Law Student Tragically Shot To Death During Winter Break

This law student was shot twice in the neck and torso after repeatedly banging on the wrong door.

At this time of year, most law students on winter break from school are busy spending time with family and friends as they wait for their grades to slowly be submitted. Students from one school, however, are trying to think of ways to celebrate the life of a friend who was shot and killed in a “tragic misunderstanding.”

Last week, after a night of heavy drinking in Las Vegas, Richard Rizal McGee, a third-year student at Whittier Law School, was shot twice in the neck and torso after repeatedly banging on the wrong door at his friend’s apartment complex and trying to get in. The Las Vegas Review-Journal has more information on what happened:

McGee, 31, died when he was shot by his friend’s neighbor at the apartment complex, near where Sahara Avenue and Fort Apache Road meet.

Police on the day of the shooting said the couple at 2200 Fort Apache Road, who Metro have not identified, feared for their lives as McGee pounded on their door just before 5 a.m. while screaming and yelling.

They couldn’t see the man behind their metal door with a small peephole. After warning him that they were armed and telling him to stop trying to enter their home, the woman called 911 for help.

But before police could arrive, the man who lives in the apartment shot through the door multiple times, killing McGee on the other side.

McGee’s death has been ruled a homicide, but under Nevada’s Castle Doctrine law, so long as the couple residing in the apartment can claim that they reasonably feared that McGee was trying to break in, the shooting will be treated as justifiable, and they will likely face no repercussions. When asked about Nevada’s defense of habitation law by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Professor Addie Rolnick of the UNLV Boyd School of Law noted that “[t]he question is not whether the drunk person actually meant to do harm, but whether the person in the home (1) believed he posed a threat and (2) was reasonable in believing that.”

McGee’s friends said he was “nonviolent, quiet and small in stature,” and that he was “a good man with a bright future.” McGee “wanted to travel and surf the world,” and his friends and family hosted a paddle out at the Huntington Beach Pier in California this morning in his memory.

This young man’s life was cut short, and we here at Above the Law would like to extend our condolences and sympathies to Richard McGee’s family, friends, and colleagues.

Tragic misunderstanding leads to shooting death through door [Las Vegas Review-Journal]
Law student is shot and killed while pounding on apartment door [ABA Journal]

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