SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP)—A tour bus of U.S. senior citizens defended themselves against a group of alleged muggers, sending two of them fleeing and killing a third in the Atlantic coast city of Limon, police said on Thursday.
One of the tourists – a retired member of the U.S. military aged about 70 – put assailant Warner Segura in a head lock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus Wednesday, said Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 80 miles east of San Jose.
The two other men fled when the 12 senior citizens started defending themselves. The tourists then drove Segura to the Red Cross where the man was declared dead.
The tourists left on their Carnival cruise after the incident and Hernandez said authorities do not plan to press any charges against them, saying they acted in self defense.
“They were in their right to defend themselves after being held up,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said Segura had previous charges against him for assaults.
Neither the Costa Rican police nor Carnival identified the man involved in the struggle with the mugger.
There was a time in this country when that kind of rough justice was commonplace. The cops patrolled their beats, and they knew who the bad actors were. If some punk needed his ass kicked, he got his ass kicked. Say what you will about banana republics, but what happened there would never happen here now. The cops would arrest the old guy and force him to prove in court on his dime that it was self-defense. In this case, the cops came, they asked a few questions, they found out the perp was a punk with previous assaults, and they sent the tourists on their way. Yes, I know that kind of freelancing can be used to jack up innocent citizens in places like Costa Rica, and that it’s entirely possible that the cops wouldn’t have been so solicitous of him if the old boy hadn’t been an American tourist with American money. Cuts through the red tape, though, doesn’t it?
And don’t forget, sometimes we end up with the worst of both worlds here. Even our bloated legal system with all its safeguards can be used to ruin the lives of innocent people. Does the name Mike Nifong ring a bell?
My title was better.
Did you already do this story? I don’t see it anywhere. And if you did, blame this on Jeff.
He’s moderating the posts, now. I submitted it last night. Or maybe he just liked my take better.
My comment got ‘lost’. You people probably just deleted it though. Fascists. After all that grand-standing yesterday about not deleting comments. Two-faced.
Sorry, but that’s about as much OUTRAGE! and MORAL AUTHORITY! as a guy like me can muster. Well, that the Prgressives charge an unbelievable amount for the license to use that stuff.
* “Well, that and the Progressives…”
:|
Fascist!
I think Darleen’s got some Absolut Moral Authority.
I hust hope that when I am 70, I remember all of my CQC skills Good for the old guy!!!!
Retired military? Hey I thought all those guys were losers?
Seriously, I could see my own dad (78) being annoyed enough by the insult that being old justifies being victimized to do something like that.
How about Patrick Fitzgerald?
I’m not so sure about that. Most cops of my acquaintance (admittedly in largely rural areas) would shake the old guy’s hand and congratulate him on a job well done.
Alledgedly, Augusta County, Virginia still upholds the “worthless Sumbitch just needed killing” defense in these cases.
Somewhere, St. Andrew-of-the-Perpetual-Heartache sheds a tear, worried about how this will cause the rest of Central America to view us.
Andrew’s tears cure cancer. Unfortunately . . .
Nah, they don’t cure shit.
“Somewhere, St. Andrew-of-the-Perpetual-Heartache sheds a tear, worried about how this will cause the rest of Central America to view us. “
Hopefully as a bunch of hardasses who won’t take any shenanigans.
Not always. Ten or fifteen years ago, someone broke into the house of a WWII veteran living in Detroit. The fellow used his pistol (I believe a German one he had from the war) to kill the guy. The police investigated briefly, shook his hand, said “good job,” and closed the investigation.
“They may be gob-smacked and filled with heart-ache, so long as they wet themselves in terror.”
I know, it’s not a real quote, but it ought to be.
Former colleague of mine was mugged by 3 ‘youths’ in a multi-storey car park in Croydon. He was 65 and had already suffered one heart attack. He put two of them in hospital, and he was indeed duly charged by the Surrey police and taken to court, where he received a sentence of 6 months imprisonment for assault.
His mistake was to have been in the Parachute Regiment, which was held to have given him an unfair advantage.
The sentence was suspended but imho that is neither here nor there.
But here, as in Europe, the old guy could have called a “time out” in order to have a trial deciding what extent of action was equal to what the perp was going to do to him after the trial, couldn’t he?
If it so happens that you can’t kill someone after they’ve killed you, just remember, only your death justifies your ethics – unless you let someone else die instead.
(Using my best Bill Murray voice)
Nifong…….Nifong…NIFONG!!!!!!
That bastard owes me money!!
You are mis-characterizing Costa Rica as a “Banana Republic”. It has a freely elected government with one president, two vice presidents and a bicameral congress, not unlike the U.S., without a military.
I also take acception to your statement that he was treated differently because he is a rich American, that not being the case21 here. I don’t know everything about Costa Rica,( I have lived here for more than five years), but I do know that Ticos are generally fairminded people and most people here view this incident as a justifiable homicide.
I also know that if you are found inside some ones house at night they are legally allowed to to shoot you dead, with minimal police involvement.
Let me know if you want any more of that coffee i sent you.
You mean they let you shoot the “homeless”?
“If some punk needed his ass kicked, he got his ass kicked.”
Indeed
Is it just me, or are the quality of trolls dropping?
True story: a 68 year old retired Army veteran was vacationing in Paris, on his way out to dinner, when he was accosted by a mugger on a side street. Without missing a beat, the apparently frail old fellow smashed the mugger’s face into a pulp, first against his hand, then against his knee, then against a nearby wall. Having utterly destroyed the mugger, he was appalled. He told me that until it was all over, he was going solely on instinct and training from over 40 years ago.
I believed him. I suspect that those who are trained well to respond to threats, such as my friend the Army vet, and the aged Marine in the story, both operated as they had been trained to do.
Just as an aside, how the hell hard a grip does a headlock require to break the clavicle?? Dang!
I’m trying to remember which bone the clavicle is. Is that a fatal break? In any event, if, at age 20, I were pwned by a 70 year old dude like that I’d have died of sheer embarrassment.
This only proves old guy’s use of force was “excessive”.
clavicle=collar bone – very hard to break with your bare hands while also trying to break someone’s neck, I would suppose, unless there was some “excessive” leaning on it or levering going on. Fry him!
I kind miss the days of “Mickey Mantle” Justice, as refered to in Suicide Kings.
It straightened out my great-Uncle, except my grandfather used a tire iron.
The NRA magazine “Freedom” has a dozen stories like that every month. Everything from 80yo widows in wheelchairs to 15yo kids defending their family. There are over a million cases every year in the US of citizens thwarting a crime with a firearm (many just the brandishing of a firearm). I don’t know how many by bitch slapping.
I think the big difference between here and there is the existence of civil and criminal law. In many places (I’m not certain that Costa Rica is among them,) there is no difference. Here, whether the cops charge you after a homicide investigation (all murders are homicides but not all homicides are murders,) you’ll probably have to look forward to a civil trial. There, probably not.
A justifiable homicide is pretty universal. Lucky for this guy, the perp/creep/deceased wasn’t giving a cut to the local cops.
70 YO dude kills young mugger with bare hands- I’m impressed.
I imagine the investigation went down something like this:
Cop: Who did this? His head has been popped.
OM: That would be me muchachos.
Cop: Yeah right!
I can tell you this, if I get an email from some 7o YO in Costa Rica, telling me how to get a bigger dick, I’m going for it.