On Monday I wrote this post about a citizen who most certainly saved his own life and probably the lives of others by shooting a man who was attacking him.
Yesterday’s Seattle Times give us an update to the story with the extensive criminal past of the attacker:
A 25-year-old man who was fatally shot while attacking a stranger Saturday at Westlake Plaza had previously served time in prison for setting fire to a day-care center his mother operated out of her Phinney Ridge home.
Daniel Culotti was shot shortly after 11 a.m. by a 52-year-old man he was assaulting in an unprovoked attack, according to Seattle police. The victim of the assault was carrying a handgun and had a concealed-weapons permit, police said.
In July 2001, Culotti had attacked his mother, Melinda Culotti, inside the family’s former residence on Palatine Avenue North near Woodland Park Zoo. He later returned and doused the floors inside the house with gasoline, setting the house on fire.
Culotti’s mother, several child-care providers and seven children escaped unharmed.
Culotti later pleaded guilty to first-degree arson and was sentenced to just under two years in prison.
According to the state Department of Corrections, Culotti served approximately nine months in prison before he was released in Oct. 2002 with time off for good behavior. But jail records show that he was arrested three times this year for violating the conditions of his release into the community.
Nine months prison time for first degree arson of an occupied business.
Washington State Justice. Sound Politics asks what this guy was doing on the street, and I second the question.
While this article gives us the name of the dead criminal, the police are thankfully still not giving out the name of the, most likely, still disarmed citizen who defended himself. They do, however, give some new info.
According to Seattle police, a woman called 911 at 11:08 a.m. Saturday to report that a man was acting erratically, yelling at passers-by and randomly assaulting strangers near Boren Avenue and Pine Street. Officers sent to the scene couldn’t find the caller, the man or any victims, police spokeswoman Debra Brown said.
Twenty-three minutes later, police dispatchers radioed that shots had been fired at Fifth Avenue and Pine Street, she said. Moments earlier, witnesses told police, a man in his 20s apparently attacked the 52-year-old man, punching and kicking him until he fell to the sidewalk. The older man pulled out a .357-caliber Ruger revolver and fired one round, striking the man in the abdomen.
The older man “was not winning the fight” – the other man “just starts attacking him, he’s on the ground and a shot is fired,” Brown said, describing witnesses’ accounts.
“It happened pretty fast. Probably by the time anybody thought to intervene, it was already over.”
The 52-year-old had a concealed-weapons license and was in legal possession of the handgun, Brown said. Police have not released the man’s name because he was not booked into jail.
“He was very cooperative,” she said, noting the man waited for officers to arrive and turned over his weapon; he was interviewed by police and later released.
According to a police report on the incident, officers took into evidence the handgun, one spent shell casing and five live rounds of ammunition.
The names of the 52-year-old man and three witnesses were redacted from the report.
So far, it sounds like this case will be one that is chalked up as a win for the good guys. But we still have to Prosecutor’s Office to deal with.
His death has been ruled a homicide, according to James Apa, a spokesman for Public Health – Seattle & King County.
The Times, in a move wholly unlike them, actually interviewed someone who knows about these things.
Though it will be up to King County prosecutors to decide, one local author who has written about Washington state’s gun laws said the shooting appears to be a “textbook case of self-defense.”
“This 52-year-old fellow was minding his own business, going through Westlake [Plaza] and this other guy jumps him, whacks him pretty good, gets him down on the ground and starts kicking him,” said Dave Workman, author and senior editor for Gun Week, a national publication that reports on gun laws, regulatory changes and news from the firearms industry.
“Under those circumstances, the man on the ground was in fear of being severely beaten or beaten to death and so was justified in defending himself, including using lethal force.”
According to state law, anyone who can legally possess a firearm also can apply for a concealed-weapons license. The law, however, typically restricts citizens from carrying guns onto school property and into jails and courthouses, bars or other places where alcohol is served, restricted areas in airports, and mental-health facilities.
State law not only allows people to defend themselves and their property from intruders in their homes but also from anyone who poses a threat of imminent bodily harm to themselves or others in any place they’re legally allowed to be – whether it is a shopping mall, a grocery store or a city street.
Workman said that in determining whether a case fits the legal definition of self-defense, one must consider “the reasonable man doctrine” – that is, what any reasonable person would do under similar circumstances with the same amount of information.
In the past year or so, King County prosecutors have declined to file homicide charges in three cases in which self-defense was claimed, spokesman Dan Donohoe said.
He explained that from a legal standpoint, prosecutors must disprove a claim of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt for a jury to convict someone in such a case.
We at RNS are crossing our fingers for the as yet unnamed citizen.
