Anyone else flash to Gran Torino when they heard a North Charlotte man chased down and shot and killed a robber who had broken into his home, then held him and his wife at gun point? The only thing missing is any indication that C.L. McClure was an ex-Marine.
As to the question of whether McClure should be charged in connection with the shooting death of Marcus Fluker, 15, there is no question. Of course not. If CMPD had been rolling up on a group of suspects known to have just brandished a weapon in commission of a crime, stolen an additional .38 revolver, and an officer thought that maybe one of the four suspects was turning to fire a weapon — what do think happens next? The officer fires, goes on desk duty for a week, and that is that.
McClure had an absolute right to attempt to get a tag number from the four thieves who stole his property and held him at gunpoint. He had an absolute right to use deadly force to defend himself when he believed one of his assailants was turning to use a weapon on him.
One of those charged in the McClure case, Joseph Eugene Graves, 17, was charged with felony possession of marijuana back in December 2007. Another Matthew Everett Morgan, 17, has a weapon on school grounds conviction, an arrest in May 2008 for felony auto theft, and two more felony armed robbery charges from last August for which he is awaiting trial. Morgan spent three months in the Mecklenburg County jail last year. The remaining suspect, Tahjaue Wiley, 17, does not appear to have been charged as an adult in Mecklenburg County previously.
An aspect I am not clear on is if McClure was told by CMPD not to talk to reporters about the incident. His next door neighbor and son Larry McClure blew that up by immediately getting the story of what happen out and in circulation. Without that, I am not certain the public gets a full account of this incident. This is an important thing to keep in mind. CMPD and the DA’s office would prefer to handle these types of cases out of the glare of public attention. But now it is much more difficult to charge McClure with a crime. Good.
From the DA’s and CMPD’s point of view, McClure really messed things up. We had a starter-set crew of violent repeat offenders making a clean getaway — no shots fired, no one hurt. In the big picture of what passes for crime-fighting in Charlotte, that’s a win. Some property changed hands, big deal. Of course it is a big deal to the C.L. McClures of the world. A huge rip in the fabric of civil society they have helped to sitch to together over the years by playing by the rules, by paying their taxes for things like police protection. The disconnect between these world views is not sustainable.
We take no great pride in pointing out that we said this sort of incident was bound to happen in Charlotte given the status quo approach to violent crime in our community. The best that we can hope for at this point is that Marcus Fluker did not die in vain.
Bonus Observation: Why weren’t the three surviving suspects charged with false imprisonment/kidnapping? They tied McClure and his wife up with duct-tape while they flipped the house looking for valuables.
Update: I’ve added the full, uncropped shot of Fluker the Uptown paper has been using cropped, along with a link to his Myspace page. Check it out before it goes dark, there are links to a couple of other suspects’ pages as well.