I think we will all need to wait and see what happens at the trial. Goughnor is going to claim self-defense, but based solely on what is in this article that defense is going to be a tough sell. The charges of both first and second degree murder would not have been made so quickly if the police and the district attorney's office thought he was acting within the legal definition self-defense. Just "feeling threatened" is not enough. The threat needs to be real enough that a "reasonable person" would have felt his or her life was in imminent danger.

Everyone who noted that Merritt should have stayed in his car was obviously correct. Sadly, hindsight is always 20-20, and people too often fail to operate on the basis of even a small degree of common sense (which may be less "common" than it used to be.)