think you guys need to go to the hospital. and that it wasn t good. and as soon as she said that, i thought, gosh, we just passed an ambulance running up there. and he must have been in the ambulance. what happened on that quiet street? did diren and robby stumble into a burglary in progress or a violent home invasion? the police asked robby to answer some questions. while kate and randy rushed to the hospital. it wasn t long after we got there that the e.r. doc came out and explained that his wounds were fatal, and that he was no longer alive. terrible feeling. it was horrible. i went outside the hospital many times and just screamed. i it was we lost our our son, too. sorry.
and i looked in the rec room, and didn t see diren. and i so i came back to him and i says, what s going on? where s diren? reporter: robby fessed up. he and diren had sneaked out. he told randy how diren had walked off on his own, and then robby said he d heard gunshots. alarmed, randy woke up his wife and the three of them went to deer canyon road. how far away from your house is this? 80 yards, something like that, directly above. it s just the next street above ours. so this is a neighbor s house. it s a neighbor s house. reporter: but when they got there, police stopped them. we were just hoping diren would just walk out somewhere, you know, show up and come out the door. i walked up to the police officer. gave him a name and description. and that s when she kind of went, well, just wait here for a second. and then came back and said, i
as robby described it, diren was not the first kid in missoula to go sneaking into unlocked garages. he said the kids weren t after money, credit cards or valuables. this stunt happened often enough that it had a name, garage hopping. and the target was usually beer. the reason for garage hopping, or garage shopping, i ve heard it called both, was for kids to go in and look for alcoholic beverages that they could easily get and take. until this shooting, that sort of wasn t on anybody s radar in law enforcement? no. i had not heard of garage hopping. no. reporter: these three friends of diren s say they ve never gone garage hopping, but they know all about it. you all know people who do it or have done it? yeah. right? they understand it s illegal? uh-huh. yeah. but it seemed harmless? yeah. exactly. i mean, it s just it s like, hey, dude, this is a way for you to get some extra beer, you know, on a saturday night. i mean, did you think to yourself, oh, my god,
walking, figuring diren would catch up. that is when, like, i heard someone yelling. you re there. i see you there. something like that. after that just the shots, like, three or four shots. and i just started running. reporter: gunshots in a quiet residential neighborhood. a now-terrified robby ran back home. he was faster than i am. i said, he s probably coming. i was almost sure that he was coming. reporter: but diren wouldn t return. and what happened to the german exchange student would simultaneously make headlines around the world and get americans asking, how far can you go to protect your home and family? coming up 911. what are you reporting? a robbery. an urgent call to 911.
be. but no one knew. no one would be like, hey, don t walk into that garage. you never know if someone is going to shoot you. reporter: robby told police diren had done it before but never taken cash or valuable property. he wasn t a criminal. he was, like, a kid. he was a kid trying to have fun and fit in the group doing what the other guys do, trying to be part of them. reporter: was it really that innocent? true or false. diren was committing a crime. he was. entering somebody else s home, even their garage, that s a crime? yes. even if the door s open? yep. reporter: and if kaarma s life was threatened, he had the right to shoot, didn t he? but as police went over kaarma s story about what happened just before the confrontation, something stood out. when kaarma was describing how his wife first noticed someone was approaching their garage.