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The man who shot and killed Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old woman standing at his front door, has been convicted of murder.
Theodore Wafer was found guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter on Thursday, according to the Associated Press. He could face up to life in prison when he is sentenced on Aug. 21. [
UPDATE: The sentencing date has been moved to Aug. 20 according to a spokeswoman for prosecutor Kym Worthy.]
Wafer
shot McBride through the screen door of his home outside of Detroit
last November. The case was racially charged: McBride was a black
teenager killed by a white man less than four months after George Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter after shooting and killing Trayvon Martin.
“Her life mattered and we showed that,” Monica McBride, her mother, told the Detroit Free Press on Thursday.
In a news conference after the verdict was announced, McBride’s parents said they supported it:
McBride knocked on Wafer’s door after crashing her car not far from his house in the early hours of Nov. 2. (Tests show she was intoxicated at the time.)
Wafer, testifying earlier this week in the trial, said he grabbed his 12-gauge shotgun because he feared for his life. He said he “just reacted,” according to the New York Times. (Earlier, he had told police that the shooting was accidental.)
Wafer fired
through the screen door and hit McBride in the face. He was charged
with second-degree murder nearly two weeks later. The jury delivered the
guilty verdict on Thursday, the second day of deliberations,
following a trial that began last month.
ORIGINAL POST
Shortly before 1 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 2, a young woman, just a year
out of high school, crashed the car she was driving along a residential
street on Detroit’s west side.
The woman, Renisha Marie McBride, 19, had veered into a parked car. As
people emerged from their houses, she appeared disoriented and troubled,
some witnesses said, walking off into the darkness before returning for
a time, then walking off again. Someone heard her say she wanted to go
home.
Several hours later and six blocks away, just outside the Detroit city
limits in this mostly white suburb, Ms. McBride, who was black, was dead
on the front porch of a stranger’s home, a shotgun blast to her face.
In the days since, the death has stirred long-simmering racial tensions
between mostly black Detroit and its whiter suburbs and provoked
comparisons to other racially charged cases around the country.
Protesters held a vigil outside the house where she died, whose owner
has not been publicly identified. The authorities say he thought Ms.
McBride, who tests have shown was intoxicated, was trying to break in.
Anguished family members and friends, wearing shirts with messages like
“Justice for Nisha,” say they believe that Ms. McBride was merely
seeking help at random homes after the crash, and they were troubled
that the man who shot her had not been arrested.
The attorney representing the family of a Detroit teenager who was shot and killed while apparently seeking help after a car accident
says the girl was injured and may have wandered a Dearborn Heights
neighborhood for as long as an hour before arriving on the porch of the
man who shot her.
According to attorney Gerald Thurswell,
McBride hit a parked car and "sustained bruises and lacerations" late
Nov. 1 or early Nov. 2. Thurswell said that he spoke with people at a
home near the scene of the accident who told him they came outside to
help McBride and found her bleeding from the head.
"She kept telling them, 'I want to go home, I want to go home,'" he said.
Thurswell said that the neighbor went into her home to call 911, and
when she came back outside and saw McBride was gone, got in her car to
look for her - but couldn't track her down. Thurswell said McBride,
whose cell phone was apparently dead, likely wandered the neighborhood
for about an hour.
"She knocked on several doors and no one answered," said Thurswell.
The
one man who did come to the door, apparently came armed with a shotgun.
McBride was shot in the face and died on the man's front porch.
Police have said the man, who has not been identified but is reportedly 54-years-old, told them he thought McBride was trying to break into his home and that the shotgun fired accidentally.
Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy reportedly asked the Dearborn
Heights police to continue investigating the case before deciding
whether to press charges against the man.
Cheryl Carpenter, the attorney representing the homeowner, told The Detroit News that the shooting was "justified."
"I'm
confident when the evidence comes it will show that my client was
justified and acted as a reasonable person would who was in fear for his
life," Carpenter said.
Thurswell said that explanation sounds implausible.
"If
he was in fear for his safety he could have called 911," he said. "He
decided to open the door, go out on the porch and put a shotgun in her
face...It's pretty hard for it to be an accident: your finger is on the
trigger and the shotgun is in her face."
Thurswell said that he
has confidence that police and prosecutors will thoroughly investigate
the case and file "appropriate charges."
"We don't want a rush to judgment," he told Crimesider.
Thurswell
said that McBride graduated from Southfield High School in 2012 and was
working full-time at an auto plant and living at home with her mother
at the time of her death.
The man who shot and killed Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old woman standing at his front door, has been convicted of murder.
Wafer,
testifying earlier this week in the trial, said he grabbed his 12-gauge
shotgun because he feared for his life. He said he “just reacted,”
according to the New York Times. (Earlier, he had told police that the
shooting was accidental.)
ORIGINAL POST
