An armed father in Florida shot and killed a neighbor who allegedly followed his son and a friend home and attempted to run over the man in a heated road rage confrontation.
Marcus Blicker, 47, was accused of following the shooter’s 16-year-old son and the teen’s friend when the pair drove past his home in Port Orange – a suburb of Daytona Beach — on Oct. 26, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.
Blicker quickly left his home, started following the kids and was “erratically swerving” at the two vehicles they were driving, police said.
The son called his father to tell him Blicker was following him.
Blicker pursued the teen onto the teen’s driveway and threatened the two drivers before the armed dad confronted him with a rifle around 7:40 p.m., police said.
The father fired warning shots in the air and demanded Blicker leave his property.
“I knew one thing, my son was eight feet behind me and that guy was not getting to them,” the father, who does not want to be identified, told Fox35 Orlando.
Footage shows Blicker’s truck briefly reverse off the property but then sped toward the father and another person who was standing nearby, the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a statement.
“I had no idea who I was shooting at. I just knew my son was screaming ‘dad somebody’s trying to kill me,’” the shooter said.
The father fired several shots at Blicker as the truck drove toward them but it eventually stopped in the front yard.
Blicker was declared dead in the front yard.
A Rottweiler in Blicker’s pick-up was injured during the incident but officials said the dog is expected to recover.
Police did not disclose what forced Blicker to follow the teens when they drove past his home.
There were no criminal charges filed against the father in the days after the shooting.
Florida is a Stand Your Ground state, which means self-defense is a type of affirmative defense used to avoid the legal effect of an otherwise unlawful violent act in Florida, according to the Jacksonville-based law firm Hussein & Webber.
The firm claims a person in Florida is justified in using deadly force “to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another” or when a person is resisting any attempt to murder such person or to commit any felony upon him or her or upon or in any dwelling house in which the person is located.”
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“He would have never, ever, went down there with intentions to let happen what happened or be a part of that,” an unnamed family member told Fox35 Orlando.
The shooter told the local news station that he had lost sleep over what happened and wished they could have talked opposed to the violence.
“I feel so bad for his family, my family, everybody’s family. Nobody wanted this,” the gunman said.
An investigation is underway however Volusia County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that the accounts from the shooter and witnesses match what was captured on video and audio recordings.
