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Stone throwing or rock throwing, when it is directed at another person (called stone pelting in India), is often considered a form of criminal battery. In certain political contexts, stone-throwing is considered a form of civil resistance. [1] [2]
The throwing of rocks or stones is one of the most ancient forms of ranged-weapon combat, with stone-throwing slings found among other weapons in the tomb of Tutankhamen, who died about 1325 BC. [3]
Xenophon mentions the petrobóloi (Ancient Greek : πετροβόλοι) in his work Hellenica , [4] and Thucydides and Cassius Dio both mention the lithobóloi (Ancient Greek : λιθοβόλοι) in History of the Peloponnesian War and Histories respectively. [5] [6] Both terms mean stone-throwers in Ancient Greek, as army units. [7]
De re militari (Latin "Concerning Military Matters") by the Roman writer Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus details Roman soldiers training to throw stones as weapons. "Recruits are to be taught the art of throwing stones both with the hand and sling." And "Formerly all soldiers were trained to the practice of throwing stones of a pound weight with the hand, as this was thought a readier method since it did not require a sling." [8]
Goguryeo held an annual national seokjeon (stone battle) attended by the king himself. [9] Originally a product of the warlike Goguryeo period, seokjeon gradually evolved into a widely enjoyed pastime during the more peaceful Goryeo and Joseon periods. [10]
Historically, stoning was used as a method of human execution in several cultures.
In the 18th century, William Blackstone stated that throwing stones in a town or city on a highway, when it caused a death, was to be defined as manslaughter rather than murder. [11] [12]
In the 19th century, "stone throwing" was defined as a "nuisance", one of a number of offenses such as "kite-flying" and "doorbell ringing" to be handled by bylaws which differed from town to town. [13]
Rock throwing during riots is a criminal offense, for which rock throwers can be charged with felony crimes, including assault on a law enforcement officer. [14] [15] [16] [17] Incidents of criminal rock throwing have resulted in arrests during sports riots; especially notable are incidents of rock-throwing football hooliganism. [18]
In New South Wales, Section 49A of the Crimes Act 1900 provides a maximum 5-year prison sentence for "throwing rocks and other objects at vehicles and vessels". [19]
Throwing of stones at Indian Armed Forces and Police is frequent in Kashmir. Usually carried out by youths, in the local language it is called "Kanni Jung", which means fighting with stones and the stone pelters are called as Sangbaaz. [20] There are claims that the rocks are thrown in response to killings of Kashmiri separatists at the hands of forces. [21]
Individuals who throw rocks at cars can serve 14 years for endangering transport. [22]
Turkey presses charges and imposes prison sentences for the crime of being part of a group throwing stones at police, even when the rock-throwers are 15 years of age and younger. [23]
The Justice and Development Party (AKP) introduced a range of legal measures criminalizing both Kurdish political claims and protest activities by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The harsh sentences handed down against stone-throwing children (taş atan çocuklar) led to a public outcry and to an amendment reducing the length of the sentences on the grounds that it was inappropriate from "a criminal justice point of view." [24]
Expansive legislation on public disorder introduced in 1986 allows stone throwers to be sentenced on average to 3+1⁄2 years in prison if the criminal justice system can prove that the action took place in a riot. [25]
In the U.S., charges vary by state. Depending upon the facts and jurisdiction, potential charges could include disorderly conduct, assault, and battery.[ citation needed ]
In the United States individuals throwing rocks at another person can be arrested and charged with assault, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct. [26] As a 15-year-old, actor Mark Wahlberg was charged in 2 separate incidents of throwing rocks and shouting racial epithets at African-American children. [27]
Rock-throwing can be a felony [28] [29] and rock-throwers could face criminal charges, dependent on the circumstances that may include second degree murder, [30] aggravated assault, throwing a missile into an occupied vehicle, criminal possession of a weapon, reckless endangerment of life, and aggravated assault with a lethal weapon. [31] [32] [33] Punishment upon conviction varies as with all punishments for all crimes. A Florida judge sentenced a teenager to serve life in prison for murder by throwing rocks at cars. [30] A New England judge, ruling on teenagers convicted of throwing stones at the windows of passing trains that resulted in eye injuries to passengers, sentenced the convicted to be kept in an eye-injury ward of a hospital for two weeks with their eyes bandaged to make them understand the consequence of their delinquency. [34] Rock throwers can be charged, tried, and convicted even when no injuries or damage result. [35] Under American law they can receive very long sentences and even be sentenced to life in prison. [30] [36] [37] Under American law, individuals who were part of a group engaged in rock-throwing can be convicted and imprisoned even if they did not personally throw any missiles. [38] [39]
Youths convicted of "vandalism and battery" for throwing stones at vehicles have been imprisoned. [40]
Rock-throwing may occur in a variety of contexts but is often associated with assaultive offenses, demonstrations and riots, and international conflicts.
Rock-throwing can be used by thieves, as was demonstrated by a 2015 case in India in which Ratan Marwadi, 45, was charged with throwing rocks at a random passer-by, Darshana Pawar, to disable and rob her. Pawar was killed by Ratan Marwadi, who had served time in jail for pelting rail commuters with stones with the intent of robbing them. [41]
Rocks thrown at cars moving along highways at high speeds have been a problem in a number of countries. [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] According to the Austin, Texas, police detective Jarrett Crippen, "When we’re talking about highway speeds of 60, 70 mph, that rock is hitting you full-force.... If it's coming through your windshield, it can cause serious damage to the body, vehicle or even death." [31] A Washington State trooper said of an arrest of criminal rock-throwers, "Any one of these rocks could have punctured a windshield, hit the driver in the face and killed them." [47] Although the rocks are often thrown from overpasses or high points along the roadside, people riding in cars have also been killed by rocks thrown at random vehicles from passing cars. [48]
Notable instances of death and injury caused by rocks thrown at cars include the death of Julie Catherine Laible, a professor at the University of Alabama, [49] the Darmstadt American rock-throwing incident in which American teenagers killed a 20-year-old woman and critically injured her grandmother, then hit another car, killing the 41-year-old mother of 2 small children, [50] the death of Chris Currie, 20, on a road in New Zealand, [22] the killing of David Wilkie by striking miners throwing rocks at cars in the United Kingdom, and the I-80 rock throwing in which youths hurled rocks from an overpass on Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania, critically injuring and permanently disfiguring a passenger. [51] In 2017, a single American highway, Interstate 75, was the scene of 2017 Interstate 75 rock-throwing deaths in two separate incidents. [52]
Throwing rocks at trains has long been a problem in countries including the United States and New Zealand, where passengers and train crews have been injured by large rocks thrown through windows. [53] [54]
Rock-throwing has been in the past often adopted as a method by an unarmed population to protest a governing power's authority. Under English common law, soldiers were not permitted to shoot at civilians engaged in that kind of protest unless their lives were in danger or they had obtained an express order from a civil magistrate.
At one point, when town officials tried to arrest a British officer who was commanding the guard at Boston Neck, Captain Ponsonby Molesworth intervened to confront a stone-throwing crowd. Molesworth ordered the soldiers to bayonet anyone throwing stones who got too close. A Boston justice told him that, under common law, a bayonet thrust was not an act of self-defense against a stone, which was not a lethal weapon. Had a soldier killed anyone, Molesworth could have been tried for his life.' [55]
Political demonstrations in many countries have resulted with the arrest of violent protestors for throwing rocks and other objects at police. [56] [57] [58]
Many notorious and deadly riots have begun with or included rock-throwing as violence escalated, including the Toronto Jubilee riots, the Boston Massacre, and the 2014 Hrushevskoho Street riots in Ukraine.
Stone throwing rioters have repeatedly clashed with Egyptian troops at the Egypt–Gaza border.
In the 2015 Horgoš riot during the European migrant crisis, illegal immigrants at the Hungarian southern border fence threw rocks and chunks of concrete at Hungarian border police. [61] [62]
In recent years, increasing numbers of undocumented sub-Saharan Africans have passed through Morocco attempting to reach European Union countries, and many attempt to enter Spanish soil at two Spanish enclaves, Melilla and Ceuta, on the African side of the Mediterranean Sea. On several occasions, Moroccan and Spanish border authorities have defended lethal violence against African illegal immigrants near the Melilla border fence and Ceuta border fence by asserting that groups of migrants attempting to storm the border in mass-entry events had thrown rocks to drive border guards away from the gates. [63] [64] [65] [66]
Rock-throwers on the Mexican side of the Mexico–United States border frequently target US Border Patrol agents with barrages of rocks to prevent them from apprehending individuals illegally crossing the border, particularly smugglers moving illegal drugs or illegal migrants across the border. [67] Between 2010 and 2014, Border Patrol agents were assaulted with rocks 1,700 times and fired weapons at rock throwers 43 times, resulting in 10 deaths. [68] Border Patrol agents are permitted to respond to rock-throwers with lethal weapons, but as of 2014, the policy is to attempt to avoid finding themselves in situations in which responding to rock-throwing with lethal force becomes necessary. [68] [69]
In Florida, statewide policy is to install fences on highly trafficked overpasses and those near schools. An exception is Manatee County, where all overpasses have it due to a rock-throwing death in 1999. [70] [71]
The Seattle Mardi Gras riot occurred on February 27, 2001, when disturbances broke out in the Pioneer Square neighborhood during Mardi Gras celebrations in Seattle, Washington. There were numerous random attacks on revelers over a period of about three and a half hours. There were reports of widespread brawling, vandalism, and weapons being brandished. Damage to local businesses exceeded $100,000. About 70 people were reported injured. Several women were sexually assaulted. One man, Kris Kime, died of injuries sustained during an attempt to assist a woman being brutalized.
The 2005 Cronulla riots were a series of race riots in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It began in the beachside suburb of Cronulla on 11 December, and spread over to additional suburbs the next few nights.
Egging is the act of throwing eggs at people or property. The eggs are usually raw, but can be hard-boiled or rotten.
The 2010 Kashmir unrest was a series of violent protests and riots in the Kashmir Division and Chenab Valley and Pir Panjal regions of Northern Jammu division of Jammu and Kashmir, India which started in June 2010 after the Indian Army claimed to have killed three Pakistani infiltrators in which a soldier of the Territorial Army, a counter-insurgent and a former special police officer had found three young men from their Nadihal village in Baramulla district and killed them in a "staged" encounter at Sona Pindi. The protests occurred in a movement launched by Hurriyat Conference led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in June 2010, who called for the complete demilitarisation of Jammu and Kashmir. The All Parties Hurriyat Conference made this call to a strike, citing human rights abuses by security forces. Rioters shouting pro-independence slogans, defied curfew, attacked riot police with stones and burnt vehicles and buildings. The protests started out as anti India protests but later were also targeted against the United States following the 2010 Qur'an-burning controversy. The riot police consisting of Jammu and Kashmir Police and Indian Para-military forces fired teargas shells rubber bullets and also live ammunition on the protesters, resulting in 112 deaths, including many teenagers and an 11-year-old boy. The protests subsided after the Indian government announced a package of measures aimed at defusing the tensions in September 2010.
Nakba Day in 2011 was the annual day of commemoration for the Palestinian people marking the Nakba—the displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. Generally held on May 15, commemorative events in 2011 began on May 10, in the form of march by Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel on Israel's Independence Day. On May 13, clashes between stone-throwing youths and Israeli security forces in East Jerusalem resulted in one Palestinian fatality, and clashes continued there and in parts of the West Bank in the days following.
The murder of Asher and Yonatan Palmer occurred on 23 September 2011, when a Palestinian stone throwing attack caused Asher, aged 24, to lose control of a vehicle he was driving near the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba in the West Bank, killing him and his infant son. Initially thought to be an accident, it was later deemed a terrorist attack by the Israel Police.
Palestinian stone-throwing refers to a Palestinian practice of throwing stones at people or property. It is a tactic with both a symbolic and military dimension when used against heavily-armed troops. Proponents, sympathizers, as well as some analysts have characterized stone throwing by Palestinians as a form of "limited", "restrained", "non-lethal" violence. Such stone-throwing can at times prove lethal: over a dozen Israelis, including women, children, and infants, have died as a result of stones being thrown at cars. Some Palestinians appear to regard it as symbolic and non-violent, given the disparity in power and equipment between the Israeli forces and the Palestinian stone-throwers. The state of Israel has passed laws to sentence throwers convicted of the charge to up to 10 years imprisonment even without proof of intent to harm. In some cases, Israelis have argued that it should be treated as a form of terrorism, or that, in terms of the psychology of those who hurl stones, even in defense or in protest, it is intrinsically aggressive.
Christopher Wayne Currie was a 20-year-old apprentice in the building trades who was killed by a stone deliberately thrown at his car as he drove along a motorway near Auckland, New Zealand. His girlfriend and her two cousins who were in the car with him at the time of his death were injured but survived the assault.
On July 10, 2014, four teenagers who were throwing rocks from an overpass above Interstate 80 (I-80) in Union County, Pennsylvania, critically injured and permanently disfigured a passenger in a car on the highway. The high-profile rock-throwing case received significant media attention.
On April 12, 2015, Baltimore Police Department officers arrested Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American resident of Baltimore, Maryland. Gray's neck and spine were injured while he was in a police vehicle and he went into a coma. On April 18, there were protests in front of the Western district police station. Gray died on April 19.
Jewish Israeli stone-throwing refers to criminal rock-throwing activity by Jewish Israelis in Mandatory Palestine, Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. It includes material about internecine stone-throwing, in which Haredi Jews throw stones at other Jews as a protest against what they view as violations of religious laws concerning Shabbat, modest clothing for women and similar issues, and material about stone-throwing by extremists in the settler movement.
On August 13, 2016, a riot began in the Sherman Park neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sparked by the fatal police shooting of 23-year-old Sylville Smith. During the three-day turmoil, several people, including police officers, were injured and dozens of protesters arrested. A nightly curfew was set up for teenagers in the area.
On November 10, 2016, three days of protests in Portland, Oregon, turned into a riot, when a group of anarchists broke off from a larger group of peaceful protesters who were opposed to the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.
Stone pelting in Kashmir refers to stone throwing by Kashmiris on the Indian forces and Jammu and Kashmir Police deployed for crowd control in Jammu and Kashmir to support the separatists, insurgents. In the local language, it is termed as "Kanni Jung", which means fighting with stones and the stone pelters are called as Sangbaaz or Pathraw Player. However, in the recent past the number of stone pelting has dropped significantly.
Alexander Levlovich was an Israeli who was killed in East Jerusalem on 13 September 2015, by Palestinians who hurled rocks at the car he was driving. He died in hospital the following day. Levlovich was the first casualty in the 2015-2016 wave of violence in Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The wave of violence began when Muslim youths gathered at the al-Aqsa Mosque, with the intention of blocking visits by Jews to the Temple Mount on the eve of the Rosh Hashanah holiday. The youths barricaded themselves inside the Mosque, hurling rocks and flares at police as the police used tear gas and threw stun grenades in an attempt to quell the violence. Social media campaigns rapidly spread news of the rioting, which quickly sparked rock-throwing and stabbing attacks in nearby neighborhoods.
In 2017, two people were murdered in separate incidents – one in Michigan and one in Ohio – when teenagers threw rocks and sandbags from two highway overpasses along Interstate 75.
Stone pelting in India refers to criminal assault in the form of stone throwing by individuals or mob who pelt, bombard or throw stones at security personnel, police forces, healthcare workers and trains. Stone pelting began with incidents of stone pelting in Kashmir, but became less frequent after the revocation of article 370 of the Constitution of India and the conversion of the state into union territories. These incidents were later reported in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh in 2019 in protest of the citizenship amendment act. In 2020, such incidents started occurring in various parts of India on doctors and policemen after the coronavirus lockdown.
