https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/ci...reaction-to-fatal-protest-shooting-incendiary
"It sounded to me, and seeing this [car] sort of plow into a crowd of people, really solidified for me what I clearly see as an act of intimidation," said Harper-Madison.
"Just him marching down the street there's absolutely no reason for anything like that to happen, said Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday. "But if the story is true about him walking up on the car and he was pointing his rifle on him, I'm sorry, in this state everyone pretty much has a gun, and if you point a gun at someone bad things happen."
https://www.statesman.com/news/2020...r-in-garrett-foster-killing-at-austin-protest
Days after the shooting death of 28-year-old Garrett Foster at an Austin protest, details about what led to the incident remained elusive. But legal experts say it's possible no one will be criminally punished in Foster's death as Texas allows wide leeway in self-defense claims.
Authorities say a driver turned onto a barricaded Congress Avenue, where a crowd of protesters against racial injustice had gathered, about 9:50 p.m. Saturday and honked his horn. Foster was carrying an assault-style rifle, which is legal in Texas under open carry laws, and approached the car.
The driver told police that Foster pointed the rifle at him or her and the driver fired multiple shots, fatally wounding Foster. A third person then fired at the driver as he or she drove away.
However, witnesses told the American-Statesman that the driver appeared to drive into the crowd and came to a stop when the vehicle hit a temporary barrier erected to block traffic from the street. Several protesters, including Foster, approached the car, they said, and Foster had his weapon pointed down.
Authorities detained and later released both shooters, whose names were not released, with no charges.
Asked why the driver was there, approaching the crowd of protesters, and what kind of police presence was at the scene before the incident, Austin Police Department officials said Monday that the investigation into the incident is ongoing and the department had no new information to share.
"We’re encouraging anyone who might have information or video/photos to come forward," police officials said.
The department did not immediately respond Monday to an American-Statesman request under the Texas Public Information Act for the incident report on the shooting.
Avenues for self-defense claims in Texas are broad, according to Jennifer Laurin, a professor of criminal law and procedure at the University of Texas.
"In terms of a doctrine of self-defense that permits an individual to continue to use deadly force even if they could retreat in safety, that doctrine is alive and well in Texas," she said. "It doesn’t matter if you’re in your car or your home, as long as you’re legally entitled to be in the place where you are."
To establish self-defense, people must have reasonably believed that the use of deadly force was immediately necessary to protect against deadly force against them or violent assault against them, she said. The reasonableness of the deadly force used is presumed if people reasonably believed someone was attempting to enter their home or vehicle and use force against them.
She said a slight majority of states have stand-your-ground laws that, like Texas’, don’t obligate an individual to retreat if possible. But Texas is in the minority of states that go farther, allowing for deadly force based on the perception that someone is under assault or to protect his or her property.
The Texas approach, Laurin said, "leaves room for people to make mistakes, as long as they’re reasonable mistakes, that deadly force was necessary." But, she said, an "individual forfeits their right to use deadly force justifiably if they are the provoker of the situation."
"And if it’s a situation in which the driver of a vehicle turned their vehicle into a deadly weapon, that itself might have justified someone actually threatening deadly force against that driver," Laurin said.
As for the question of whether Foster had been pointing his gun at the driver, that might matter in further establishing reasonableness, she said. But even if Foster was pointing the gun at the ground, a driver might still reasonably think that someone approaching with an assault-style rifle was a threat.
"You can’t say, ‘You got it wrong. He had peaceable intentions and was exercising his Second Amendment rights,’ " Laurin said. "That doesn’t resolve the matter if a person had a reasonable belief that deadly force was imminent or that a person was going to enter the vehicle in some way."
"It strikes me that in a state where there’s legal conceal carry and open carry, it’s an interesting question how a jury — if it comes before a jury — thinks about the question of when it’s reasonable to think someone walking up to you with a gun in their hand is threatening you," she said.
"The police haven’t forfeited any option," she said.
