Texas man cleared of killing suspected burglars
A Texas grand jury has cleared a 62-year-old retiree who who shot and killed two men he suspected of burglarizing his neighbor's home last fall in the Houston suburb of Pasadena.
Joe Horn saw the men crawling out the windows of a neighbor's house and called 911. He told the dispatcher he had a shotgun and was going to kill the men. The dispatcher pleaded with Horn not to go outside, but
Horn confronted the men and shot both in the back with a 12-gauge shotgun as they fled.
The suspected burglars, Hernando Riascos Torres, 38, and Diego Ortiz, 30, were unemployed illegal immigrants from Colombia. Torres was deported to Colombia in 1999 after a 1994 cocaine-related conviction.
Civil rights activists organized protests, saying that the shootings were racially motivated and that Horn engaged in vigilante justice.
"The message we're trying to send today is the criminal justice system works," Harris County District Attorney Kenneth Magidson said after the grand jury declined to indict Horn.