
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 14, 1990                   TAG: 9004140233
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

JURY DETERMINES SHOOTING OF 3 MEN WAS SELF-DEFENSE

Mark C. Flint says he had no choice but to resort to gunfire the night three drunken men barged into his Southeast Roanoke home and beat his roommate senseless with a tire iron.

A jury in Roanoke Circuit Court agreed Friday - ruling that Flint acted in self-defense when he shot and wounded all three men.

Flint's two-day trial raised the question of how far someone is entitled to go in protecting themselves from what defense attorney David Damico described as "a murderous assault by a bunch of drunken intruders."

The jury deliberated just 15 minutes before answering that question, finding Flint, 26, not guilty of two counts of unlawful wounding and one count of malicious wounding.

"I feel bad about it, but I had no other choice," Flint said of the shootings.

While making no excuses for the conduct of the intruders, prosecutors sought to impeach Flint's claim of self-defense by arguing that he overreacted to a situation that was not life-threatening.

"Mr. Flint turned a fist fight into a fire fight," Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Mac Doubles told the jury. By opening fire with his .22-caliber pistol, "he introduced a lethal element into a non-lethal situation," Doubles argued.

But Damico countered that his client was "entirely justified" to shoot in self-defense.

"Drunk, drunk, drunk," is how Damico described the condition of three boisterous men who showed up at Flint's Penmar Avenue home to settle a score with his roommate, David Jeffries.

Testimony provided the following account of what happened the night of last Oct. 22:

About 2:30 a.m., Flint heard pounding on his door and shouted death threats. By the time he went downstairs, Robert Randolph Wright, Charles Gorig and Donny Ray Blankenship had broken through the door and were beating Jeffries with a four-pronged tire tool, he testified.

Flint said he fired two warning shots into the air. But the men paid no attention, he said.

"One came running up the stairs toward me and I shot him," Flint testified. Wright suffered a gunshot wound in his chest.

But Flint denied shooting Blankenship, who was grazed in the head, or Gorig, who was struck in the hand.

"We feared for our lives," he said. "They came in to kill us for no reason."

by CNB