The Michigan Court of Appeals threw out a manslaughter charge against a Detroit gas station clerk who locked the door before an angry customer shot three bystanders, killing one.
Prosecutors have argued that clerk Al-Hassan Aiyash’s actions make him criminally responsible. But the appeals court said an involuntary manslaughter charge doesn’t fit.
It was “not reasonably foreseeable” that the customer, Samuel McCray, would pull out a gun and start shooting, the court said Wednesday.
Who cares? At the end of the day, someone didn’t want to get hurt and they almost got a prison sentence because of it.
Are we incapable of recognizing that at least?
I would argue that by locking the door, trapping the aggressor in the same room with the cashier and other customers, the intent of the cashier was to avoid theft and not to avoid getting hurt.
To go back to my original point, I personally do not think that he exercised good judgement in evaluating the risk vs reward of his actions.
He placed the value of his employers property above the value of his safety, the safety of the other customers and the safety of the rest of his employers property should the aggressor resort to acts of violence or vandalism in an attempt to secure his freedom.
I agree that trapping a potentially violent person in, basically cornering them and escalating the situation, was a bad decision. I also agree with the court that it doesn’t fall into that category. It looks like lesser charges will still be pursued, probably more in line with negligence. It’s good that in response it’s now illegal to lock doors like that while customers are inside. I would have thought the general rule of keeping doors unlocked during business hours (as a fire code mostly) would have covered that already.