A soldier in the U.S. army is probably thankful for North Carolina’s “castle doctrine” defense allowing homeowners to defend their property from intruders with lethal force after he escaped any charges for shooting a foreign national dead on his land.
No media have disclosed his name; he will be referred to as “the soldier” below.
The Moore County Sheriff’s office posted about the incident on its social media page on August 12, stating that no charges would be filed, and that the case turned out to be more complicated than it appeared at first glance.
The incident took place on May 3 near Carthage, North Carolina, where the soldier lived. The man who intruded on the soldier’s property was named Ramzan Daraev, who claimed he was a Chechen national who had fought in the Russian army against Ukraine in the ongoing war. There is not yet any confirmation of his identity, his nationality, or his service in the Russian military.
The soldier’s wife noticed the man on the couple’s property and he seemed to be photographing their home. She ran to alert her husband, who serves in the Army Special Operations Command. He went outside to deal with the trespasser.
According to the Moore County Sheriff, Daraev “became aggressive” and refused orders to leave the property. That’s when he started shouting that he was from Chechnya and had been a soldier for Russia.
Details are not clear, but the argument between the soldier and intruder Daraev got hotter, and that’s when the soldier went back inside and grabbed his gun. The trespasser “became agitated” and “lunged” at the soldier after refusing multiple commands to leave his property.
The soldier shot and killed him, but has been cleared of charges since state law allows lethal defense of one’s self, family, and property.
There are some who support the slain man and they claim he was legitimately working in the area doing survey work for a fiber optic internet company. But there was nothing on the man’s body that would indicate he was employed by the company or equipped to do that job.
In fact, other local residents reported men behaving in a similar fashion, and the county sheriff believes they may be connected to a gang of which Daraev was a member.
Daraev apparently crossed into the United States in 2022 and went to live in Chicago, but there is no information about his legal or illegal immigration status.
