A Washington State man has been charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of an apparent intruder who was taking a shower in a house on his property.
According to the Daily Olympian and Yakima Herald, Bruce Fanning, 59, of Belfair was arrested April 1 after calling Mason County sheriff’s deputies to the scene. Fanning said the house in which the shooting occurred is where he operates a business.
Bail was set at $250,000.
In Washington State, self-defense laws justify homicide under circumstances “when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design on the part of the person slain to commit a felony or to do some great personal injury to the slayer or to any such person, and there is imminent danger of such design being accomplished.” Translation: When there is imminent danger of grave bodily harm or death.
The law further states that lethal force is permitted “In the actual resistance of an attempt to commit a felony upon the slayer, in his or her presence, or upon or in a dwelling, or other place of abode, in which he or she is.”
The Olympian reported that Fanning told investigators that he discovered an intruder, later identified as Nathaniel Joseph Rosa, 31, of Bothell, in the shower when he checked the house that morning. He apparently told Rosa to leave, but the intruder then reportedly replied “with non-understandable verbal threats.”
Then, according to published reports, Fanning went to his nearby home, armed himself with a Smith & Wesson .45-caliber handgun, went back to his business and fired three times through the shower curtain.
The Olympian said Rosa had apparently been staying at a residence nearby, so it is not clear why he was in Fanning’s business. He worked as a “paraeducator” at a Bothell elementary school.
