In the process of threatening the lawyers a sniper shoots the homeless man (who was later found out to be named Lloyd) and kills him. .
This story strongly relates to the Rene Girard's theory on scapegoating because Lloyd is very similar to the scapegoat Girard describes. Lloyd was chosen by the other homeless people to go out and try to gain justice for the wrongful act that the lawyers committed, therefore Lloyd took on all of the responsibility of the homeless people and was sacrificed in the process. Another point that proves that Lloyd is a scapegoat is that after he was killed the other people in society took pity on the lawyers (when they heard that they were threatened) and thought that Lloyd was the pest of society and therefore placed on him more blames than he deserved. In this particular incident Lloyd was hated by the lawyers and the other people in society (therefore he was a problem) so they choose him as a "supposed" scapegoat and when he died all of the problems were considered resolved. .
Case studies on "www.nationalhomeless.org." describe a similar incidence concerning a homeless man. One case study describes a homeless man named Shaul who was murdered near an apartment building where he used to go into the hallways in order to find heat and sleep. Shaul was murdered by a twenty-one year old male named John Jeffrey Dolittle and a group of his friends. Dolittle confessed that he murdered this 52 year old Vietnam veteran because he was a pest to the residents in the building and to the rest of society who had to see him. This means that Shaul took on a lot more blame than he deserved because he couldn't do anything about his situation this makes him a scapegoat for society. Shaul would also be considered a scapegoat to the other homeless people because he suffered the "consequences" of being homeless and has given out a warning to the other homeless people that it is not safe to be homeless and that there are people out there that really hate them.