A Raleigh, North Carolina, Good Samaritan will not face charges after he used his legally-owned gun to halt an axe assault, local media reported Tuesday.
A resident who witnessed the potentially lethal domestic dispute between two homeless men, one of whom had struck the other with an axe, fired a shot that left the axe-wielding assailant with serious injuries, Raleigh-area TV station CBS17 reported. The Wake County District Attorney’s Office elected not to file charges after the assailant died from his wounds, according to ABC11, another Raleigh-area TV station.
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Police later identified the deceased assailant as 39-year-old Emmanuel Graham, ABC11 reported. Graham and the other homeless person lived at an encampment in woods near Summit Avenue, where the shooting took place.
“Preliminary details indicate Mr. Graham and the other adult male were in a domestic relationship. Prior to the shooting, they had become involved in an argument that escalated into a physical confrontation,” a Raleigh Police Department release said, according to CBS17.
Police say Graham struck the other man with the axe, then pursued him into the neighborhood where the Good Samaritan lived. The armed citizen then retrieved a handgun and intervened before firing the shot that hit Graham in the upper body, ultimately proving fatal after Graham was taken to a hospital.
The use of firearms for self-defense has been more frequent than their use in crime, according to multiple studies by criminologist Gary Kleck. In many cases, no shot is fired in the instances where a firearm was used defensively.
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