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The shooting death of 62-year-old Bart Diguglielmo in a North Lauderdale, Florida Walmart parking lot has made national news and has the public divided. It even has the staunchly pro-self-defense Right arguing among itself, highlighting just how contentious this case is.
A good place to always begin is with the facts of the case. From the Broward County Sheriff’s Office:
At approximately 12:28 p.m., on June 30, Broward County Regional Communications received a call reporting a shooting in the parking lot of the Walmart located at 7900 W. McNab Road in North Lauderdale. Broward Sheriff’s Office district deputies and North Lauderdale Fire Rescue responded. On scene, deputies located Bart Diguglielmo suffering from a gunshot wound. Paramedics transported Diguglielmo to Broward Health Medical Center, where he was later pronounced deceased.
The preliminary investigation revealed an adult female and the victim were involved in a verbal altercation over a parking space in the Walmart parking lot prior to the shooting. According to investigators, the shooter, the adult female, remained on scene, cooperated with detectives and she told them the shooting was in self-defense.
More details from Law & Crime:
Cellphone video captured during the confrontation shows the woman allegedly shooting Diguglielmo as he walks toward her. A witness told WPLG that the woman let Diguglielmo know she was going to shoot him during the altercation as he kept approaching her.
With the investigation still ongoing, this is the extent of the publicly known facts. The woman has also yet to be publicly identified, which is rare in these types of incidents. But we also have the smartphone video which captured the shooting. There appear to be two videos shot from two different angles, though I’m not sure if they were recorded from different phones. I’m having great difficulty finding the uncut, uncensored versions of each video (if anyone has access, please let me know), so all I can provide here are the edited clips widely available on the Internet and social media.
The best I’ve come across is this video which appears to have spliced the two clips together, creating the most complete documentation of the incident [WARNING: graphic content]:
Here’s the video most widely seen on the news and social media, which shows the moment where Diguglielmo gets shot:
Two things stand out. One, though the woman does exit the vehicle with weapon in hand, she appears to be trying to defend herself by putting space between her and Diguglielmo. Two, not only was the one who called police, when they do arrive on scene, she cooperates as she should and doesn’t resist. At least as far as can be seen in the video, she seems to be doing everything possible to protect herself. It’s Diguglielmo who keeps trying to confront her. Her post-incident actions also appear to be consistent with best practices, suggesting she’s a trained individual.
Of course, we can’t hear anything, and exactly what triggered this violent encounter remains under investigation. The thing to remember though is that verbal provocations alone aren’t justification for violence, threats aside. Then there’s also the matter of confronting an armed individual, which I’ll address in a few moments.
First, what do the experts think? We’ve heard from one, let’s consult another. “Nate the Lawyer,” who also has an excellent YouTube channel, is a source of reliable legal takes:
Popular self-defense attorney Andrew Branca discussed the shooting on his YouTube channel and does a good job of explaining why this is a justified shooting:
Failure To Walk Away Is Fatal
What do I think? Practically speaking, confronting an armed individual is foolishly dangerous. Worse, it negates any claim to self-defense one might have - anyone who approaches someone pointing a gun at them probably isn’t in fear for their life, and anyone not in fear for their life doesn’t have any legitimate claim to self-defense. This isn’t a situation where someone confronts an active shooter or comes to the aid of someone in danger. This is an interpersonal dispute over a parking space. I can’t think of anything dumber to shoot someone over, no, but I also can’t think of anything dumber to get shot over, either.
Like Andrew Branca, I’m surprised that so many following this case are either ignoring or failing to notice that Diguglielmo confronted and followed her around for a full minute while she had the gun in hand, walked away, before returning to confront her yet again. If he was in any way in danger of getting shot, he sure didn’t seem to feel that way. If he was in any way in fear for his life, his actions aren’t consistent with that of a fearful individual.
If anyone is still unconvinced, ask yourself: what would’ve happened if DiGuglielmo walked away? He wouldn’t have gotten shot. That much seems certain. So many tragedies occur unnecessarily because a person refused to walk away when they could’ve. That’s what appears to have happened here. Again, we won’t know for sure what started this altercation. But the video very clearly shows the woman in retreat, Diguglielmo following, then him briefly walking off before coming right back and walking towards her. It makes you wonder if Diguglielmo was in a right state of mind or had his fight-flight response so triggered, it completely overwhelmed his better judgment.
There’s also the fact that Florida is a stand-your-ground law state, which has become an inconvenient aspect of the case for those who generally defend the statute. A lot of people have criticized her for not walking away, for getting out of her car, gun in hand, you name it. They have more to say about her actions and very little to say about Diguglielmo’s.
Since Florida is a stand-your-ground state, however, and doesn’t require a defensive party to retreat even when the opportunity to do so exists, a lot of these criticisms are moot. First, if you watch the video, the woman does, in fact, retreat. Diguglielmo follows her around someone else’s parked car as she walks backwards, even as she points a gun at him. She only stands her ground when Diguglielmo comes back after walking away and advances towards her. This isn’t someone with murderous intent. As Andrew Branca said, if she just wanted to kill him, she had many opportunities to do so before she actually did.
Cynics might say that she was playing it smart, looking for the right moment to pull the trigger and get away with it. First, until we know more about what led up to the shooting, this is all useless speculation. Second, it was Diguglielmo’s choice, nobody else’s, to walk back towards an armed woman. It was an immensely stupid thing to do, and we need not absolve him of agency. I’ve said something to the effect many times before, I’ll say it again: when walking away safely is an option, it’s the only option. Obviously, stand-your-ground laws seemingly complicate matters, but again, they apply only to the defensive party.
And no, she doesn’t need to be attacked before she can shoot in self-defense. The law makes very clear the perception of threat alone can serve as justification for using force. Whatever force ends up being used must be proportional to the threat presented, and a lot of people are arguing that shooting and killing Diguglielmo was disproportionate.
The problem is that Diguglielmo was warned, both by word and through display of a firearm, to disengage, but he refused to. There’s also a potential for strength disparity, not to mention a defensive party has no obligation to wait around to see what kind of physical harm a person can inflict before they can act. Andrew Branca notes that she may have been wrong to get out of her car with her gun drawn, but once the gun had been drawn, it was stunningly imprudent of Diguglielmo to confront her. This is the opposite of standing one’s ground. As Branca also notes, the aggressor-victim are more fluid than people realize. An individual can start off as an aggressor, then become a victim later on during an encounter.
It’s Not Always About Race
There’s also unfortunately the race angle here. As Andrew Branca, who’s absolutely not a liberal, also points out, those who think Diguglielmo was murdered are suffering from “race derangement syndrome”. They think that because the shooter was black and Diguglielmo White, there’s no possible way she could ever have acted in self-defense. Race derangement syndrome makes it impossible for people to look at the case with any objectivity.
I get it - racial dynamics in these sorts of cases are real. My longtime readers know exactly where I stand on the race issue in America. I have nothing more to prove to anyone. Yes, blacks are more often than not the instigators of violent confrontations, they needlessly provoke and escalate, and are more than happy to exploit our society’s suicidal sympathy towards them regardless of their behavior during altercations with other races, Whites in particular. All of that’s true.
Here’s the thing: accepting all that, a person still needs to be able to analyze each individual case on its own merits, based on the facts presented. We rightfully criticize blacks and liberals for making assumptions and projecting all sorts of ridiculous notions onto these stories. Well, what are people doing in this case? They’re assuming that just because she’s black, she must’ve instigated, escalated, provoked, and therefore murdered an innocent White man. The fact that she remained calm, discharged her weapon only after Diguglielmo came walking back towards her after she’d warned him many times to back off, put down her gun, called police, and cooperated with them proves she was the reasonable party here.
So no, I reject any racialized take on this case. How many times do I need to say it: not every interracial crime has a racial motivation. That goes for incidents where blacks kill non-blacks as well. America is an atomized, low-trust society where people have forgotten how to avoid killing one another over the silliest of things. Blacks kill blacks all the time over the mildest of provocations. Whites kill Whites over property disputes. Hundreds of people are killed annually because Americans have forgotten how to resolve disputes without viewing them as zero-sum, winner-take-all affairs. I have a feeling that the some of the same people who think the black woman murdered Diguglielmo would think differently if the two individuals were of the same race.
In turn, I also reject the idea propagated by blacks and liberals that Diguglielmo was motivated by racism in confronting this woman. There’s no evidence of that and again, not every interracial altercation has a racial motivation. This seems to be yet another mundane dispute gone wrong, and whether or not both parties had a hand in things spiraling out of control, the person who ultimately crossed a red line was the one who got shot and killed in the end.
I’m sure Bart Diguglielmo was, all things considered, a good and decent man. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The facts of the case, as they stand currently, tell me he was the aggressor when he was shot. It’s unfortunate and America doesn’t need another one of these cases to argue over. If the facts change or new facts come to light, I may change my analysis. For now, I’m content to consider this a justifiable self-defense shooting.
Don’t Fight Over Parking Spots
Before anyone allows their emotions to overwhelm their judgments of this incident, let’s refocus out mental energy on what really ought to matter to us: preparedness. What can we learn from this case? There’s not going to be a whole lot here I haven’t said before, but refreshers are always necessary.
First, I’m confident that this case was, like so many others, a case of overheated emotions resulting from people unwilling to give in or yield to others. We’ve all seen parking disputes. Some of us have been involved in them. We all know how easily our emotions can get stirred up in a hurry, how easily we can take offense, even though people are just being inconsiderate as opposed to deliberately trying to wound anyone’s pride.
We don’t know exactly what triggered this fatal fracas, so I’ll just say this: don’t get into disputes over something as silly as parking spots. If this means finding a different parking spot further away, so be it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so apply that thinking to your daily social interactions, also. No, nobody’s going to think you’re a wimp for parking further away so you don’t have to fight anyone for a parking spot closer to the Walmart, Costco, whatever. They don’t care actually. That’s what’s really happening here - they don’t care about you, they care only about themselves. There are few things more offensive than selfishness, which is why we take it so personally when on the receiving end of it.
Second, the longer you remain engaged in an argument, the more you escalate a situation, the harder it becomes to walk away, even when the opportunity to do so presents itself. This is because humans are emotional creatures and the more emotionally invested we become in something, the more difficult it becomes to disengage. Again, simply avoiding the situation in the first place is the best course of action. If you avoid an argument, you end up with nothing to get emotionally worked up over.
However, if you do find yourself in an argument, be civil, and always look for a way out. The other party being rude and uncivil isn’t an excuse for you to return the gesture. If anything, if a person is being rude and uncivil, then nothing you say or do is going to force them to back down or be more reasonable, so it’s probably better to just walk away. If they won’t let you disengage, then we’re now talking about a potential self-defense situation. But most people are content to simply yell at you, so just get out of there as quickly as possible. Nobody gets in trouble for walking away.
If you don’t like the sound of this, just remember: the longer you remain engaged, the harder it’ll become to walk away, even when you want to. Eventually, even the mildest of arguments can turn personal when they go on for long enough, and when it does, you’ll so overwhelmingly be consumed with anger, you’re not going to want to walk away. That’s a very bad place to be. That’s when the risk of a violent clash goes up exponentially. Keep it simple; don’t let it ever escalate to that level by getting out of there as soon as possible and always be civil in your interactions.
Third, assume that somebody, even a third party, will be recording events. Take a moment and ask yourself: how do I want to be perceived? Do you want to be perceived as Bart Diguglielmo was, trying to look tough as he awkwardly attempts to confront the woman who later shoots him? Do you want to be perceived as unhinged, having a temper tantrum? Do you want to appear weak? Do you want to be caught on camera getting beat up? Or to look like a bully, picking on someone weaker?
You can tell yourself that you don’t care what anyone thinks of you. The moment that video goes viral, however, you’ll very much care, because public perception carries tremendous weight in any society. It may not matter in terms of what happens in court, but it can matter with respect to whether the case even ends up going to court, to say nothing of how your employer might think, whether you can confidently show your face in public, etc.
Finally, and this is likely to be my most controversial proposition, but just because the law says you can stand your ground doesn’t mean you should. In my opinion, stand-your-ground protects a person who may have objectively had both the means and opportunity to retreat, but instinctively didn’t and chose to use force instead. Since these situations are so fluid, so sudden, everything unfolding so quickly, it’s unreasonable to expect people to make the objectively correct choices 100 percent of the time. Stand-your-ground laws effectively allow an otherwise aggrieved party to make an understandable mistake and not be prosecuted over it.
However, if time and space permit, if retreat is possible, absolutely do so. One, it’s conducive in terms of safety. Two, you’ll have a much stronger case for self-defense if you attempted to retreat. While the law doesn’t require a person to retreat and thus cannot hold it against them if they fail to do so, it’s a double-edged sword because not only does it expose you to further danger, stand-your-ground applies only if you remain the defensive party. It can’t help you if you end up assessed to be the aggressor. This is what so many people get wrong about stand-your-ground: it’s not a legal justification.
As explained by the website Law Shun [bold mine]:
Stand-your-ground laws, sometimes called “line in the sand” or “no duty to retreat” laws, allow people to use deadly force when they reasonably believe it is necessary to defend against certain violent crimes. However, these laws do not apply if the individual is the initial aggressor in the altercation. This means that if a person initiates a confrontation and then claims self-defence, they cannot invoke stand-your-ground laws as a defence.
In the case of Bart Diguglielmo, the question of whether this was a self-defense shooting will depend on whom investigators identify as the initial aggressor and when. People end up in arguments and disputes all the time without there being an aggressor, or at least not a clear and obvious one. It’s possible for a simple argument to escalate to the level of violent confrontation, with the beginning of the violent confrontation being the moment someone became an aggressor, not before. You can see how this can all get complicated in a hurry.
More from Law Shun:
Stand-your-ground laws remove the duty to retreat before using force in self-defence. In other words, they empower individuals to defend themselves without the obligation to first attempt to escape from a threatening situation. While these laws vary by jurisdiction, the general principle is that individuals can use force, including deadly force, if they reasonably believe it is necessary to protect themselves or others.
It is important to note that even in states with stand-your-ground laws, there are still restrictions on the use of force in self-defence. For example, a state may require that the threat of perceived bodily injury is objectively reasonable, and that the force used is proportional to the threat. Additionally, stand-your-ground laws typically require that the person using self-defence be lawfully present in the location of the altercation.
Basically, stand-your-ground laws still demand all other criteria for self-defense to be satisfied. Once more, stand-your-ground alone isn’t a defense. Nobody gets away with killing someone just because they had no duty to retreat. We can have disagreements over whom the aggressor and whom the victim is, but claiming that individuals get away with murder simply by playing the stand-your-ground card is brutally dishonest. I assure you, even liberals don’t think they should ever need to back down against anyone. It’s everyone else who should. It comes as no surprise.
In closing, forget about trying to “win” anything when you end up in a clash with someone else, especially over something as silly as a parking space. That parking space isn’t even yours. It’s not theirs, either, no. But that just means there’s no real rhyme or reason to so steadfastly defend your right to it. While you may have no obligation to be concerned for anyone else’s well-being, always remember: the outcome in which everyone lives is always the best outcome.
That all said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that, sometimes, you can walk away from trouble, but trouble can still follow you. Consider this appalling incident that occurred in El Paso, Texas only two days after the shooting of Diguglielmo:
A 32-year-old man is dead after a fight escalated into a shooting in West El Paso, according to the El Paso Police Department.
Nicholas Emanuel Wells, 26, was arrested and charged with murder. He was booked into the El Paso County Detention Facility.
…
Investigators learned that the incident began as a verbal argument in the parking lot over a handicap space.
According to the affidavit, Wells parked his vehicle next to a handicap parking space near the front entrance of the business. The victim, identified as Christopher Brandon Steven, his mother and sister also arrived at Walgreens and attempted to park their vehicle in the handicap parking spot directly next to Wells.
It was noted that the mother was driving the vehicle, and Steven was in the passenger seat.
Steven’s mother told detectives that Wells yelled at them, questioning why they were parking next to him. As a result, the mother then reversed and parked the vehicle in a different spot on the opposite side of the parking lot.
In the surveillance footage, Wells followed the family into the store and was seen “walking in close proximity behind (Steven) and appears to be speaking to him in an aggressive manner,” according to court documents.
A fight then ensued between Wells and Steven as they both grabbed each other. Then, Wells was seen holding a handgun in his right hand pointed toward the ceiling.
According to the affidavit, both Wells and Steven were fighting for the weapon and Wells is then seen putting an arm around Steven’s neck in an attempt to restrict his movement.
Wells pointed the firearm down at Steven’s head, but Steven continued to struggle until eventually Wells pointed the gun at Steven’s abdomen and fired one shot, according to court records.
Steven was seen in the surveillance footage falling to the ground, at which time Wells shot a second shot at Steven.
The shooter is black, but the article says nothing about the race of the victim. I did some research and came across a GoFundMe which appears to have been made for the victim’s family and includes a picture of the victim. He appears to be White. There’s no indication that the crime was race-related. Maybe it was. But as I said before, not only can it be true that blacks have a major violence problem which puts people of all races in danger, there are plenty of terrible people out there who’ll find a reason to kill someone.
So no, walking away isn’t always an option nor will it save you. That’s why stand-your-ground laws exist, in some states, at least. The lesson is to avoid danger whenever you can, to the extent possible. If trouble wants to find you, it will, unfortunately.
That’s all for now. If new facts come to light, I’ll share them, especially if they alter my judgment of this case. What do you all think? Was the killing of Bart Diguglielmo self-defense? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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My standing advice for young men is to just walk away from a confrontation over stuff that doesn’t matter. Pride and being macho is such a stupid reason to die, or to kill someone over something minor and spend decades of your life in prison. I guess it is hard for people to keep that in mind in the heat of the moment and I think in general it is the people who don’t have any experience with violence who are more likely to do stupid things like that. It’s never like the movies and you don’t have plot armor.
Excellent article. I am sorry to say my X feed had multiple posts about "the poor veteran shot by a crazy black woman" and I was astonished when I came across a post with the video - he was threatening her, she warned him off, he kept advancing - to do WHAT? Good shooting if you ask me. Another lesson in "don't rely on interpretations of an event - wait to hear the facts."