Boonie Hicks, chronicling a shooting.(Allen Hicks)

Allen Hicks, an aspiring rapper with the tag of "Boonie," entered Coliseum Pizza in East Oakland, California, on April 19 carrying a gun. He was accompanied by two friends. He pointed the gun at the shop owner's head and announced a robbery.

The owner, Catarino Piedra, wondered whether the men would be satisfied with just taking money or if they would start killing innocents in the pizzeria, including his three children and his wife. Knowing that he couldn't take a chance that the men might be violent, he pulled a gun that he kept on hand because his delivery drivers get robbed so often, and he shot Hicks, killing him.

In the aftermath of the shooting, the San Francisco Chronicle did a story about the shooting--a story that makes one wonder if any level of bad behavior is egregious enough nowadays to earn condemnation by either inner-city youth or the Chronicle.

The Chronicle article almost immediately states: "The lives of the two men intersected tragically at about 9:30 p.m."--as if it was an accident that Hicks entered the pizzeria to rob it.

Then the Chronicle gives a very cherry-picked account of the shooting as seen through Piedra's eyes: all the reader hears is about how scared Piedra was in the midst of the action and how remorseful afterward. There is no mention of his relief that his family was saved from potential death or that the shooting needed to be done. This section of the article is immediately followed by the official rebuke of Piedra's actions by the Oakland Police Department: "By no stretch of the imagination are ...