Celal Dede, 46, said he never imagined his 17-year-old son, Diren, could have been shot for entering someone's property.

Celal Dede, 46, said he never imagined his 17-year-old son, Diren, could have been shot for entering someone's property.

Posted by Sylvester on Friday, May 2, 2014 0

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Celal Dede, 46, said he never imagined his 17-year-old son, Diren, could have been shot for entering someone's property. The outraged dad arrived from Germany so he could bring his son's body home after the teen was killed by Markus Kaarma, who claimed he shot the teen in self-defense.

Diren Dede, 17, a German exchange student, who was shot and killed during a break-in at a Missoula, Minn., home.

The father of a 17-year-old German exchange student who was shot dead during a break-in at a Montana home slammed Americans who try to solve everything with a gun.
Celal Dede, 46, said he never imagined his son, Diren, could have been shot for simply entering someone’s property, according to the German news agency dpa.
“America cannot continue to play cowboy,” he told dpa after he arrived in the U.S. to bring his son’s body back to Germany.

“I didn’t think for one night that everyone here can kill somebody just because that person entered his backyard.”

The outraged father said he would not have allowed his son to participate in the exchange program if he had known any better.

His son, an all-state soccer player and a junior at Big Sky High School, was mortally wounded after a Missoula homeowner, Markus Kaarma, found the teen rummaging through his garage early Sunday.
Kaarma, 29, who faces one charge of deliberate homicide, said he shot the teen because he feared for his life after at least two burglaries at his home in the previous three weeks.

But prosecutors argue that Kaarma used his wife, Janelle Pflager, to stage an intricate trap to corner and ambush the teen.
Pflager told investigators that she carefully placed her purse so that it can be seen through the open door of the garage — which was rigged with motion sensors and a baby monitor, court papers obtained by the Missoulian show.

Once Diren Dede and another suspect triggered the alarm, Kaarma ran out the front door of the house with a shotgun and approached the garage from outside to box the bandits inside, prosecutors say.
The second suspect managed to flee before Kaarma opened fire.

Emergency workers arrived a short time later to find the teen bleeding from two shotgun blast wounds. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died.

“The young man made a choice and put the wheels in motion that ultimately created this whole situation,” Kaarma’s lawyer, Paul Ryan, told The Associated Press.

The soccer team of 17-year-old German exchange student Diren Dede holds a moment of silence prior to a soccer match in Hamburg, Germany, on Wednesday.
 
The teen’s mother and two sisters helped arrange a farewell soccer game with hundreds of friends and neighbors in his hometown of Hamburg on Wednesday.

The family — German-Turkish immigrants — planned to bury the teen in Bodrum, Turkey, after a memorial service at Yeni-Beyazit Mosque in Hamburg, dpa reported.

Several of the people gathered were wearing T-shirts with the slain teen’s picture on them.
Diren Dede, who was studying at the Minnesota school for one year, was planning to go home after the school term ended in a few weeks.
With News Wire Services