Longing for logic.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Brief article)

Peggy Abel of Mesa, Arizona, heard a woman and children screaming in panic in her neighborhood on the night of July 6. She sent a teenage son out to see what was happening. He returned and said, "We gotta call 911," Abel told the East Valley Tribune. Then she heard gunshots.

The man whose actions were responsible for all of the screaming was dead.

The incident began about 11 p.m. when 29-year-old Abraham Mariscal suddenly began "going crazy" at his girlfriend's house. He destroyed objects in the house with a pool cue and threatened the children, leading to the aforementioned screams that were loud enough for most people in the normally quiet neighborhood to hear. One man in the neighborhood, 49-year-old Sheldon Randolf, had also heard the screams, and so he grabbed a gun and walked into his yard to investigate.

As Randolf stood in his yard, Mariscal and his girlfriend--who had already called 911--verbally abused each other outside her house. When Mariscal saw Randolf, he charged Randolf while still wielding the pool cue. When Mariscal closed the distance between the two men, Randolf shot, killing him. Though Arizona passed a law upholding the "castle doctrine," in which a person does not have to retreat from a violent encounter in his own home and can use lethal force to ...