the doorbell”
You might have a point if TikTok was a sex trafficking drug cartel or something. Otherwise it’s completely irrelevant bit of info. As if kids weren’t doing stupid shit like this before.
Ding dong ditch used to be a staple of kiddie pranks… for fuck’s sake! Do none of these idiots have any real threat assessment? Or are they so desperate to shoot someone that they just wanna blast some kid and say they feared for their lives?
Do none of these idiots have any real threat assessment?
More that they’ve got a house full of guns, an ear full of “crime wave!!!” media, and a not insignificant amount of mental illness.
“If someone rings my doorbell and runs away, they’re targeting my house for a burglary” is a thing lots of people unironically believe.
Or are they so desperate to shoot someone that they just wanna blast some kid and say they feared for their lives?
Definitely elements of that, too. But in the sense of feeling like they want to be the hero of a story they’ve heard on Talk Radio.
A lot of these people are legit delusional.
“If someone rings my doorbell and runs away, they’re targeting my house for a burglary” is a thing lots of people unironically believe.
God help me, I’m going to lose it with the next idiot that I hear this shit from. My parents constantly regurgitate simulacrums of that line. Somehow we’ve moved on foolish grans mass spamming the emails about people putting tags on your car at the gas station to follow you home… but it’s ‘moved on’ to the insidious new middle-aged twats on facebook losing their minds about shit like kids being kidnapped from their school by secret russian/chinese/iranian/democrat black-ops teams.
None whatsoever. They’re bloodthirsty savages. Itching for any excuse to murder someone.
I give it 2 weeks before the shooter is being interviewed on Fox. Whinging about how he’s really the victim of some nebulous “woke mob” that drug him online for murdering a child.
As someone raised by conservatives, it’s #2. They fantasize about being in a scenario where they have to defend their home with a gun. It’s a core component of being a conservative.
I think they are just stupid, scared people who watch Fox 24/7 and really think bad things are happening everywhere. Or to put it more succinctly, they are little bitches.
Or are they so desperate to shoot someone that they just wanna blast some kid and say they feared for their lives?
It is exactly this. These are deeply violent people who are actively seeking any reason to hide behind the excuse of self defense.
There is something ingrained in certain people I’m finding. I’m a big dude who can handle himself if need be, but I also have guns cause the state does too. Moved from a more liberal area to this purple pearl in a very red area. Had a girl over one night and heard some rustling outside the door. I put on pants and went to go check it out and she asked me why I wasn’t bringing my gun. Jackie, my sister in Christ, we are outside the downtown area of a fairly safe little tourist trap. At the absolute worst it could be is a small black bear that I just scream at. But I’m not going to jail for firing a gun near downtown(although that doesn’t tend to stop anyone else around here).
Or are they so desperate to shoot someone that they just wanna blast some kid and say they feared for their lives?
Too many people are kept in check by fear of getting caught by the law and will turn into savage beasts at the slightest opportunity.
At 11PM?
deleted by creator
11 PM? So what? Is that when ‘the purge’ starts in that nasty rat hole state or what?
It’s when kids, traditionally, are in bed. But you do you if 35 year olds do the ding-dong ditch in your holler, sounds like you’re a good fit.
Well maybe not for an 11 y/o, but sure, high school boys are rarely any more grown up.
Adults: “Kids never go outside and have fun anymore.”
Also Adults: “If you step on my property I’ll kill you.”Those are different adults saying those things. The gun nuts tend to instill irrational fear in their kids that they should never leave the house unless they are prepared for life-and-death warfare. It’s a sad cycle of paranoid abuse :(
wtf from the cops
a homicide detective with the Houston Police Department, told KHOU, noting the boy’s death does not appear to involve self-defense because the shooting “wasn’t close to the house.”
Implying that if they rang the doorbell and waited (you know, the entire purpose of a doorbell), it could have been considered self-defense? I know, that’s a bit of logical fallacy but wtf
Everyone is entitled to their day in court. This is a cop doing a good job of cutting out any possibility of bullshit weaseling by pointing out that the possibility of self defense doesn’t even need to be debated or discussed.
Everyone is entitled to their day in court
Even ICE detainees? Don’t tell trump that. It’ll rile him up no end.
It just means they don’t even need to consider if it could have been in self defense because it was ruled out at step 1. Not that if it passed step 1 it would be guaranteed that it was.
They just want to head off that entire line of defense from the get go.
could have been
as the other user said, yes, exactly. depending on other factors it could have been
i mean i’ve seen signs in austin, on the same lawn, that say “we don’t call the police” with a picture of a gun and “ring my door and i’ll shoot”
lovely, warm neighborhood…
So doesn’t that person have any deliveries or visitors or anything? Imagine ordering a pizza and then being shocked when some anxious guy (anxious because they got tons of deliveries to make on a deadline or be fired) shows up?
i honestly don’t know. i was visiting three houses down and asked, they just shrugged and said welcome to texas
Keep Austin
WeirdPsychotic
“Why don’t kids play anymore”
Once saw a mother with kids in her car, drive past another group of kids playing soccer in the street. She’s sped past them yelling, “next time I’ll just run you idiots over!” (not a busy street at all!) maybe one car every 10 min. Those kids don’t play soccer any more.
There was more violent deaths in children in the 70s, 80’s, and early 90’s, than there is today, even though there’s over 100,000,000 more people in the US than there was in 1980. Kids are safer. People like you just think it’s worse because now it’s blasted all over the news and internet for you to see anytime something like this happens.
While there was more violence and crime then, normal people seem entirely unhinged now. Maybe it’s just the news but back then I would have trusted neighbors and feared crime whereas today the neighbors seem scary (at least in certain parts of the country. That doesn’t generally happen here)
Statistically, it is just being blown out of proportion by the media. No one sells ad space by reporting that nothing terrible happened again today.
Ignore the stories you’ve heard about things happening “somewhere”, and think about what’s happened on your street.
Your neighborhood may be a cesspool of violence and death, but the smart bet is that it’s just as peaceful and boring as mine.
Didnt the media report on crime in the 80s and 90s, too? I mean with the incredible amount of crime happening back then (at one point New York City had 2000 murders a year, while today it is closer to 200 or 250) they could have made it a fuckload more sensational. How the fuck did greatly reduced crime translate to more media sensation?
News reporting was different then.
In the 80s, most people got their news from broadcast network news shows or newspapers. CNN only just started in 1980. The Fairness Doctrine wasn’t eliminated until 1987. Fox News didn’t start until 1996.
There wasn’t ever a need for a 24x7 news channel. There still isn’t, but we have multiple 24x7 news networks. They have to blow things out of proportion like never before to try to get viewers.
You answered your own question with your last sentence.
Not only was there more child murder back then, but they were less likely to be solved. Do you remember the whole missing kids on milk cartons? It started when a paperboy was abducted and never seen again. Also whoever did it completely disappeared, too. The police didn’t have any leads or suspects.
In the 90s it was the same thing. You know the Amber alert? It was named after a girl who was kidnapped and murdered. Her killer was never found. Not a single suspect interrogated, either. Some DNA did surface in 2022 or so, but that didn’t lead to any suspects either.
People like you
You know nothing about me.
I’m aware that violent crime against children is down significantly over the last few decades. But have you considered that the same news reporting allowing us to see these stories, also allows parents and children to see them? Could that possibly have an effect on children’s behavior? You’re ignorant and overconfident. Blocked.
Yeah. I definitely mean people like you.
I live just outside of Houston, and I’ve had kids play ding-dong ditch at my house, and honestly it’s fucking creepy. It wouldn’t bother me during the daytime, when people are around and there are often children playing on my street. But it only happens late at night, when my two little kids are in bed. I check outside and they’re gone. My street is well-lit, but I never see them running away. There’s a green space nearby that they must be running to, but there’s nothing to hide behind there.
Anyway, it’s creepy as fuck. I really hate it. If I caught the kid in the act, I’d probably get real serious at him and try to get him to stop. But I’d never point a gun at him. I hope he trips while he’s running and busts up his teeth, but I don’t want him to die.
The murderer here is completely unhinged.
You could always respond like a normal human being and get a doorbell cam. You can at least see what is going on and maybe go talk to their parents (if you didn’t live in a dystopia where people think it’s ok to just start blasting)
We don’t have a doorbell cam because we live in a dystopia and I don’t want the cops or the government to have visual access to my front door at all times.
Self-hosting is an option if you’re tech-savvy enough
I’m not.
Also savvy criminals would have jammers on. There is little question in my mind that tech bro bastards probably shut down all cameras they don’t fully control if they go anywhere. They want all the privacy in the world while they probably want a nice shot of your ass as you take a dump.
Lawl nobody bothering people at home for tiktok clout is carrying a fucking jammer
jammers
No idea why you need something as sophisticated as a jammer when you can just stick a piece of tape over the lense.
Either way, yeah. These cameras are more useful for a panoptican security state than any individual home owner.
And even then… not that beneficial.
Also kids playing ding dong ditch, aren’t walking around with sophisticatedish tech like that!
Chances are astronomically low you know who the parents are. Maybe this is a legit use of that nextdoor app.
Given that kids sometimes play outside, or take some time to get loaded into or out of cars in a driveway, and I am also sometimes outside or driving to or from my house, I feel like I have a decent handle of what kids live where in a one block radius of my house. I may not know the parents, but I would know which door to knock on to meet them.
Especially creepy if they’re kicking your door in the middle of the night.
I had this happen to us as well, but we put a sign on the door with a please don’t ring the door bell, baby is sleeping and it never happened again.
For some reason this also stop solicitors.
“creepy”? Annoying, stupid, sure, but “creepy”?
I think the point is that you don’t really know it’s kids playing a game. Your doorbell rings at night and there’s no one there.
Unless you think ghosts are real, there really aren’t many possibilities. Late in the evening it’s more threatening than creepy.
I guess I’m not at all into supernatural stuff, so I wouldn’t think “creepy” as in ghosts, but I’d for sure be wondering if there was someone waiting away from the door to cause me problems if I stepped out to look without locking the door behind me. And I don’t live in a place where that kind of thing is common.
I hope he trips while he’s running and busts up his teeth, but I don’t want him to die.
You hope a child is seriously disfigured and has to endure painful reconstruction and likely very expensive dental bills for… checks notes… annoying you? I mean, at least you don’t wish death up on him for playing the prank that nearly every child ever has played. Just serious injury, which is totally OK.
That’s obviously hyperbole for “I want them to face some consequences for their actions after alarming me in my home in the middle of the night for their own enjoyment.”
Is someone ringing your doorbell alarming to you? Especially in a city like Houston. I get that in the country it is rare for people to be out and about. I also get that you might be scared if they ring the doorbell late at night, but that’s what peepholes are for. Or Ring cameras. Or keeping the door closed and yelling, “Who is it?”
Yes, someone ringing my doorbell late at night and then running away before I can get to the door is alarming. I don’t like it. Maybe you’d like it, but it disrupts my peace, wakes up my kids, and I don’t like the feeling that someone is targeting me for their one-sided enjoyment. It’s fucking creepy.
And that is the same rationale used by the guy who just shot and killed a kid. Maybe they are targeting you because they can see how mad you get over a simple and common prank.
It’s not creepy. It’s the most common prank done around the world by nearly every generation of kids. Or it was until people started killing kids for it.
Being an adult involves tolerating a lot of things without externally reacting in the moment. There’s always an incompetent boss we can’t call out, or an insufferable family member that we still have to be nice to, or a neighbor that we have to somehow share a wall/fence with. We still get annoyed about things, we just save it for appropriate times and places. For example, frustration about ding dong ditching, could be shared on a post about ding dong ditching.
It’s sad it needs to be said, but calmly expressing an opinion online ≠ going overboard IRL.
We can’t all lead a blameless thought life like yourself but I’m sure we’re all hoping you can teach us a few things.
Imagine you hear someone trying to kick down your door in the middle of the night. Is this…annoying? Or terrifying?
Except, Moakley didn’t say they are trying to kick down the door. You brought up kicking. Moakley just said they are ringing the bell and running away. No kicking involved, so disfigurement seems extreme.
However, it’s also a wish, which means it has no effect on anything. Feel free to wish anything on anyone, it won’t happen.
Although, my high school bully did get brain cancer and die, so who knows? Maybe wishes work sometimes.
This article left that out. Other articles say they were doing the door kicking challenge.
Either way the dumb kid shouldn’t be dead.
Please read articles before posting comments about them. Otherwise it’s just baseless flame wars.
I did. The article that was posted didn’t mention kicking.
Edit:
Also, this particular comment thread was about a person experiencing ding-dong ditch personally, not necessarily what happened in the event described in the article.
Are you seriously equating ringing a doorbell with kicking a door down?
No, but that’s the latest middle of the night fad
Three teenagers rang his door as a prank, and his response is to get in his car, follow them, and then mow them down? Totally reasonable. He was clearly just defending himself. 🙄
There are people that seriously argue that it should be legal to chase down someone who has wronged you in some way and take out any form of revenge you wish against them.
Can we just make an exception for billionaires? It should be open season on them, at least.
Thats not how corruption works my dude
No no, you have to fight the hundred thousandaires and millionaires, while the billionaires laugh with the raucous amusement of dark and hungry gods.
As long as these people are not put in charge of all our institutions, the rule of Law, and police forces…
Some teenagers mistakenly banged on the back door of the wrong house near me and the home owner chased them down and fired on their car when they were trying to get away. The kids ran into the woods and the car went missing for a few hours. The home owner was a cop, so anyone paying attention was suspicious where the car went. The whole incident was sweep under the rug, so I assume that either the chief didn’t let them plant evidence or there was nothing in the evidence locker to plant.
I’m not saying anything whatsoever would warrant this, but were the kids at least, like, throwing eggs? Knocking the mailbox over? To fire a weapon at someone for ringing your bell is just so unhinged that how could he even make it that far?
I don’t care if the kid threw a brick through my window, murdering a child is completely unforgivable and there is zero justification for it.
Imo, the only time shooting someone is even remotely justified is in the defense of someone’s life or as a very last resort when there are no other options.
Yes, of course. I’m certainly glad I never got shot for worse shit, believe me. But shooting someone for ringing your doorbell is about 300 levels up. At least I could imagine getting a warning shot at the sky for smashing a window.
And I’m not implying these kids must have done anything other than ring bells and go laugh as someone opens the door to no one. Kids do both.
He was a kid. Running away.
I can’t imagine this happening in the Netherlands… Wtf…
It absolutely does happen here. Like this one for example: guy chases young girl with an axe after messing with his doorbell.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2438126-man-wordt-boos-om-belletje-trekken-en-verwondt-man-met-bijl
Don’t mess with the wrong people. You never know what’s going to push them over the edge.
Ja, Limburg. Vandaar. ;)
Edit: the axeguy was stopped by visitors of a local bar while pursuing the little girl. Noone got seriously injured and the unhinged moron was left in police custody.
Now, in the US these kind of stories have a different ending. In the US this guy would’ve shot the girl and rampaged through that bar.
Well, shit…
Oh but gun control laws are not needed are they America? But an old irrelevant document from 150 years ago says otherwise so clearly the matter is closed.
But they need them for when the fascist government takes over! Oh, right, all the 2A people are on that side…
Actually, the document doesn’t really say that, it’s just that we love murdering children so much, that we pretend that is what it says.
Even the “old west” had gun control.
Try 234 years for 2nd Amendment…
Had someone fire a gun at myself and 2 friends for doing this when we were teenagers. No vandalism, no destruction, just knocking on the door (friend happened to bang particularly fast and hard while screaming “Satan Loves You”) and hightailing it. I also live in the south, so guns a-blazin’, I guess.
I’ve also been threatened with a gun and other acts of violence for dressing in all black and not believing in some bullshit god. Police have also been called on me for sitting in front of the mall in my trenchcoat while waiting on my ride as a teen. And I’ve had a cop train a gun on me while my friends and I were goofin’ around in their backyard.
When little kids can’t even play simple pranks in your country without being shot, your country has serious issues that desperately need addressing (but won’t because the administration is so corrupt)
There are federal, state, town, and county layers of administration. They’re all corrupt. But not the parents.
Black?
Hispanic judging from the name.
Ooooo boy, prison loves them a child killer.
