"He wasn't a ninja"

The words of Baltimore City police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi describing Johns Hopkins student John Pontolillo after the NJ native went medieval on the ass of career criminal Donald D. Rice. The comment was simultaneously an assessment of the lethal skills of the young man and a tacit acknowledgement that all's fair in love, war and the defense of private property.

Not so fast. The story has elicited responses that are dismayingly predictable.

On the one hand you have the law and order crowd who believe that frontier style vigilante justice rules the day. The kid was just preserving the security of himself and his possessions against the ravages of those too indigent, unambitious and unmotivated to work hard and obtain the material trappings of life in a legal manner. The deceased was a repeat offender on the streets only because of a revolving door legal system that fails to protect its citizens from an obvious menace to society. If Seth Bullock can't impose order then Al Swearengen surely will.

On the other side we have the bleeding heart liberals and the perpetrator's family. Even though he had a long criminal record, the guy didn't deserve to die in a pool of his own blood when all he was trying to do was flee the scene. He only went there to steal and he would never really have hurt anyone. When you find someone committing a crime, call the authorities and let the law sort everything out in a civilized manner. The cops / homeowner / businessman didn't have to kill him to stop him.

In a scene that plays out with alarming regularity, the family wails in grief before the cameras for the nightly news. The agony of an inner city mother bemoaning the loss of her progeny, gunned down by a would be victim is real. Her defense of the fallen relative as being merely a harmless hustler is a wrenching level of naivete given her constant contact with the ravages of street violence.

Should the swordsman end up escaping indictment for the events of that tragic day, there's more to fear from the fallout of this incident. Chances are that the family of the thief will drag the student into court seeking redress for the slaying. Look for the anguished invoking of all the elements that make the story so sadly American. Class, privilege, race, cultural influences, vigilantism, inequality, injustice. All will be laid bare as a sharp legal team scorches the earth in search of a payday.

Pinned against a shed on a late summer night, Donald D. Rice was not a saint, but John Pontolillo shouldn't exactly be elevated to the status of mythic urban hero either.