Good Guy with a Gun #8: Boise, ID
Original incident: November 16, 2023
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People often think that guns are just made to kill people. That’s not really true: They’re meant to be capable of killing people. Some of the best defensive gun uses (DGUs) don’t involve a single shot being fired, much less a wound or death.
This story is one of those no-shots-fired DGU stories. It took place in Boise, Idaho, which makes me think of potatoes, which forces me to admit that I’ve never really understood the “never go full potato” meme.
But it feels like I should be able to use it here. Because if it means anything, then I think Khynndyl Lasley went full potato early in the morning of November 16, 2023.
Around 2:30 in the morning, he strolled up, tested the door handle, and, finding it unlocked, slipped inside to steal stuff. There’s surveillance video to prove it.
The homeowner confronted Lasley with a gun, ordering him to leave.
The funny thing here is that Lasley didn’t take the opportunity to go. Instead, he barricaded himself in the furnace room: Nowhere to go.
He refused to come out for the homeowner.
When the cops came, he refused to come out for them, too.
By 3:30 AM, the police breached the door safely, hit Lasley with a 40mm non-lethal round, unleashed a K9, and cuffed him. Lasley got patched up at the hospital before going to jail on burglary and resisting charges.
Lasley’s big sister, AJhaunnai, joined in the commentary on the Boise police’s Facebook post about the arrest. Without defending Khynndyl’s actions per se — “No one said he was in the right. No one said we want sympathy for him.” was part of a typical exchange — she indicated that he was epileptic, that she expected the charges to be dropped, and that he’d probably get his meds fixed and do some community service.
I don’t know much about epilepsy, but it seems to me that he had to be aware enough to try to steal things, as shown on the surveillance footage; that said, again, I don’t know much about epilepsy.
At any rate, even if Khynndyl were mentally incapacitated and having a seizure, that’s not something that the homeowner could know. In fact, if he were incapable of knowing what he was doing, he could have been extremely dangerous. Multiple commenters noted that Khynndyl was lucky he wasn’t shot. So good for the homeowner for protecting himself, and for doing it in a way that caused Khynndyl no harm. Let’s hope Khynndyl is taking advantage of his good luck and is ensuring that he’s never in that kind of danger — and doesn’t put anyone else in that position — ever again.
Sources
Boise police. Everything more-or-less follows what’s said in here, without significant additions.
News sources: KIVI TV, CBS2 Idaho News, KIDO Talk Radio
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I had a student who was epileptic, as was my daughter. You don't do anything while having a seizure, believe me; you are incapacitated and having convulsions (major seizures are terrifying to watch and minor ones are still scary). Afterwards, you may be disoriented (my student said some pretty weird things while wandering around my office one time), but probably wouldn't be wandering into someone's home and picking up things to steal . . . He may have still been disoriented enough following an earlier seizure not to make good decisions when confronted, I suppose, but if he was lucid enough to break and enter and steal stuff . . . I don't know.