Key Takeaways
- The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office declined to charge a 30-year-old Dearborn woman who shot a man attacking her boyfriend inside a shoe store.
- Prosecutors said there is not enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she was not acting in self-defense or defense of another person.
- Security video shows the woman in a pink jacket pulling a handgun from her purse and firing after a man in blue attacked her boyfriend.
- The 33-year-old man who was shot was struck in the back and remained in critical condition as of the report.
- Dearborn Police Chief Issa Shahin said the people involved appeared to be acquaintances and that charges against whoever instigated the fight remain possible.
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DEARBORN, MI — A 30-year-old woman with a Michigan concealed pistol license will not be charged for shooting a man who attacked her boyfriend inside a Dearborn shoe store, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office said three days after the shooting. Prosecutors said there is not enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she was not acting in self-defense or in defense of someone else.
The shooting happened just after 6 p.m. Saturday inside White House Kicks near Ford Road and Oakman Boulevard, according to Dearborn police, as reported by WXYZ-TV. Police initially took the woman into custody. She is the one who called 911, and according to dispatch audio, she told the call taker she had just had to shoot somebody.
Security video released by Dearborn police shows the sequence. The woman, in a pink jacket, walks in with her 36-year-old boyfriend, who is wearing a gray track suit. The boyfriend greets a man who appears to be a shopper. A man in blue attacks the boyfriend. The woman takes a handgun out of her purse. She fires.
A witness who asked not to be named told the station the two men “started fighting,” and then the “lady pulls out her gun and then protects her boyfriend.” Asked how many shots were fired, the witness estimated three or four. “It’s madness, you know,” he said.
The 33-year-old man who was shot was hit in the back and remains in critical condition, police said.
Dearborn Police Chief Issa Shahin said the woman is a CPL holder and that the people involved appeared to know each other. “It’s clear they were acquaintances somehow before they saw each other inside the store, and obviously they didn’t like each other, because it escalated into a fight,” Shahin said.
Three or four rounds inside a retail store with other shoppers present, and the man struck in the back, is why I would not call this a clean case. Deadly force in defense of another person is lawful only against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, and a fistfight does not automatically meet that bar. The prosecutor’s statement reflects that. It is not a finding that she was right. It is a finding that the state cannot prove she was wrong, which is the burden prosecutors carry once self-defense is on the table. Shahin put it the same way, deferring to the charging decision as “Prosecutor Worthy’s purview” and saying his department’s job “is to gather the evidence and provide the case as thoroughly and as complete as possible.”
The mindset lesson is in the gap between what the video shows and what the law requires. Anyone who carries for the people they love has to be ready to answer for every round fired on their behalf, including where it landed. This woman was taken into custody, spent three days waiting on a prosecutor, and the man she shot may still die. That is what a justified shooting can look like from the inside.
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The investigation is not closed. “There’s a possibility that those charges may be filed against the people that instigated the fight,” Shahin said. No one has been charged with instigating it as of this writing, and anyone who is would be presumed innocent unless convicted. None of the three people involved has been publicly identified.
Shahin added that even in a city he called safe and welcoming, people should stay alert. “Just be aware of your surroundings and always be cautious no matter where you are,” he said.
