imported post
Looks likea shoot justified by law. Game over. That dirty bum burglar will burgle no more! Guy had a lonnnnggg record.
The family member who moved in to protect the houseafter the first burglary was
prepared!And waiting withhis shotgun...to
neutralize the attacker...
Intruder, a vet, was troubled
Shot by homeowner
A burglar was shot and killed Sunday by the owner of a house at the corner of Sims and South Gholston streets in Comer.
Tricia Spaulding/Staff By Joe Johnson
Story updated at 12:06 AM on Wednesday, September 12, 2007
William "Keith" Parks can't explain why he broke into a house outside downtown Comer last weekend. A man waiting inside shot and killed him as he entered the vacant home that was burglarized once before.
But only days before he died, Parks stopped by an Athens Veterans of Foreign Wars post seeking direction from fellow veterans for problems that ran so deep, they made him cry at the drop of a hat, according to one of the vets.
"He was emotionally screwed up," said Tony Moon, an area contractor who grew up and went to school with Parks in Madison County. "Every time he'd start talking, his eyes would well up about the least little thing. They don't realize this guy was a veteran who had some mental issues and stuff."
Parks claimed to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder from deploying to Beirut with the U.S. Marines during the Lebanese civil war in the early 1980s, Moon said Tuesday.
"He talked about that a lot, really dwelled on it," Moon said. "He mentioned about having to kill folks over there - a lot of that kind of stuff was the topic of conversation."
The 41-year-old Carlton man had been to Veterans Affairs hospitals at least twice for emotional problems, but he never seemed to get the help he needed and kept landing in trouble, according to Moon.
But the contractor doesn't excuse his childhood friend's choice to break into a house, a decision that got him killed.
"He got what he got," Moon said. "But there was a lot of ball-dropping."
Parks didn't show signs or report that he had emotional problems or mental illness during various stays in jail, according to Madison County Sheriff Clayton Lowe.
"I've seen him almost every day for months, and I never noticed anything like that," Lowe said Tuesday.
In fact, according to the sheriff, Parks was granted trusty status during his last stint behind bars on a burglary charge and was allowed to do janitorial work around the jail. That privilege is not given to prisoners with behavioral problems, the sheriff said.
Parks was arrested in February for allegedly burglarizing a Comer business, but was allowed out last month so he could care for his mother in Colbert and drive her to chemotherapy treatments, according to Lowe.
Parks didn't return one night, and his mother reported her car stolen. When he was killed early Sunday, he was wanted on an auto theft charge. Earlier the day his mother's car went missing, he started work at a Comer-area factory but was fired the same day because he was drinking, according to Moon.
The house at the corner of Sims and Gholston streets had been vacant since the homeowner, an 82-year-old widower, died in June, and on Friday night, someone broke in and stole cash, jewelry and other valuables.
The homeowner's son moved in the next day to sit guard with a shotgun, and Parks, who was unarmed, was killed by a single blast to the chest when he broke in shortly after midnight.
Officials believe Parks probably intended to steal from the house to support a drug habit, since officers found in his pants pocket a glass pipe called a "straight shooter," which Lowe said is used to smoke crack and methamphetamine.
But Moon, an 11-year Army veteran, gives Parks the benefit of the doubt, saying Parks was homeless after losing his job and stealing his mother's car.
"Maybe he just wanted to go in there to sleep," Moon said. "What they did was shoot an emotionally disturbed veteran."
Lowe doubts that theory, because investigators learned that while Parks was on the lam from the auto theft charge, he was staying with a friend in Comer.
Whatever led Parks to the house at Sims and Gholston streets early Sunday probably had something to do with the internal demons he struggled with, according to Moon.
"I had this gut feeling that something bad was going to happen to him," Moon said. "It seemed to me he had no idea where to turn in life and was at a stopping point where existence just didn't mean anything."
A Georgia Bureau of Investigation official said Parks' death likely will be ruled a justifiable homicide, but the Madison County district attorney will make the final decision after prosecutors review witness statements and receive the GBI's autopsy report, which should be completed within 60 days.
Under state law, a person may use deadly force to defend a home if "the person using such force reasonably believes that the entry is made or attempted for the commission of a felony ... and that such force is necessary to prevent the commission of the felony."
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/091207/news_20070912058.shtml
