Armed Citizen Stops "Crime Spree"

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To address the hypothetical:

Setting aside whether the prosecutorial judgment that was made in this case reflected the law, or might have not been the same on another day or in one of the two counties to the east, we can say that prudent strategy and tactics would not entail either leaving to retrieve a firearm and doubling back toward trouble in any reasonably forceable circumstance that did not involve returning to one's place of habitation, or shooting in the direction of innocent persons.

People with even rudimentary defensive training know that.

Also, it is not a good idea to leave a firearm in one's car in such an environment. People around here learn that the hard way quite frequently.
 
Folks know that police in urban areas have a very hard time finding witnesses to shootings because of intimidation and the fear of retribution. It's not like Law and Order where someone is put in a safe house or witness protection. Beside you know when they say we will have a police car in front, those officers are usually killed first while eating a donut (to spout a TV cliche).

Intimidation is quite common.
 
One thing to keep in mind, is that today's criminal is far more likely to be suicidal than those in the past. They might actually welcome death so the threat of "drop the knife or I will shoot!" may on serve to make them do something to trigger your shot.

Unfortunately there just isn't any way of knowing what the right answer is for any given situation. Fail to confront the robber and he may kill the clerk while you stood by and did nothing which would suck. Confront him when he had no intentions of harming the clerk and you cause him to end up killing the clerk and that would suck just as bad. No right answers here but one options presents a far greater likelihood of being on the hook if something goes sideways.
 
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I was going to abstain from further comment on this one but I can't help myself.

The discussion here has evolved into the question of what is best, follow the law or do the right thing.

Following the law is the safe way and some here feel that living life the safe way is the best way regardless of what happens to others, On the other hand there are others that feel that doing the right thing is more important regardless of what the law says. These are the real heroes that follow their God-given conscience and are heroically willing to endure the consequences that follow.

Approximately 250 years ago killing a British soldier was a capital offense but there were brave men who felt that the laws were unjust and needed to be changed and they fought and died and that is why we today are a free people. This bravery has been repeated many times by men and women who have been willing to fight to the death if necessary for a just cause.

The law today unjustly protects the worst of criminals and very often the worst of criminals are caught and immediately released to continue their criminal ways at the expense of innocent, law abiding victims. It amazes me that we all know and recognize this dilemma yet there are still those who defend it because "it is the law" and they feel so high and mighty and so much better than the rest of us common idiots who question the insanity of some legislation.

I don't give a hoot at what the law says regarding the actions taken by this person. He has been unjustly and with the worst intent been referred to as a mock "hero" because he confronted and removed a violent criminal off the streets and in doing so maybe saved the life of one or more of the many "goody two shoes" on this thread that keep using the law as an excuse for the fact if it had been them in that position they would not have had the B--s to do anything about it.

Shame on you.

Fire away gentlemen, I can take all the heat you can bring.
 
The discussion here has evolved into the question of what is best, follow the law or do the right thing
Do you reallly believe that shooting someone who is no longer endangering anyone, and doing so by firing in the direction of innocents,, is doing "the right thing"?
 
shooting someone who is no longer endangering anyone,

So, the fact that "he is no longer endangering anyone" makes automatically him a good guy? That 's exactly how these left wing prosecutors think.
Would it had been preferable to let him go? Or perhaps since the guy was no longer threatening anyone the honorable thing would have been to tackle him and subdue him in hand to hand combat?.
Can't you see how ridiculous all that is?
The gut saw a violent criminal, he reacted within the limited time he had and took him out. What the hell is so bad about that?
 
So, the fact that "he is no longer endangering anyone" makes automatically him a good guy?
No. He was a very bad man before, and he remained one. What does that have to do with it? Do you believe that one should shoot someone because he is a "bad guy"?

If so, you have a lot of learning to do.
 
It appears to me in the video that the knife welding bad guy and armed citizen are about 8 feet apart facing each other. Knife guy had the option to run in the other direction towards back of store but didn't. I'd consider that danger close.
Clerk hit the floor behind the counter at shot #2 while the citizen was focused on knife guy. Since she was at the citizens 3:00 he probably didn't know her location reinforced by his yelling towards the back of the store to call 911 after the shooting stopped.
No judgement from me on the citizens decision to reenter the store. Man did what he thought was right.
 
There is no way I am immersing myself in a gun battle over a total stranger given the prevailing climate.
My employer would undoubtedly grow weary of the distraction, even if 100% lawful, and terminate me.
That would have a disastrous impact upon my family and extended family for decades.

Most any high-profile videoed shooting would lead to months (if not years) mired in the court system.
For all these reasons I have decided, in advance, that my policy is to only intervene for me and mine.
My hope is by contemplating this…it would facilitate me going on autopilot to think more clearly in the fog.
 
I think a criminal wielding a knife is automatically a threat to someone, and one could legitimately argue that they felt threatened with deadly force. I also think that a gas station open for business is effectively a public place and nobody should have to justify why they enter it or when. It would also be very hard to prove what the armed citizen knew, and when. So although it doubtless might be able to be twisted into a case of “rogue vigilante” (“A new George Zimmerman!” they might cry) I have to believe that right would eventually prevail. But I’m under no illusions that it would not be very costly for the hero/citizen/well-meaning-person-with-a-gun, in terms of a long drawn out trial and the life-altering adversities that might accompany such.

I once was near a place where a thug had used a knife to steal merchandise from a convenience store. The store owner and employees gave chase and were running after the guy. I was walking down an alley carrying a sack of books I’d just bought from another store, and the thug pushed past me, the store people following a few seconds later. I recall thinking “Had I known what he was, it would have been so easy to swing these books and clock the guy. Of course, do I really want to be involved with a fight involving a knife wielding criminal? No.” I suppose many would say it’s highly imprudent and a bad idea legally to chase after an armed shoplifter. Someone could get hurt. But if they don’t, innocent people lose their property. I know many “big box” stores have policies forbidding their employees from chasing shoplifters.

To me, that’s the question that’s unresolved here, and certainly one that informs strategies and tactics in a situation where someone who might be carrying might come face to face with a criminal wielding a weapon. Legally speaking, is it ever permissible for a civilian to try to stop a robber or thief? We take it for granted that one may defend one’s own self when attacked, but beyond this very strict least common denominator…. I am also under the impression that police are technically civilians as well, so I don’t understand why legally they might be permitted to, for example, chase and apprehend a robber but a “regular” citizen cannot. That might be a separate question best addressed in another thread, however.
 
I just re-watched the video. Sequence of events as follows, as I understand it. Because things happened so quickly I had to watch this many times to clearly perceive the relevant details. That in itself is a tactical lesson. These guys are both in fight-or-flight mode. I doubt niceties of “is he technically moving toward me or away from me for purposes of optics to a jury later” were perceptible, let alone registering, for either party.

1. Citizen pays for his snacks and leaves the store, goes out to his car, intending to go home or whatever.

2. Store cashier exits the register enclosure and walks to the other end of the store to do something mundane.

3. Criminal (and dressed as such) enters the store, looks for the store cashier, goes to end of store where she is and gets her, then forces her at knife-point to go back to the register.

4. (Surmised) Citizen has seen criminal go into the store and has seen him go down the length of the store past all the front windows once, and now a second time, this time with cashier as hostage. He grabs his gun (if it wasn’t already on his person) and heads back toward the store to try to help.

5. Criminal audibly threatens cashier, she opens register and he thrusts her behind him out of the way and starts grabbing money.

[Presumably at the time the citizen made the decision/final approach to the door, the cashier still had a knife at her neck.]

6. Citizen enters store, challenges criminal while he’s helping himself to the contents of the register.

[At this point I feel like violence is inevitable. The criminal has to leave the register enclosure whether to flee the citizen or to attack him, and leaving the enclosure has the effect of bringing the armed criminal nearer to the citizen, in the sense that there’s no longer a physical counter barrier between them, so the citizen must inevitably feel threatened by this. If he’s feeling threatened by an armed criminal, and he himself is armed, he’s going to be shooting soon.]

7. Things start happening very fast. Citizen is still standing in the store entrance doorway. He says “we ain’t doin this, bro.” Criminal leaves the register, towards the register enclosure gate.

8. Citizen may fire the first two shots here. Hard to tell. It’s not as loud or clear from the camera as the subsequent four shots. I think it was probably the sound of the criminal exiting the enclosure, based on cashier’s non-reaction compared to subsequent gunshots. Criminal heads away from enclosure gate, presumably looking to flank the citizen, whether for escape or to attack him.

9. Criminal yells “I got something for you bro”

10. Citizen shoots, criminal runs perpendicular to him along the back of the store, citizen enters the store fully and the two run around the center candy aisle. Citizen is shooting, focused on the criminal. Cashier hits the deck inside the register enclosure, very sensibly. Citizen shoots in the direction of the cashier as he’s aiming at the criminal, for the forth and final shot, at which the criminal goes down.

11. Citizen tells the cashier to call 911


Leaving aside the thorny question of whether it was a good idea or advisable to intervene and enter a store during a robbery-in-progress, it seems that the big takeaways here are:

1. Speed of the incident. The whole affair lasted 2 minutes and 20 seconds, with the confrontation between the citizen and the criminal between 1:19 and 1:43. Approximately 24 seconds. That’s not a lot of time to evaluate angles, options, outcomes.

2. The citizen obviously had tunnel vision for the threat, and could have inadvertently shot the girl he was trying to protect. She took cover, and maybe the angle of fire was such that she wasn’t in as much danger as it appears, but from the perspective of the camera it looks like she was, so at the very least there was no margin of error.

3. The citizen fired four shots, or possibly six. For the purposes of this incident a K-frame revolver would have been sufficient.
 
Now that we have the full video, the following is clear, at least to me:

1) After the clerk opened the till and the robber turned his attention to extracting the money, she should have quickly moved to a position of safety, a long way from the robber. Because she chose to stay so close to him, she voluntarily allowed the robber's knife to still pose a deadly threat to her. This is not a sound tactic. But, legally, the robber's knife did not "have to be at the clerk's throat" for him to remain a deadly threat to her.

2) The defender knew that the clerk was an innocent third party. He recognized the clerk from his visit to the store. Also, he said that he saw the robber threaten the clerk while they walked together from the far end of the store back to the till. As long as the clerk and the robber remained close enough to one another for the robber's knife to pose a deadly threat to her, the defender would be justified in using deadly force against the robber in her defense. .

3) The robber and his knife ceased to pose an imminent deadly threat to the clerk at some point as the robber left the employee enclosure. And the justification for the use of deadly force in defense of an innocent third party ended. There is no exact fixed point at which this occurred; careful observers can come to different, reasonable conclusions.

4) Once the clerk was no longer threatened, it would likely have been tactically sound for the defender to step away from the threshold to allow the robber to leave. But he was slow to get off the "X". This delay may have occurred because he had several choices. Which direction would have been best?

To retreat to the outside of the store would reduce risk to him, but would leave the robber inside the store with the clerk. Entering the store would be riskier to the defender. If he entered, should he angle to his left, to his right, or straight up the middle? Perhaps he could have let the robber take the lead, and have just moved in the opposite direction.

For whatever reason, though, he largely stayed put. At least initially. We see him using the door as a shield between him and the robber and his knife.

5) Was it sound tactically to stay in the doorway? Probably not. However, a critical question: was the defender legally required to get out of the robber's way? No.

6) However, the bad guy does get a vote in the matter. If the robber had chosen to stop, raise his arms, drop the knife, and wait for the police to arrive, he would likely still be alive today. Instead, the robber chose to flank toward the defender and the door. It appears that the defender may have finally realized that he and the doorway he occupied were the robber's new focus. He hears the robber say something that could be construed as establishing intent: "I got something for you". And that he was now under imminent threat of deadly force by the robber and his knife. He decided to move, the robber continued to move, and the two did their dance around the shelving units. With bullets flying.

The shot in the clerk's direction was clearly dangerous!

7) Another interpretation could have been that the defender obviously was at no risk, and he simply decided that it was time to end the robber's threats in that store. And he chased the robber down and punched his ticket.


The legal jeopardy for the defender depended largely on whether the prosecutor thought that he could prove number 7) to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Recognizing that what is reasonable in the heat of a critical event may NOT be the same as what might appear to be reasonable after time-consuming, thoughtful analysis. The defender's state of mind, as expressed to police and prosecutors by the defender himself or through counsel, had to be critical in determining which interpretation the police and prosecutors acted upon.


There are lots of things that I'm NOT sure about. How many shots were fired, when were they fired, and in what direction were they fired? What exactly was said, when was it said, and by whom? How did our defender interpret these statements? Unfortunately, we'll never know how the robber interpreted what was said. With the benefit of calm, cool, analysis, and faced with the same circumstances, would the defender choose to get off the "X" sooner? And let the robber make his escape so he did not have to die? And much more.


But, based on what I have seen in the video, I think that the superficial judgements of some here who claim that the defender acted "illegally", or that the "prosecutor failed to enforce the law" ignored some of the nuance I've pointed out above.
 
There is no way I am immersing myself in a gun battle over a total stranger given the prevailing climate.
In a way, I think this could be the root of some of the differences of opinion on this subject. I live in a place where, to some degree, there are almost no "total strangers". I'm very confident saying that, in most cases, I'm one degree of separation away from knowing everyone in the county. If I encountered a situation like the one being discussed, in my area, the chances of a friend or acquaintance of mine knowing the clerk are extremely high. It can throw a little different twist into the mix.
 
it appears that you already know everything. Congratulations
Do not try being snide. It isn't becoming.

If you want to learn something about use of force lay, subscribe to the Law of self Defense Blog and read the book, and attend Massad Ayoob's MAG-20.

Don't stop there.
 
The discussion here has evolved into the question of what is best, follow the law or do the right thing.
And that discussion is off topic here. Why is it off topic? Because the entire world doesn't share the same beliefs about what the right thing to do actually is. There are many belief systems that would say the right thing to do would be to meekly submit and if the bad guy decided to murder you, your admittance to heaven would be ensured. PERSONAL BELIEF SYSTEMS AND MORAL CODES ARE OFF TOPIC HERE AND ALWAYS WILL BE! We will only discuss what's legal and tactically sound. This line of discussion is hereby closed. Any further posts on what the right thing to do will get the member a nice vacation from THR to contemplate on the rules in ST&T. The only reason this thread is still open is because there are things to learn from the video.
 
mosin77: The citizen fired four shots, or possibly six.

It sounded to me like the armed citizen fired four distinct double-taps.
I had my hearing aid cranked up.
 
I don't know what I would do in that situation. I was a third shift clerk in a gas station/convenience store back in the early '80's in Atlanta. The company, whose name I no longer recall, had a policy to lock the door at midnight and use the following system.
The only window they could approach was bullet resistant with a roll out box. The customer would request products through a mic/speaker system. The clerk would retrieve the products and put them on the counter. The clerk rolled out the box, the customer placed the money in the box. The clerk would roll the box in, collect the money and place the products and any change in the box and roll it back out. The transaction was complete. I have said many times since that all companies should adopt this process. It may not be perfect, but it would cut down on these robberies.
 
I think a criminal wielding a knife is automatically a threat to someone, and one could legitimately argue that they felt threatened with deadly force. I also think that a gas station open for business is effectively a public place and nobody should have to justify why they enter it or when. It would also be very hard to prove what the armed citizen knew, and when. So although it doubtless might be able to be twisted into a case of “rogue vigilante” (“A new George Zimmerman!” they might cry) I have to believe that right would eventually prevail. But I’m under no illusions that it would not be very costly for the hero/citizen/well-meaning-person-with-a-gun, in terms of a long drawn out trial and the life-altering adversities that might accompany such.

I once was near a place where a thug had used a knife to steal merchandise from a convenience store. The store owner and employees gave chase and were running after the guy. I was walking down an alley carrying a sack of books I’d just bought from another store, and the thug pushed past me, the store people following a few seconds later. I recall thinking “Had I known what he was, it would have been so easy to swing these books and clock the guy. Of course, do I really want to be involved with a fight involving a knife wielding criminal? No.” I suppose many would say it’s highly imprudent and a bad idea legally to chase after an armed shoplifter. Someone could get hurt. But if they don’t, innocent people lose their property. I know many “big box” stores have policies forbidding their employees from chasing shoplifters.

To me, that’s the question that’s unresolved here, and certainly one that informs strategies and tactics in a situation where someone who might be carrying might come face to face with a criminal wielding a weapon. Legally speaking, is it ever permissible for a civilian to try to stop a robber or thief? We take it for granted that one may defend one’s own self when attacked, but beyond this very strict least common denominator…. I am also under the impression that police are technically civilians as well, so I don’t understand why legally they might be permitted to, for example, chase and apprehend a robber but a “regular” citizen cannot. That might be a separate question best addressed in another thread, however.
My understanding is that deadly force is not allowed to be used by a civilian in response to a property crime. (Texas has an exception if you are on your own property and it's night time.) You see shoplifters in a store, if you want to help you can tell the manager and/or call 911, but you don't get to use deadly force unless they are also using or reasonably appear about to use deadly force, for example they display a weapon. You don't have to be the person threatened to be the defender, if the person threatened would be entitled to use deadly force you can use deadly force to protect them. Note that what constitutes a threat of deadly force can be different for different defenders, the best example being disparity of size / strength / age / numbers. When I took my concealed carry class the instructor, a large retired police officer, kept using me as an example, being that I was by far the oldest and smallest person in the class as well as one of only a few women, i.e. if he were a BG threatening me even without a weapon I might be justified in using deadly force given that by virtue of his being more than a foot taller than me and probably 20 years younger, unarmed I wouldn't stand a chance if he put his hands on me, whereas conversely for the same reason he would NOT be justified in using deadly force against me if I were the BG and unarmed. (I think most places still count being a female threatened by a male a valid disparity, interested to hear if anyone knows of jurisdictions where this is not the case.)
 
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(Texas has an exception if you are on your own property and it's night time.)

Not quite.

Here we go again. Read it for yourself:

Sec. 9.42. DEADLY FORCE TO PROTECT PROPERTY. A person is justified in using deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property:

(1) if he would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.41; and

(2) when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary:

(A) to prevent the other's imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime; or

(B) to prevent the other who is fleeing immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property; and

(3) he reasonably believes that:

(A) the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means; or

(B) the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.

[Emphasis mine]

Notice the word "and." Plus, there's that pesky "reasonable" again.
 
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