John's Hopkins student kills intruder w/ samurai sword
 

woooo....representing my city, yo!

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/mar...0,114199.story

Hours earlier, someone had broken into John Pontolillo's house and taken two laptops and a video-game console. Now it was past midnight, and he heard noises coming from the garage out back.

The Johns Hopkins University undergraduate didn't run. He didn't call the police. He grabbed his samurai sword.

With the 3- to 5-foot-long, razor-sharp weapon in hand, police say, Pontolillo crept toward the noise. He noticed a side door in the garage had been pried open. When a man inside lunged at him, police say, the confrontation was fatal.

"He was backed up against a corner and either out of fear or out of panic, he just struck the sword with force," said Baltimore Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. "It was probably with fear for his life."

Pontolillo, who rents the house in the 300 block of E. University Parkway in the Oakenshawe neighborhood, struck the intruder no more than twice, police say, nearly severing his left hand and inflicting what police termed a "spear laceration."

The intruder, Donald D. Rice of Baltimore, a 49-year-old repeat offender who had been released from jail only Saturday, died at the bloody scene.

Pontolillo, 20, of Wall, N.J., whose identity was confirmed by law enforcement sources, was released late Tuesday afternoon. Guglielmi said it would be up to the state's attorney's office to determine whether he will be charged in the incident.

In a statement Tuesday, Hopkins officials told students there had been more than a half-dozen burglaries in the area recently, and that police presence would be bolstered.

Diego Ardila, a Hopkins student who lived with Pontolillo in the three-story, five-bedroom house during the summer, said Pontolillo owned a samurai sword and generally kept it in his room. He described Pontolillo as somewhat outgoing, but said they didn't talk a lot.

"You don't expect to hear that someone you know killed a guy with a samurai sword," said Ardila, 19. "From what little I know of him, he wasn't some guy going out to kill."

It is legal to possess a sword in Baltimore, Guglielmi said, and "individuals have a right to defend their person and their property." He declined to comment on whether its use in this case was appropriate.

University of Maryland professor David Gray, who specializes in criminal law, said prosecutors must weigh whether Pontolillo felt his life was in danger or whether he became the aggressor.

In Maryland, Gray said, an individual is not expected to retreat from suspected danger in his own home. But it is unclear how the law applies to an enclosed backyard.

If the student felt he was in danger of severe bodily harm, then he was within his right to protect himself, Gray said: "It doesn't matter if he used a gun, a sword or a frying pan."

The sword police recovered from the scene, with a sharp blade and ribbon-wrapped hilt, is a replica of a historic samurai weapon. Though a real one would cost thousands of dollars, Guglielmi said, this one probably cost a few hundred.

The police spokesman said the student who wielded the weapon had no advanced sword training. "He wasn't a ninja," Guglielmi said. "He may have been moderately trained or on the intermediate level."

Hundreds of varieties of samurai swords are available online to collectors and hobbyists, martial arts enthusiasts and students of swordplay through stores such as Steve Dibble's Japanese Swords 4 Samurai site, based in Birmingham, Ala.

His swords range in price from about $50 for the model called the "Kill Bill," after the violent Quentin Tarantino films, to more than $2,000 for a handmade "Katana" forged of steel, a hilt wrapped in leather and silk, and decorative flourishes of silver.

Midrange swords, the type apparently used in the Baltimore incident, are those likeliest used at martial arts schools, he said, where students want a weapon sharp enough to cut.

To inflict lethal damage requires some skill, Dibble said.

"To be that confident with it that he would go grab it, he may have been into martial arts," he said. "You would have to hold it with two hands and be confident that you would really know what you were doing."

Mantis Swords, an online outlet based in Westminster, specializes in sharp weapons. "Our swords are ready for cutting," owner Shawn Salafia said.

Salafia sells mats that people can soak in water so that when they dry, they'll be roughly the consistency of a person.

"You stick them on a stand, and you cut them," he said. "If someone laid their hand into it, you could probably cut into it pretty darn deep."

By Tuesday afternoon, two pools of blood remained on the ground a few feet away from the door to the garage, which is not connected to the home. A gate in a wooden fence surrounding the backyard was broken, allowing the scene to be viewed from the sidewalk.

Michael Hughes, who lives about a block away in the neighborhood, heard screams early Tuesday.

"I could hear the fear in the voice, and I could tell someone was scared," said Hughes, 43, who works for Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health.

He called police and then walked over to the crime scene.

"The body was near the garage," he said. "I watched them carry the sword out. The whole thing was surreal and totally bizarre."

Rice, of the 600 block of East 27th St. in Baltimore, had 29 prior convictions for crimes such as breaking and entering, Guglielmi said. He had been released Saturday from the Baltimore County Detention Center, where he had been held after his arrest by county police last year for stealing a car in the city. He was found guilty in December of unauthorized removal of property and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

The incident was the second this week in which a man was wounded trying to commit a robbery. An off-duty Baltimore police officer shot and critically wounded a man who had tried to rob him at gunpoint in his Northeast Baltimore home, according to police. He chased the man for two blocks before opening fire, police said

29 prior convictions. fucking A. good for the Baltimore Samurai.

I appreciate the convenient hyperlink for those who require more information on hands.

I was at a bar last night & people wouldn't shut up about this.

Recently an elderly man who lived with another elderly man Here near Houston had his backyard shed burglarized of two hunting crossbows and some fletches. The next day he heard someone in his shed, checked to see his old roommate was upstairs,a nd went outside with his rifle. The same FUCK was trying to steal the protective cases for the crossbows. The old man shot the fucker dead.

cops had a good laugh. In TX you are free to protect your life and yr property with DEATH-DEALING if need be.

Baltimore is an extremely racist city. The court usually gives you leniency as long as you are white and the person you kill is black. It's mad fucked up.

yeah. that does suck.

a few years ago a mexican man was in his home here in South Houston when he saw what looked like a vagrant standing in his yard taking a piss. It was actually an und4ercover cop. The man yelled at the "vagrant" to leave his property and the cop, instead of saying anything, just pulled up his shirt to reveal a holster and pistol. The man went back inside his house, grabbed a rifle, and shot the cop dead, thinking he had been threatened.
white cop, mexican man. no charges filed at all

completely against procedure to flash a piece at a civilian without notifying them of your status as a police officer. fucked up huh?

Now I know why Mexicans want to live in Texas.

That is not racism... that happens to be REALITY in Baltimore. Fucking piece of shit ghetto.

I like to remind myself that old New York City back before gentrification was also a shit pile. That's the NYC I remember growing up.

Did you all miss this fucked up part at the end? "Chased the man for two blocks BEFORE opening fire.."

Thats not justice or defending yourself, that shit is vengence! FUCK AMERICA AND ITS GUN LOVING CULTURE..

and in regards to the dude with the sword, I say its good that he defended himself instead of relying upon the police, because the the police are a handicap. We all rely on them in our minds, and so we do no take care of our own communities, we wait for the police. The police do not stop or prevent crime, they are a band-aid. The police do not prevent murder, rape or child molestation, they are just there after the fact to clean up the mess.. If we as a society were more involved in our own protection, then we would not need the police. Marcus Garvey said it a hundred years ago, "The police and their guns are no there to protect your liberty, they are only in existence to protect property."

The police do not exist to stop or prevent crime, they only exist to stop poor people from taking justice against billionaires and taking back the resources that are rightfully ours. The police are there to stop a desperate and homeless person from getting what is rightfully theirs, access to necessary resources.. so that one guy can have four cars in his driveway while another sleeps on the curb in front of his house.. :(

but I must say, I DO NOT CONDONE KILLING PEOPLE WITH SWORDS OVER PROPERTY CRIMES. It is sad the dude died, one way or the other :(

I feel the need to mention all the cops which have been kicking homeless people away from tent cities in public areas.

How about all the homeless who have literally been thrown in jail for loitering on public property?

F-ed up.

"This is the State -- it is a repressive organization
But the state -- and gee, well, you know,
you've got to have the police, cause..
if there were no police, look at what you'd be doing to yourselves!
You'd be killing each other if there were no police!
But the reality is..
the police become necessary in human society
only at that junction in human society
where it is split between those who have and those who ain't got"

i feel nostalgic.

i've seen so many junkies weening in and out of consciousness on those benches.

the police exist to provide the illusion of safety.
They are the caretakers of the wealthy and pwoerful, who can have as many squad cars available to them on command as they'd like.
when a regular person's home is burglarized and fucked up (like mine was TWICE) they come by, file a report, tell you you should have a dog, and make a list of what was stolen (at the exact WORST TIME for one to try and remember what one had) to provide your "insurance" company, who will then give you twentyfive cents on the dollar for what your shit was worth.

me too.

We're talking about Texas here. They ENJOY frying retards.

I never said that BMORE is the only fucked up place in America.

Texas might win.

IDK though, I've never visited. The only Texan city that doesn't scare me is Austin.