Public Reaction
"The Subway Vigilante", as Goetz was labeled by New York City media, was front-page news for months, partly owing to the repressed passions the incident unleashed in New York and other cities. Public opinion tended to fall into one of three camps: Those in the first camp tended to believe Goetz's version of the incident, that he was aggressively accosted and surrounded by the four men and feared he was about to be beaten and robbed. Those in the second camp tended to believe the version told by the four men, that they were merely panhandling to get some money to play video games. A third camp believed that Goetz had indeed been threatened, but viewed the shooting as an unjustified overreaction.
Read more about this topic: Bernhard Goetz
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