I'm currently at home and thus forced to learn about all the latest right media trends on Fox which plays all day.
In short, the story is that the girlfriend of the victim, Austin Simon, had a declined transaction. She went and got her boyfriend for whatever reason, he had some kind of confrontation with the man at the counter, Jose Alba, and Simon was eventually stabbed to death.
I've seen this mostly covered by conservative outlets and "JusticePorn" type social media, and they're all basically supporting the Alba. Also including Eric Adams, who has criticized the decision to charge the guy with murder - NYT.
I linked the most complete video I could find of the incident. To me, it looks like Alba is shoved once by Simon pretty hard, and he then yells at him for a bit before pulling him up from the chair he was shoved into and looks like he's going to march him out in front of the counter, which is the point at which Alba grabs the knife, whips around, and stabs him: at least 5 times according to reports and you can see a stab to the neck in the video.
Additionally, from the NYT article, according to Alba, Simon "had demanded that he 'come apologize to the girl,'" which I think tracks with leading him out from behind the counter maybe. Simon also did not have a weapon.
To me, this seems like a disproportionate response, and I can see why he would be charged, but I wanted to know other's thoughts. I feel like you shouldn't be able to kill people over relatively minor altercations when your life isn't immediately threatened but that's just me lol.
Have you ever been in a fight? Like a real fight with a stranger that you don't know? Things happen very, very fast. You don't have time to do a lot of critical thinking, especially when someone already has control over you and is about to do who knows what. You have time to react, and you can and should use overwhelming violence to protect yourself. The legal idea of "proportionate response" is usually nonsense. There's no proportionate response to being grabbed by someone bigger than you. They could easily bounce your head off the pavement until you died. And you have no idea of knowing whether they mean to hurt your or just scare the shit out of you. You have to assume the worst.
This isn't to say you should jump straight to killing people; If you can you should deescalate or try to run away. But a lot of times that isn't a realistic option - There's no where to run, or you're surrounded, or someone is obviously faster than you.