It wasn’t that long ago that people were “cheering” the “hero dad” in Texas who beat off his daughter’s alleged child molester, killing him in the process. We tend to like these stories for the obvious reason: It sets a terrible situation right. A child is being hurt. A parent rushes to the rescue. The parent gets revenge on the child’s attacker. All is well with the world again. But what if that scenario goes horribly awry? What if the person who hurt the child genuinely did it by accident? What if the father who rushes to the rescue is overcome with the understandable desire to beat the bejesus out of the person who hurt his child? And what if the person who hurt the child just happened to be a cop who was carrying a gun? There’s no “happy” ending to this story. But it might teach everyone a lesson about using fists instead of the law.
