Following slew of ‘wrong place’ shootings across the nation, Chicago experts discuss alternatives to violence
In a country where mass shootings and gun violence have become daily occurrences, a fatal shooting in Antioch on April 12 during an argument over the use of a leaf blower stood out for its triviality.
But while shocking, the deadly dispute between neighbors was by no means unique in recent weeks, when guns have been used to end petty grievances: Knocking on a stranger’s door. Pulling into the wrong driveway. Accidentally getting into the wrong car.
All are examples of seemingly normal human interaction that left people shot, sometimes fatally.
These harrowing cases illustrate what a Loyola University psychologist calls an “emerging category of violence.” Most recently, a man in Texas used a rifle to fatally shoot five of his neighbors, including an 8-year-old, after the family had asked him to stop firing rounds in his front yard because a baby was trying to sleep inside their home.
“It could be (that) the more these kinds of killings occur, the more normative they become, as you can see with mass shootings,” said Art Lurigio, a criminologist and professor of psychology at Loyola. “We’ve had more mass shootings to date in 2023 than ever in United States history.”
The recent shootings have spurred conversations about why humans regard strangers with such distrust, about the alternatives to violence in the face of a perceived threat or slight and about the pitfalls of self-defense and “stand your ground” laws.
According to psychologists and criminologists, certain physiological factors compel individuals to react impulsively to danger. But there are also societal factors that come into play, such as a seemingly divided America.
Regardless, experts offer alternative, yet simple ways to respond — and not simply react — to a perceived threat without the use of violence.
Paranoia and wrong place shootings
What began as an argument between neighbors on a regular Wednesday evening in Antioch turned deadly for William Martys, 59. Police found him lying in a driveway in the 40700 block of North Black Oak Avenue, unresponsive and with a single gunshot wound to the head.
Authorities said Martys and his next-door neighbor Ettore Lacchei, 79,allegedly had a disagreement while Martys used a leaf blower. According to officials, the older man had “various perceived grievances” with Martys. Prosecutors said neighbors reported often seeing Lacchei walk along their street armed with a pistol. Martys’ family members declined to comment.
Lacchei was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, and his next court date is scheduled for May 25.
Psychologists and criminologists explain that most of these reactive shootings have a physiological component. In the face of a perceived threat, the amygdala in the human brain sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus.
The hypothalamus, in turn, activates the sympathetic nervous system, which triggers a stress reaction commonly known as “fight-or-flight.” Some experts note third and fourth possible reactions: “freeze,” or an inability to react, and “fawn,” or an attempt to appease or please a threatening person.
And then the adrenaline starts pumping.
“These are instantaneous responses, which do not involve the executive function of the brain,” Lurigio said. The executive function, he added, compels humans to take a moment to analyze a situation and consider possible rational responses. “So we have instantaneous responses to threat and a readily available handgun or other lethal weapon.”
The combination of both is often deadly. Such was the case for Ralph Yarl, a Black 16-year-old on his way to fetch his brothers who knocked on the wrong door and was met with bullets from inside the home in Kansas City, Missouri. The shooter, a 84-year-old man who lived alone, reportedly thought the teenager was breaking in.
These shootings can be understood as a reaction to “perceived imminent danger — not actual imminent danger,” Lurigio said. “Because to come to the actual imminent danger assessment, you have to engage other parts of your brain.”
This perception of danger can be colored by factors such as racial bias, according to Sylvia Perry, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University.
“In the United States, people perhaps are experiencing a lot of divisiveness and a lack of trust in one another. I think these things can be exacerbated by biases as well,” she said. “So in the Ralph Yarl case, I think that biases may have played a role.
“I recall that the person who shot him said something about the fact that he looked very threatening to him, and that’s why he shot him. The combination of that snap judgment and an assumption that this person was committing a crime could have been shaped by stereotypes.”
People might also be increasingly bound to react violently due to other erosions in American society, some say: People are not polite and courteous with each other; there is a high degree of political polarization; and citizens have very easy access to guns, which are marketed as a fail-safe way to defend one’s own security and interests.
“Where’s our sense of propriety, politeness, courteousness? To neighbors, to strangers?” Lurigio pondered. People yell at each other in cable news, bully each other in social media.
But good manners aren’t even modeled in the highest echelons of government like Congress, he said. He recalled President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this year, a speech that was interrupted by heckling from Republican lawmakers.
And so Americans see fit to react violently not only to danger but also to small grievances, such as the use of a leaf blower in the Antioch case. A similar shooting occurred in North Carolina recently when a man reportedly shot a 6-year-old neighbor and her parents during an argument after a basketball rolled into his yard.
Perry noted that a narrative of needing to work in order to earn property and possessions can lead to a sense of entitlement.
“I think that those kinds of narratives also might contribute to a lack of trust and a feeling of aggression toward someone who is perceived to be pushing back against that,” she said. “‘This person’s on my property and they shouldn’t be,’ for example.”
The general feeling of divisiveness that currently permeates the country — whether it be political polarization or ideological differences — may also contribute to a feeling of distrust and thus antagonize others who think or live differently.
“I think that the average person does think that they have a lot in common with others, even if they don’t share the same political beliefs,” Perry said. “But at the same time, the information we’re exposed to, the media — we’re exposed to how siloed our lives are. All of those things can drive the possibility of us perceiving the world potentially in a more fixed way: This person is against me, and these people are people I can’t trust, and so forth.”
Alternatives to reaching for a gun
Stop. Count to 10. Take a deep breath.
These three steps constitute perhaps the simplest way to de-escalate a violent reaction — so simple, in fact, that it’s what teenagers are taught in violence prevention programs, Lurigio said.
Perry also suggested “trying to pause and slow down and actually assess whether there is a real threat. And it seems like for a lot of these folks, the snap judgment was just to shoot first. No thought, no pause.”
Self-defense instructors like Margaret Vimont, however, offer their students the opportunity to add the choice of physically defending themselves to their response “tool kit.” Vimont is a lead instructor at Impact Chicago, a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching self-defense to women and people with disabilities.
Due to the adrenaline-based learning environment of their workshops, self-defense training at Impact is “able to change what massive amounts of adrenaline does to our bodies, because untrained, we would freeze and we would flail.”
“So this is about actually learning another choice and being able to exist inside that adrenalized experience,” Vimont said. “When you have that, it does mean that, in the moment, what would happen to us biologically is less likely to take over. Because biologically we will fight or flee.”
Vimont said she believes there’s no correct or incorrect response to danger, rather, the right response depends on each person and the tools they have.
“I wouldn’t want to comment on other people’s choices in situations, because there’s so many pieces of context there and it is true that the choice about how to respond is very highly personal,” Vimont said.
She encourages people to “put themselves in the driver’s seat” when it comes to their own safety and expand their choices about how to respond.
“Safety in dangerous situations are in a lot of people’s minds because there’s so much happening around us,” Vimont said. So she would suggest self-defense training “for people who are thinking about wanting to have the full range of responses, and to be able to not react, but to be able to respond to situations.”
Some training even equips students with the skills to respond verbally when an encounter feels unsafe. When a person’s immediate safety is not a risk, Vimont said, they can set their boundaries clearly and effectively to divert situations that might otherwise escalate.
“Being able to firmly and directly say, ‘I need you out of my space. I need you to leave. I need you to stay there while I leave,’” she said. “Very clearly setting a boundary and then watching the behavior of the other person in response to us setting a boundary will give us all kinds of information about what kind of danger might we be in. And more information means more choices.”
In another case, a group of friends pulled into the wrong driveway in upstate New York, and the homeowner fired two bullets at them from his front porch, killing a 20-year-old inside the car. The Associated Press reported the man had grown increasingly upset in recent years over people making wrong turns into his driveway.
“Another suggestion might be: Don’t have a handgun or any other loaded weapon close at hand,” said Lurigio. “Keep them out of reach if someone comes to the door.”
‘Stand your ground’ and the law
In the conversations surrounding shootings over small mistakes and petty grievances, the question of self-defense comes up, as “stand your ground” laws are often invoked in the legal defense of alleged shooters.
The laws allow for the use of deadly force when someone believes it’s necessary to defend themselves from a threat. Where these laws are in place, people don’t have a duty to retreat before using deadly force in self-defense if they’re somewhere legally, experts say.
“So when you’re defending yourself, it has to be necessary to what the law says is to prevent imminent danger or great bodily harm,” said Teri Ross, executive director of Illinois Legal Aid Online.
While some states have “stand your ground” laws, Illinois does not — except in particular cases.
“If you are in grave danger, you have the legal options of both retreating or standing your ground through defensive action,” Ross said. “Illinois is not a ‘stand your ground’ state, except when someone is at home. That’s the ‘castle doctrine.’”
“The castle doctrine allows people, when they’re in their homes, to exercise specific self-defense actions to defend themselves, their property and their family,” Ross said.
In some instances, this castle doctrine that allows for deadly force in self-defense can be applied in personal vehicles and workplaces as well.
Some might argue that when a group of cheerleaders in Texas accidentally got in the wrong car in a grocery store parking lot and the driver followed them to their vehicle to shoot at them, he might have done so legally in accordance with “stand your ground” laws in Texas.
But Ross doesn’t believe that argument will help the shooter in this instance.
“He’s the aggressor, and that’s not self-defense,” he said. “Somebody has to be acting aggressively towards you in order for you to defend (yourself). And it sounds like he was just angry.”
“We’re not remembering that we’re all humans,” Ross said, reflecting on the recent shootings. “It’s really disheartening.”
