Christopher Cervantes
[email protected]

If there is anything that the history of journalistic storytelling has proven, it is that there are numerous ways and angles to tell the story. The perfect type of frame is all that is needed in order for the audience to

determine whether a specific event should be viewed as either a triumphant occurrence or a tragedy. It is in cases like this that even the minutest bit of evidence could be the determining factor on how the masses will perceive the story. Such is the case concerning an event on Sept. 3 in Missouri.

In St. Louis County on that evening, an 11-year-old boy was baby-sitting his 4-year-old sister. During that time, two would-be intruders attempted to enter the home through the front door. The 11-year-old (whose name has not been released) shot the younger of the intruders, and the second escaped. When police arrived on the scene, the 16-year-old assailant (later identified as Lamonte Streeter) had died from his wound. From these details, it seems as if this is a simple matter of self-defense.

It is not that simple, however.

Several neighbors disagree with this home-invasion story. According to the Inquisitor, some state that there was a disagreement between Streeter and young shooter over the selling of a cell phone. “It was not a break-in,” neighbor Donna Jackson told the St Louis Post-Dispatch. “He shot him in the head.” Others claim that the pre-teen had a violent history. However, there are also accounts that the home had been broken into on numerous times, leading the mother of the young children to purchase the gun.

The events have raised several questions. If this was a case of self-defense, then is the mother of the shooter held responsible for leaving a loaded firearm where a child can get it? And if this is not self-defense, then has its claim become overly used as a way to hide behind the law?

There are several rules that dictate the need for self-defense. However, there is a limitation on what one can do in order to warrant it. For example, the legitimacy and legality of self-defense is void if the individual claiming it is the initial aggressor and refused to back down from the altercation. This seems to be the key factor on deciding exactly who is the guilty party of this confrontation was. At this point in time though, the truth revolves around one question: Who is the aggressor?

I understand the desire for people to jump to conclusions and find whom to blame. This is a case of adolescence of killing another, and that, in any case, is a tragedy. However, I implore that we wait on judging the shooter, Streeter, and the mother and allow law-enforcement officials to gather the data needed in order to solve the ongoing investigation. Then, and only then, can these questions be truly answered.