Home invasion defense: a couch barricade fails and the intruder's gun ends it

Key points: Home invasion defense couch

• The door was barricaded with a couch, which tells you the resident already knew someone was coming — and two men kicking a door in beat one piece of furniture, putting the fight in his bedroom anyway.
• Neither gun on the scene was his: Johnson drew a handgun partway through the beating, and the unarmed resident fought him for it from the bedroom out into the breezeway before shooting him with his own weapon.
• Noir rejects the “he handled it without a gun of his own” reading — the resident survived on desperation and a sloppy attacker, which is not something anyone can plan around, and most people who grab for a gun from that position lose.
• Xerion Sanders was a convicted felon already barred from touching a firearm, showed up with a rifle, hit the resident with it after Johnson went down, then took the handgun and ran.
• Every firearm law that applied here was already on the books and was ignored by the two men it was written for; the only person in the apartment those laws actually reached was the one relying on furniture.
• Sanders faces especially aggravated burglary, aggravated assault, felon in possession and employing a firearm during a dangerous felony — but as of now, not Johnson's death.
• Tennessee is among the states where a death during a violent felony can be charged to the surviving participant, so the only homicide charge in the case may land on the man who kicked the door in and walked away.

About this Tactics and Training video

Home invasion defense in Memphis: Colion Noir works through an affidavit in which two men kicked in an apartment door barricaded with a couch and beat the resident in his own bedroom. The only handgun in the fight belonged to the intruders — Devont Johnson drew it mid-beating, the unarmed resident fought him for it out into the breezeway and shot him with it. Accomplice Xerion Sanders, a convicted felon carrying a rifle, struck the resident, took the pistol and fled. Noir's argument: barricading is the right instinct, but a couch is a speed bump, not a home defense plan.

Transcript: Home invasion defense