[chris]

A 14-year-old boy fatally shot a deaf and mute man who had waded up to his family's waterfront home in Miami Shores, Florida, to steal a personal watercraft, according to Miami-Dade police and published accounts of the May 21, 2011, killing.

Reynaldo Munoz, 20, had been dropped behind the home of attorney Jeffrey Davis by an accomplice riding his own WaveRunner, investigators said. Munoz came ashore and began dragging the family's craft toward the water when Yasmin Davis spotted him from inside the house.

Davis walked outside and called 911, shouting at the man to stop and telling her son to bring the family's shotgun, according to the recording released by police. She told the dispatcher the intruder had a gun. Munoz, whom friends and former teachers described as profoundly deaf and unable to speak, was in fact holding a device used to start the stolen watercraft, prosecutors later concluded, and could not hear the warnings.

Jack Davis, 14, came out with the shotgun and fired. Munoz was struck in the right side of the head and died in the water behind the house.

On the 911 call, Yasmin Davis first told the operator that she had fired the weapon herself, saying she shot "by mistake." Police concluded her teenage son had pulled the trigger, noting that the recoil had split his lip, and said the mother appeared to have taken the blame to protect him.

The accomplice, 19-year-old Carolina Lopez, pleaded no contest to grand theft in January 2012 and was sentenced to a year of probation, 50 hours of community service and a $200 payment to a crime victims fund, court records show. Lopez had piloted Munoz's watercraft and left him behind the Davis home to take the second machine.

Miami-Dade prosecutors announced in June 2013 that neither the boy nor his mother would face charges. In a close-out memo, the State Attorney's Office wrote that the teenager "reasonably believed he and his mother were being attacked and were in imminent danger," and that the appearance of danger was real enough that a cautious person could have concluded deadly force was the only way to avoid it. Munoz's family filed a wrongful-death suit against the Davises.