DETROIT (AP) – A suburban Detroit man who said he fatally shot an unarmed woman on his porch out of fear prompted by relentless early morning pounding on his doors faces up to life in prison after jurors rejected his claim of self-defense.
Theodore Wafer was convicted Thursday of second-degree murder after a nine-day trial that centered on whether the 55-year-old had a reasonable and honest belief that his safety was in peril.
“I don’t know why this was brought to me,” Wafer testified this week. “I didn’t go out looking for this.”
No one knows why Renisha McBride ended up at Wafer’s Dearborn Heights home about 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 2, though prosecutors speculated the 19-year-old may have been seeking help. She had been out with a friend hours earlier before crashing her car in Detroit around 1 a.m. and an autopsy found she was extremely drunk.
Wafer opened the front door and shot McBride in the face, firing through a screen door while she stood on the other side. He first suggested to police that it was an accident but later admitted to intentionally pulling the trigger.