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MOBILE, AL — A man broke into a Calgary Drive home through a window around 9:15 at night and the homeowner shot and killed him, according to the Mobile Police Department.

MPD identified the man as David Lee Jr., as reported by FOX10 News. A news crew that reached the block just after 10 o’clock that night found crime scene tape strung around the home and detectives gathering evidence.

Police are working the death as a homicide investigation. That word alarms people, and it should not. Every death by gunfire gets that label at the front end, including the ones that end with no charges at all. It describes the category of investigation, not a conclusion about the person who fired. Police have not announced any charges against the homeowner.

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Most of the rest is still unreleased. The department has not said who the homeowner is, whether anyone else was in the house, how far Lee got inside before he was shot, or whether he was known to the household. Alabama imposes no duty to retreat from your own home, and what investigators will work through now is the physical evidence, the layout of the house, and the homeowner’s account of the moment the shot was fired.

There is a practical takeaway in the timeline. This was not 3 a.m. with the house asleep. It was a little after nine, an ordinary evening, television-on hours. That is the argument for keeping a gun on your person at home instead of parked in a closet or a nightstand down the hall. A firearm you have to cross a dark house to reach is one you may not reach at all once someone is already through the window.