Close encounter.(Exercising The Right)

At around 11 p.m. on May 17, Pizza Hut employee Ronald Honeycutt of Carmel, Indiana, was climbing into his van after delivering a pizza to an apartment on the far east side of Indianapolis when he heard someone call out to him. Turning, he saw a man armed with a handgun walking toward him. The stranger, later identified as Jerome Brown-Dancier, approached to within about five feet, then raised his arm as if to point the gun at Honeycutt. Honeycutt quickly drew his own legally licensed weapon and fired until the 15-round clip was empty. At least 10 shots found their mark before Brown-Dancier fell to the ground. Honeycutt picked up Brown-Dancier's gun, then drove to the Pizza Hut restaurant where he worked (about two minutes away) and had his manager call police.

According to Honeycutt, the mortally wounded man murmured, "I just wanted a pizza," but the May 29 Indianapolis Star reported that a friend of Brown-Dancier admitted "he and Brown-Dancier were planning to rob the deliveryman." The friend then "changed his mind and tried to talk [Brown-Dancier] out of it." Investigators seeking to determine if Honeycutt acted in self-defense were initially perplexed by some aspects of the case. For instance:

* Why had Honeycutt fired so many shots? Honeycutt said that Brown-Dancier did not immediately fall, so he could not be sure if any bullets were striking him. "He never ran. He never cried. He never moved," Honeycutt told the May 18 Star. "It was like I was missing him altogether."

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