January 4, 2016

By Leah Caldwell

When hatred collides with Texas’ Stand Your Ground law, the result is fatal.

It was the second week of Ramadan and Ziad Abu Naim was fasting. He was about to head to the mosque for Friday prayers when his wife, Lisa Aimone, decided she’d go with him. She and Abu Naim were “attached at the hip,” she said, even after eight years of marriage. The couple had taken a trip in May to Belgium and Luxembourg and, even though they had been back in Houston scarcely a month, they were contemplating where to go next.

That day in June, he was in a hurry. Before heading to the mosque, he had to meet a client to drop off some contact lenses, a business he dabbled in.

The couple had driven only a block from their home on a residential street when they came to a four-way stop. They were turning left when a BMW X6 M with dealer plates and custom rims pulled into the intersection at the same time. The two nearly collided. Abu Naim paused to let the visibly angry driver pass. Instead, the man — a 43-year-old Houstonian named Robert Craig Klimek, who owns a security firm called Templar Security — made a right turn and pulled alongside Abu Naim’s Porsche SUV. Both men rolled down their windows. Aimone sat forward in her seat to catch a glimpse of the man in the other car, and that’s when she heard it: “Go back to Islam!” Abu Naim opened the door and stepped out of the car. Aimone kept her eyes on his back. Within a few seconds, she heard a single gunshot.

In late September, a Harris County grand jury declined to indict Klimek for murder. Klimek’s defense centered on Texas’ Stand Your Ground law, one of the most expansive in the nation. In 2007, the Texas Legislature passed legislation explicitly stating that civilians have no “duty to retreat” from their vehicles before using deadly force in self-defense. Instead of driving off, you can now legally shoot to kill in certain circumstances. Critics have said the law is so broad that it gives the trigger-happy carte blanche to shoot first and ask questions later.

http://www.texasobserver.org/stand-your-ground-islam-shooting-houston/