okay. what s going on? someone entered into our garage. shots were fired. reporter: a robbery was rare in prospect, but a shooting was unheard of. dash cams captured the chaos as first responders raced to the scene. stay to the right. what s the number? stop, stop, stop. it was all happening just a few hundred feet from where foreign exchange student diren dede lived with his host family. i kind of woke up with a start. heard four loud pops, bang, bang, bang, fairly close together. a pause, and then another bang. reporter: randy heard the sirens and got out of bed. so i went downstairs, just to make sure i could lay my hands on robby and diren. and he came downstairs with me and he s like, where s diren? and he said he didn t know. he didn t know? and i thought that was kind of weird. and i looked in the rec room, and didn t see diren. and i so i came back to him
believe diren dede was armed and ready to attack. and because he felt his life was threatened by the movement, specifically, of mr. dede, he had to take the steps, unfortunately, to take his life. the danger of a burglar is when there s a confrontation, and they all want to escape, and they ll do whatever they can to get away. reporter: the defense said there was no debate over one central fact. diren dede went into that garage to steal. and on the stand, kaarma s lawyer got diren s friend robby to admit that despite warnings, diren didn t see much wrong with garage hopping. i think diren never felt like it was a crime. but you were warning him. you were telling him it wasn t right. it was reckless. it was dangerous, right? yeah. yeah. like, i understand on this way. but he maybe didn t understand. reporter: in fact, the defense suggested that diren was part of a local burglary ring that was stealing more than just beer and may have been behind
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. when they brought us in to identify his body, it was horrific.
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. she s like, showtime. she s like, i see something.
and record high temperatures expected across the northwest and mideast ahead of july 4th. that s what s happening. now back to dateline. welcome back. living in a state of fear, answers raising more questions, what really happened in the garage? and what was diren dede doing there in the first place? to let america to learn more, needed to find out more about their foreign exchange student. here is josh mankiewicz with deadly exchange. reporter: when he was killed in a neighbor s garage, exchange student diren dede was just two months away from returning to his family in germany. the man who shot him said he feared for his life. and from diren s best friend, robby, police learned the teen did enter the garage to steal.