Roman Welzant, who claimed to have been tormented for years by neighborhood teenagers, shot two of them one winter night in 1980 as they threw snowballs at his house in Eastwood, just over the city line in Baltimore County. Welzant, who was 68 at the time, killed one of the teens and seriously wounded the other.
Six months later, a jury in Towson felt sorry for Welzant and found him not guilty of second-degree murder. But 18-year-old Albert Kahl was dead over snowballs, and his mother cried out in the courtroom: “You all have Albert’s blood on your hands. Mr. Welzant, you’re a killer.”
Having attended the trial, I said then and say now: Remove the gun from the scenario, no one would have died and Welzant would not have had blood on his hands. There should have been a penalty for juveniles harassing an elder, but the penalty should not have been an extrajudicial killing.
