THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Unless perhaps you are the Vice President, in which case anyone nearby is fair game. In Dearborn Heights, MI it is called 2nd degree murder.

A suburban Detroit homeowner on Friday was charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of Renisha Marie McBride, a 19-year-old woman who was shot in the face with a shotgun as she stood on the man’s porch in the middle of the night nearly two weeks ago.

The shooting in Dearborn Heights has stirred racial tensions both in Detroit, a mostly black city, and in its whiter suburbs, including Dearborn Heights, which sits just across the city line.

Much remains unclear about what happened in the early morning hours of Nov. 2, when Ms. McBride, who was black, crashed her car and hours later ended up on the doorstep of the defendant, who was identified as Theodore Wafer, 54, who neighbors say appears to be white.

Though the case has been compared to the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager killed last year in Florida, the Wayne County prosecutor, Kym L. Worthy, said at a news conference Friday morning that “race is not relevant.”

Ms. Worthy said Ms. McBride knocked on the exterior screen door of Mr. Wafer’s Dearborn Heights home around 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 2. Ms. McBride had been in a car accident about three hours earlier, and tests have subsequently shown that she was legally intoxicated. Witnesses said that after the car accident, Ms. McBride appeared to be disoriented and walked off into the darkness before returning, then walking away again.

The prosecutor said that there was no sign that Ms. McBride had sought to gain entry to Mr. Wafer’s house, but that he had opened the front door and fired a shot through a locked screen door that struck Ms. McBride in the face.

“We do not believe he acted in lawful self-defense,” said Ms. Worthy, adding that prosecutors had decided to charge Mr. Wafer “based on the facts and the evidence.”

Let's hope the prosecution doesn't screw this one up.