The Ayoob Files – American Handgunner

The Judge Harry Peetris Incident

Situation: The defendant pulls a gun and takes the entire courtroom
hostage — but there is one judge who has more than a gavel with which
to enforce his authority.

Lesson: Lawbreakers, by definition, do not obey laws. When they violate
them and threaten the lives of the innocent, lawful force is required to bring things under control. Competence creates confidence, and vice versa. And from the tactical side, we need to remember gunpoint situations can last longer
than shooting matches.

Security at courthouses is rigid. It has to be. Courts are filled with emotionally charged people who are going through some of the worst experiences life has to offer. Some of those who come to court are filled with everything from total despair to a lust for revenge.

Many a judge has been the recipient of death threats. It’s no secret — at least in the justice community — many of them wear guns under their signature black robes. Some judges have had to clear blue steel from beneath those black robes to protect the lives of themselves and others.

Now, meet a judge who once had to do exactly that.

Prelude

On August 29, 1962, Judge Harry Peetris was presiding over Division 67, an arraignment court on the first floor of a Los Angeles courthouse. He carried a gun, wearing it under his robes in court. Then and now, even in jurisdictions like L.A., where it’s extremely difficult for ordinary people to get a license to carry, exceptions are routinely made for attorneys in general and judges in particular. It was known to the other judges Peetris not only carried, but shot regularly every couple of weeks at the LAPD range — where he consistently tallied perfect scores with his preferred revolver, a 4″ Colt.

At that time, and even now, armed bailiffs were stationed in the courtrooms, but there were never enough of them to keep an eye on everyone. Judge Peetris recently told me, back in those days, the bailiffs in the municipal court were Los Angeles County Marshals, while Superior Court employed Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriffs. Security was a big concern for the folks in the black robes and part of their security plan included notifying Judge Peetris in the event a courtroom faced an armed threat.

The Incident

Judge Peetris had a full courtroom on the day of the incident, and had been in session only 40 minutes when he noticed his court clerk had received a telephone call and gave him a troubled look. Sensing a disturbance, Peetris covered his microphone and motioned her up to the bench where she proceeded to tell him a gunman had taken over a neighboring courtroom, holding Judge Donald Redwine and a room full of people hostage.

The judge motioned to his own bailiff, Marshal Shelly Wagner, to approach the bench and briefed him quickly, telling him to take the front door while the judge would get the back door. After admonishing everyone to remain seated, the two split up, with Peetris running out the back door toward Judge Redwine’s second-floor courtroom.

Upon reaching the back door to the courtroom, Judge Peetris opened it carefully and quietly. A strange tableau awaited him.
A full jury box, sitting still. Judge Redwine, motionless at the bench. A uniformed police officer, sitting stock-still in the witness box. And a full courtroom of spectators, likewise silently rooted in place.

And, striding angrily back-and-forth in the well of the courtroom, stood John Burrows, a stocky clean-shaven Caucasian, about six feet tall, wearing white coveralls. In his hand was a black semiautomatic pistol.

tris threw open his robe to clear his snubnosed Smith & Wesson .38 Chief Special from its open-top leather holster on his belt. Going to the familiar standing barricade position from which he had shot PPC so many times, Peetris said in command voice, “Drop your gun!”
John Burrows, the man with the pistol, faced him for a moment. He waved his gun, but didn’t aim it at the judge or anyone else. Instead he shouted back, “Shoot me! Go ahead and shoot me!”

It had instantly turned into a potentially lethal standoff.

On Eggshells

Peetris could see his bailiff, Wagner, posted opposite of him at the edge of the main doorway to the courtroom. Wagner’s service revolver, a 4″ S&W .38, was on the gunman. The packed courtroom offered a target-rich environment for the offender if he started shooting. Contrarily, this was an innocent bystander-rich shooting backdrop for Peetris and Wagner — obviously complicating the matter greatly.

In the following moments, Peetris began to understand why no one in the room was moving. It was obvious the man with the gun was a raving lunatic, who continuously screamed allegations he had not been speeding and the police officer was lying. In essence, he had drawn a gun over a speeding ticket. It was apparent to everyone in the room the gunman was irrational, and none of them wanted to push him over the edge.

The cop on the stand, a motorcycle officer, was in uniform wearing his service revolver in a flap holster that hung at his thigh on a swivel. It would have taken too many movements to open the flap, draw the weapon and bring it on target without catching Burrows’ attention thus inviting him to open fire. Realizing the jurors would all be directly behind him if he traded shots with Burrows, the motor officer made the conscious decision not to go for his own gun.

At one point during the standoff, Peetris remembers silently urging Judge Redwine to drop to the foot-well of the bench for his own safety. Redwine waved him off, later saying while he could have easily removed himself from danger, he didn’t want to spook the ranting madman any further. With Redwine still a visible target Peetris knew he would have no choice but to open fire if the man pointed his gun at the judge.
As the gunman paced the courtroom and shouted mindlessly, the court reporter documented every word on her steno machine. The wife of an LAPD officer, she kept a low profile and calmly documented every word spoken in the courtroom — which later became valuable evidence.

The manically pacing Burrows continually walked between Judge Peetris and Marshal Wagner, forcing both men to elevate their muzzles to avoid crossing each other.

Judge Peetris realized his snubnosed revolver, in a packed courtroom with many observers in the seats between him and Burrows, posed a tremendous danger to onlookers. He was grateful for having the foresight to load his .38 with hollowpoints long before they were allowed by LAPD. In the event of a sudden escalation requiring Peetris to shoot, hollowpoints were much less likely to overpenetrate and strike a bystander.

Early in the standoff, the judge made the conscious decision to cock the hammer of his little Chief Special. This was a man capable of shooting a perfect 300 out of 300 on the LAPD qualification exam, all double action and while overcoming the short sight radius of the snubnose .38. But Peetris recognized a 12-pound double-action trigger press on a 19-ounce revolver could pull the muzzle off-target if he had to fire reactively in an instant.

Even then, shooters were taught not to cock the hammer of a revolver in a gunpoint situation because it increased the risk of an unintentional stress-induced discharge if one was startled. But, as a law school graduate, he also understood the Doctrine of Competing Harms, the principle which holds one is allowed to break the rules or even the law in the rare circumstance where following the law would cause more danger to human life than breaking it.

Acutely aware of this delicate balance of dangers, Judge Peetris allowed his index finger to lightly rest on the trigger as he tracked the situation across his sights. Initially holding for the chest, he took time to analyze Burrows’ anatomy vis-à-vis the positions of the people behind him, and decided the upper abdomen would be a more solid target with less likelihood of even a mushrooming hollowpoint exiting. Accordingly, he lowered his point-of- aim to that part of Burrows’ body.

Endgame

The incident received an unexpected twist in the form of Burrows’ concerned boss, who arrived to the courthouse earlier that day in support of his employee. He hadn’t been in the courtroom when Burrows pulled the gun, but once he learned what happened, he made his way to what was now a hostage situation. Bailiff Wagner, holding the fort at the main entryway to the courtroom, called out to Judge Peetris, asking him if the boss would be able to enter to speak to Burrows.

It was a difficult decision for Peetris. Normally, people in the hostage-taker’s life aren’t allowed into the hostage negotiation, because it is impossible to predict whether their presence will help or hurt. In this case, instinct told Peetris it would more likely do good and invited the boss in. A large man in a dark suit entered the courtroom. The gunman yelled at his boss to stay back — and at that moment Peetris must have questioned his own decision — but after that outburst, the gunman calmed down.

At this point, Peetris remembers feeling something at his knee and looked down to see a gun pointed at the defendant with the man wielding it identifying himself to the Judge as Captain Pete Hagen. It turns out Hagen was in charge of the Southwest Division of the LAPD, located one block from the courthouse.

There were now three drawn guns on Burrows, but he seemed to no longer be aware of them. Instead, he was listening to his supervisor. As he approached the low swinging gate separating the courtroom well from the spectators’ gallery, he soothingly urged Burrows to calm down and hand him the gun.

And then, John Burrows simply reached over the short wooden gate and handed the pistol to his boss.
Peetris and Captain Hagen moved in from their position, and bailiff Wagner from his, all with their guns on Burrows. The motor officer approached from the witness stand to assist in apprehending the suspect. In moments, Burrows was handcuffed and the officers began searching his person. Captain Hagen took the semiautomatic pistol from the gunman’s supervisor, removing a fully-loaded magazine and clearing a live cartridge from the chamber. Hagen then searched the handcuffed Burrows, finding two more fully-loaded magazines.

Judge Harry Peetris carefully lowered the hammer of his Smith & Wesson and returned it to its holster inside his robes.
The jurors in the jury box stood up as one, spontaneously applauding the men who had ended their terror.

It was over.

Review of the transcript recorded by the unflappable court reporter indicates the encounter lasted between 22 and 23 minutes. John Burrows was later found to be mentally incompetent to stand trial, and was committed to a California institution for the insane.

Lessons

In the country of the blind, the 1-eyed man is king. Likewise, a single criminal with a lethal weapon can dominate a great many unarmed helpless people at once. But when the armed criminal realizes he is under the gun and will likely die the moment he pulls the trigger, his interest in self-preservation is suddenly more important. It’s clear the perpetrator in this case realized Judge Peetris had a gun on him, who would be more than capable of “dropping the hammer” on him if he pulled his own trigger or even took aim at someone in the courtroom. Soon after, the bailiff and the police captain also had guns leveled, and Burrows had to realize three good guys with guns are better than one. This is the most likely explanation of why the situation did not escalate, and why the perpetrator ultimately surrendered.

Taking dangerous criminals at gunpoint is a far more common occurrence than actually having to shoot them. A study conducted by the California Attorney General’s Office not long after the Peetris incident proved this to be true of armed citizens who took criminal suspects at gunpoint. Later studies by professors at respected universities have also validated this finding.

I have been an LE course instructor for over 40 years, and in the classes I teach, I routinely ask those in the attendance to raise their hands if they had lost count of the number of people they’ve shot in the line of duty. In many years of asking, no hands have ever been raised. When I follow-up and ask if anyone had lost count of how many suspects they’d taken at gunpoint, a forest of police officers’ arms will rise — particularly if the class takes place in a high-crime area.

Most gunpoint situations last little more than seconds. Judge Peetris’ incident lasted more than 20 minutes. Let’s take a moment to look at this often-neglected element of armed-encounter tactics.

When you have a death grip on your gun and are holding it on target at arm’s length, you’re using muscles unaccustomed to doing so for long periods of time. Cramping, pain and tremors can set in. The ability to vary stances proves useful during such long, drawn-out situations. Adjusting from an isometric Weaver stance to a skeletal support-intensive isosceles position allows tired muscles a break from their unnatural “push-pull” position. Switching from Isosceles back to Weaver lets the muscles bear the brunt of the effort, and allows painfully weary joints to rest and recuperate. Even changing hands may become necessary when cramping and tremors set in.

Judge Peetris told me during this incident, he was indeed aware of muscle fatigue and cramping effects. What got him through it, he said, was the fact he had spent a great deal of time shooting left-handed from the left side of a barricade and right-handed from the right side. It also helped he was fairly young and in good shape. All of this prepared him for the long ordeal in Judge Redwine’s courtroom. The stance he used was the old FBI barricade position, with his support hand palm-flat against the wall and his thumb protruding parallel to the floor, creating a “rest” for the wrist of the gun hand.

Triggers

More than 50 years after the incident, studies of human error have continued to show us cocked guns with fingers on triggers are not a good idea, and guns with a light trigger press are almost universally frowned upon for threat management. However, at the time of this incident, this was not the common practice. Well into the 1980s, police training manuals depicted officers with their fingers on the trigger during gunpoint situations — even through the course of the draw. Many police duty holsters back in 1962 left the triggers exposed, and the “clamshell” holster popular among LAPD officers at the time actually required the finger to be inserted into the triggerguard to release the firearm. In any case, thanks to an experienced shooter’s finger on the trigger, this incident ended well.

Judge Peetris told me while the standoff was happening, he “went cold,” something he had learned to do in harrowing situations during his FBI days. His focus on the task and his perception of what he needed to do and watch for, allowed him to push out fear. This seems to be a nearly universal agreement among today’s teachers going in harm’s way.

Now well into his 90s, retired Judge Harry Peetris remains an armed citizen, a gun enthusiast and a man who continues to practice on the range. He leaves a considerable legacy: A half-century on the bench and a career marked by a deep understanding of both human values and human nature as they relate to the laws of man and society. I hope he writes his autobiography one day, and on behalf of American Handgunner, I would like to thank him for sharing his story with our readers.
By Massad Ayoob

Situation:

The big man has threatened to beat you to death, and you have reason to believe he’s capable of doing it. Now he shows up at your house, and begins to beat you …

Lesson:

Not everyone who violently attacks you will be a stereotypical
criminal, and the justice system still has trouble recognizing your attacker doesn’t need a weapon to kill you.

Social scientists tell us by the time we turn 21, we’ve seen thousands of people “killed” on TV and movie screens. Those images shape our society’s values, sometimes in unrealistic and unhealthy ways. TV and movies can give the general public false impressions.

The guy was shot in the back? “It couldn’t possibly be self-defense — he must be a victim of cowardly, murderous ambush!” The deceased was shot more than once or twice, particularly with a relatively powerful gun? “Hey, when Gary Cooper shot a bad cowboy once with a .45, it knocked him off his feet! This shooting must have been motivated solely by murderous malice!”

Years of watching shows such as “CSI” on TV can lead the viewer to think if the spent casing was found in Position X, then without a doubt the shot must have been fired from exactly Position Y. And, horror of horrors, an armed citizen shot someone unarmed? In reference to one such case last year, I saw a CNN commentator literally scream into the camera, “Murder! Murder! MURDER!”

The Facts

Anyone who’s been involved in homicide cases for any length of time knows all of the popular beliefs listed above are misconceptions. Any number of dynamics can account for a bullet entering behind the lateral midline of an attacker’s body. Many factors can turn a violent assailant into a “bullet sponge,” who soaks up wound after deadly wound before he goes down.

Any shooter who has tried to retrieve brass after a range session absolutely knows the shooter’s position does not exactly correlate to where the spent casing ends up. And any medical examiner or homicide investigator who has ever seen the corpse of someone beaten to death knows a criminal assailant does not require a deadly weapon to kill an innocent victim.

Movies teach us to expect an attacker who resembles a street monster out of Hollywood Central Casting. The fact is, with surprising frequency, the attacker is someone who doesn’t happen to have a criminal record, and who is loved by family and friends — who genuinely see him as a good guy.
Earlier this year, I was involved in a premeditated murder trial in the Appalachians where all of these factors came together. I came to know the defendant and his wife, who asked me to keep their names out of this story because they have suffered enough from the trial’s negative publicity. The same seems fair for the family of the deceased. For these reasons, I am going to change two names here, the name of the defendant and the name of the man who was killed. All other names appearing in this account are real.

Prelude

The men on each side of the gun the night of this shooting had clean criminal records and were respectable citizens. One of the men, who I’ll call “Mr. Phist,” had an eye for the wife of the man I’ll call “Mr. Gunn.” Neither man had ever so much as met, but Mr. Gunn got wind of it. He touched base with Phist’s wife. He testified later she told him she wasn’t surprised, because her husband had a wandering eye, and Mr. Gunn had better be careful because Mr. Phist was a dangerous man who stood six-feet-three, weighed 300 to 350 pounds of solid muscle, and messing with him was a good way to get killed.

This was a definite concern for Mr. Gunn, who was of average height and had never been in a serious fight. A hunter and recreational gun owner with a concealed carry permit, he had long made a habit of keeping a pistol in his car, and bringing it into the house when he came home. It was kept out of reach of his little boys, but in a place where Mr. Gunn could get to for home defense.

Late on the night of Nov. 17, 2010, the Gunn family was asleep when Mr. Gunn heard a loud banging at the door, awakening him. He got up, and without opening the door, asked who was there. Mr. Phist, clearly in a state of rage, identified himself and verbalized his anger, claiming Gunn had put his marriage in jeopardy by talking to Mrs. Phist. In his verbal tirade, he swore he would “beat the life” out of the smaller man.

Gunn, wisely, never unlocked the door. Phist eventually drove off into the night. Shaken, Gunn called 9-1-1 and told the dispatcher what happened. Since this was a rural community with a limited police presence, he was told to simply call back if the man returned.

The Incident

Four days later, devastation occurred. It is approximately 8:00 p.m. The two little boys in the Gunn family were eager for Christmas, and even though it wasn’t yet Thanksgiving, decorating the house for the holidays is now in full swing. The doorbell rang, and Mrs. Gunn answered it. In moments, she was back inside, a look of grave concern on her face — informing her husband Mr. Phist was at the door demanding to talk to him.

Gunn’s mind immediately flashed back to the screaming rage he witnessed at his door four nights ago. He was glad his kids were asleep then and didn’t hear any of it. Fearing it would escalate again, he told his wife to take the boys into another room. Then, because he had every reason to be genuinely in fear of his life, he took his pistol from its high resting place and tucked it into his waistband behind his right hip.

The gun was a Ruger P345 he bought used from a friend a few years ago. Its hammer was de-cocked on a live round — the way he always carried this gun, with the lever up and off safe. Having been told all his life to load magazines one round short of capacity to save their springs and preserve reliability, his 8-round magazines had seven Remington 185-grain jacketed hollowpoint .45 ACP cartridges. After chambering a round, he never bothered to top it off; meaning a pistol capable of holding 8+1 rounds had only seven.

Pausing at the door, Gunn then stepped out onto the dimly lit porch area and closed the door behind him. Part of him hoped the man had simply come to apologize for his previous outburst. No such luck.

This was the first time he had seen the dreaded Mr. Phist face-to-face. The man towered over him, looking every bit of the 300-plus pounds he’d been described, and launched into a tirade. Philst’s wife had just kicked him out and he was holding Gunn responsible for ending his marriage of more than 20 years.

He angrily repeated his previous, ominous threat, “I’ll beat the life out of you!”

A punch came out of the darkness from nowhere, hammering into the right side of Gunn’s face like the kick of a mule. He felt his partial plate dislodge from the painful and stunning impact.

Reeling back and acutely aware of the situation — knowing his wife and children were inside and certain this enraged giant was not going to stop — Gunn reached for the Ruger with his right hand, and as soon as it cleared his belt, he opened fire on the enraged assailant.

Gunn then realized the big man was running away from him down the side of his property and watched him fall at the backend of the house. Not knowing what else to do, Gunn walked back inside and numbly placed his empty, slide-locked P345 on the kitchen counter.

Gunn’s brother, who had been working on a truck in the yard, sprinted toward the house. At the first shot, he raised his head, witnessing the exchange between his brother and Phist. He immediately called 9-1-1. Also nearby, Gunn’s father, who was staying in a motor home on the property, grabbed his shotgun and ran to help after he heard the shots fired.

Emergency response was swift. The Gunn home was located at the edge of the county line, and the dispatcher sent full ambulance crews from both counties to be fail-safe. Pulling in at opposite sides of the yard, two three-person crews rushed toward the downed patient with their gurneys. One gurney rolled directly through the “evidence field” in front of the house — which was in line with the spent brass from the gun fired from the porch. In minutes, police were on the scene.
Mr. Phist did not survive. And, a documented 12 minutes after the police arrived, Mr. Gunn was placed under arrest for premeditated murder.

Issues And Answers

Autopsy revealed eight gunshot wound tracks from seven bullets, all but one clearly entering behind lateral midline. Trial began on Feb. 4, 2013, in the court of Circuit Judge Eric O’Briant in Logan, W.Va. The prosecution argued a jealous husband had murdered a perceived suitor of his wife, shooting the unarmed man several times in the back — and arming himself before the confrontation constituted the element of premeditation.
The night of the shooting, five spent .45 casings were recovered from in front of the porch. The following afternoon, two more were discovered near where the dying man had fallen; this, the prosecution maintained, meant Gunn must have walked 40 feet forward and fired two more execution shots into the “victim,” who had collapsed and was rendered helpless.

Gunn wisely retained Brian Abraham, former District Attorney of Logan County, to defend him. Abraham’s management of this case, I think, is a template for future defenses in cases of this nature. This case presented a number of issues needing to be addressed.

Firstly, Spent brass does not correlate exactly to shooter position. Remember the six responders and their two gurneys, one of which left tracks through where the first five spent casings were found? Many lawmen and other people walked through the same area. The state’s own Firearms and Toolmark Examiner from the crime lab testified factually and honestly too many factors to list here were inconsistent between lab testing and assured reality — points he clarified in Abraham’s expertly delivered cross-examination.

The prosecution then brought in an expert witness, a young engineer who had never been involved in a ballistics trial before, disputed the state’s expert analysis by claiming the location of the spent cases absolutely correlated to where they would land. The state’s real expert insisted the casings could have been kicked, caught in shoe treads or picked up in the treads of the gurney wheels and redeposited where they were eventually found; the state’s outside expert stipulated the casings had to be execution shots. Abraham tore him apart in his cross-examination.

Shots in the back were a critical issue. When I was on the stand, I explained the dynamics of action/reaction paradigms, and demonstrated on video how a man can easily shoot seven shots from this type of gun in under a second and a half. I also demonstrated how the human body can turn 180 degrees in half a second, and how those time frames could intersect in a situation like this one. We showed the jury a training film I had produced for the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association, in which I was shot multiple times in the back with Simunitions. In the criminal attacker role, I spun away from the legitimate defender who was shooting back at me.

When you’re shooting as fast as you can to save your life and your nearby family from an irrational, violent man, it takes a relatively long time to react to something unexpected — which in this case was the other man suddenly breaking off the attack. But, “seven shots”? We showed the jury on video the significant muzzle flash of the Remington Express 185-grain JHP, the same lot of ammunition the evidence showed the defendant was using. He never saw a muzzle flash, and after the savage blow to his head, the next thing he saw was the other man running away.

An experienced fighter can train himself to keep his eyes open after such a blow — so he can block or parry the next blow, and see his target to counterpunch — and the reaction of an untrained person such as Mr. Gunn is to instinctively close the eyes. Because of what Phist did, Gunn couldn’t see him unexpectedly turning away in time to stop his defensive stream of fire.

The “power of the gun” issue came up here, certainly not for the first time in such a case. The medical examiner who did the autopsy spoke of how powerful a .45 was and how devastating the hollowpoint bullets were — implying a terrible unfair advantage and malice on the part of the shooter. When my turn came on the stand, I simply pointed out the arresting officers carried essentially the same amount of stopping power: a 9-shot department-issue Smith & Wesson Model 4566s, all loaded with Gold Dot .45 hollowpoints.

But, the medical examiner dropped a bomb. The fatal shot of the seven fired had gone through the left ventricle of Phist’s heart. Asked by the prosecutor how far a man so wounded could have traveled, he answered adamantly, no more than 10 feet — which fueled the state’s theory of the execution shots.

This testimony occurred on Wednesday, February 6. It was too late for the defense to retain its own forensic pathologist to counter the testimony and I was due on the stand the next day. Courts often accept testimony on these matters from us who are extensively trained homicide investigators, but a pathologist has more credibility. I had with me for other reasons a textbook by pathologist Abdullah Fatteh, which explained why wounds of the left ventricle are the least likely among heart shots to cause rapid death, and even a study by the state’s witness’s own mentor showing men shot through the heart going great distances and even shooting back.

However, I remembered a classic case from Dr. Vincent DiMaio Jr.’s authoritative text, Gunshot Wounds, in which a man whose heart was shredded by a close range shotgun blast ran a far greater distance before falling. I didn’t have it with me, so I phoned Marty Hayes and Jim Fleming of Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network. Within hours, they had it faxed and e-mailed to me, and I read it to the jury the next day, showing them the state’s theory pertaining to Gunn taking execution-style shots as totally false.

All evidence has to be correlated! Gunn, his wife, his brother, and his dad had all stated from the very beginning the shots were fired as fast as a trigger could be pulled, and in one continuous string of fire. Three impartial ear-witnesses heard the same. A neighbor lady bathing her grandchild when the shots were fired said it sounded like “a string of firecrackers.” Another neighboring couple agreed, with the deer-hunting husband saying it sounded like one long, echoing rifle shot in the woods.

Brian Abraham had me explain how long it would take for a man to run 40 feet, and why there would have had to be a distinct pause between the first five shots and the last two if the state’s theory was to be valid. My final statement before it went to cross-examination was if the prosecution theory was true, we would have to discount the testimony of all seven eye- and ear-witnesses, and suspend the laws of time and space.

Disparity of force was a key element here. It means when an ostensibly unarmed man is so likely to kill or cripple you, his physical advantage becomes the equivalent of a deadly weapon, and warrants your recourse to a gun or knife or whatever in self-defense. Gunn was dramatically outmatched by his much bigger and stronger attacker, and already stunned by a blow to the head so brutal it had knocked his teeth loose. He knew a man this irrational was a threat to Gunn’s wife and children as well as to him. The man could take his .45 and kill them all once he had overpowered Gunn. The defendant was indeed facing deadly force, and Brian Abraham drove that home to the jury effectively throughout the week of trial.

The Verdict

On the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 8, 2013, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. The long ordeal was over. Under West Virginia law, a conviction on the charge of premeditated murder would have resulted in a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole. Instead, a good man went home to his family to rebuild his life.

There are no winners here. The acquittal meant merely a wrongly accused man did not lose as much as he could have lost. His actions certainly saved him from death or great bodily harm at the hands of a man who had threatened to “beat the life out of him,” and may well have saved his wife and children also.
Real life is rarely as starkly black and white as in a Charles Bronson Death Wish movie. I want to commend Brian Abraham for an outstanding piece of trial advocacy, and extend my best wishes for the healing of the families on both sides of this unfortunate incident.
By Massad Ayoob

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Situation:

A neighbor has escalated from strange to full psycho, and
is rampaging through the neighborhood shooting people. Only one cop has
arrived … and you have a Glock with which to back him up.

Lesson:

The ability to fight back can be the difference between horror
and heroism — but the press doesn’t want to admit it.

Prelude

Gunshots and screams echo through a quiet, classic suburban neighborhood as a cop and armed citizen move together quickly toward those terrifying sounds. They take cover behind a big tree as they spot the suspect, a black semi-auto pistol in his hand. The good guys both shout commands, but the gunman — moving fast — raises his own weapon to kill them, even as their own fingers go to their triggers …

Background

Located just west of Akron, Ohio, the Copley Township has a population of just over 17,000 within its 21 square miles, and a police department consisting of some 30 well-trained officers. In the late morning hours of August 7, 2011, an atrocity occurred in the quiet community — proving extreme criminal violence can occur anywhere, at any time.

Our suspect, Michael Hance had been voted “most helpful” by his high school classmates: but he was 51 now, and time changes people. He lived with his girlfriend of some 20 years in a house she and her brother had inherited from her late father, whom Hance helped to nurse through a long, sad period of dementia. While some neighbors found him helpful and courteous, others disliked him and even feared him. Unemployed for some time, he was known to sit in his yard in a kayak and paddle the air, and to scream violently at a neighbor’s child.

Hance was described as delusional, while others viewed him as depressed; it would later be reported herbal remedies represented the extent of his only mental health care. While many noticed his mental deterioration, none thought it serious. Never institutionalized, he legally owned firearms. In 2005, he bought a 6″-barrel Smith & Wesson Model 586 Blue Steel .357 Magnum. Five days before the incident, he purchased a 10-shot Hi-Point .45 autoloader from the same pawnshop.

The Johnson family, who lived next door, had been friends of the original owner and complained to Hance about how run-down he had allowed the inherited house to become. A tarp on the roof, torn-up ground instead of a lawn and a dilapidated car became a real eyesore.

Hance had been bitter toward them ever since. Craig Deiter, the brother of Hance’s longtime girlfriend, was concerned about the situation and came up with his family from Kentucky to visit. On the morning in question, the Dieters were next door talking with their old friends, the Johnson’s, when Michael Hance snapped.

The Killing Spree

With six rounds of Remington semi-jacketed .357 hollowpoints in his S&W, Michael Hance sets out to settle his vendetta. A speedloader, filled with the same ammo and another quick-loader with soft nose Magnum rounds, rests in his pocket. He also has the .45 loaded with Remington jacketed hollowpoints, a spare 9-round magazine of the same ammunition and one more magazine of 230-gr. CBC hardball.

The murders begin in the driveway between where Hance lives and the Johnson home. Hance shoots neighbor Russell Johnson, 67, once in the torso and once in the head, and pumps five rounds into his girlfriend’s brother. He then chases Johnson’s wife Gudrun and shoots her from behind three times — once in the back and twice through the buttocks. She falls, and he stands over her and executes her with a bullet to the back of the head.

Hance finds the Johnson’s granddaughter Autumn, 16, and her friend, Amelia Shambaugh, 16, in a black Saturn SUV in the driveway and fires through the windows. He kills Autumn in the front passenger seat and Amelia in the back seat. Some witnesses describe the murderer as wielding a gun in each hand.

Hance reloads the .45 and either intentionally or accidentally drops the .357, which now holds two live rounds and four fired casings. Then, he roams away from the Johnson home, looking for more victims.

Also left behind in his wake, is his longtime girlfriend, Rebecca Dieter. He shot her through her right arm and into her chest. She laid still and played dead as — according to witnesses — Michael Hance stood over her body, calmly reloading. She’ll be his only surviving victim this day.

People in the neighborhood have heard the shots and, recognizing the danger, are running from him. Some, he ignores. Others, he chases and doesn’t get close enough to harm them. Not everyone is so lucky. Bryan Johnson, 44, the son of Russell and Gudrun, collapses in a driveway with six gunshot wounds, including a fatal shot to the head.

The youngest object of the madman’s hatred is Scotty Dieter, age 11. Hance is chasing the child down the street when he sees another neighbor looking at him. He slows down — as if preparing to shoot — and then realizes the neighbor is pointing a Glock pistol at him! Hance abruptly turns and runs out of the neighbor’s line of sight.

Safe for now, Hance looks around and sees the young boy run into another house. He circles the place, looking for entry, and finally breaks in. Scotty has fled for shelter in the home of a neighboring child, Dae’Shawn Bagley, age nine. The boys were hidden in the basement by the time Hance confronts Dae’Shawn’s mom, Melonie Bagley, who is trying to get her two smaller children upstairs to safety.

Hance puts his gun to her head and snarls, “Where’s the little boy?”

Melonie Bagley defiantly screams, “There’s no little boy!” Frustrated, the murderer turns and begins to search for the child, giving Melonie time to scoop up her two little ones and sprint to safety.

But Michael Hance now searches the basement, finding Scotty behind the furnace. Hance’s evil now reaches its peak: without a word, he raises his gun and shoots the little boy in the head, killing him instantly and spattering blood all over Dae’Shawn as he cringes in his own hiding place. The Dieter child will be Hance’s seventh murder victim.
And his last.

Hance now races up the stairs, through the door and out into the street. He hears male voices shouting commands at him, and he turns to see two armed men by a tree pointing guns his way. One is the neighbor with the Glock. The other is a uniformed policeman with an AR-15.

However belatedly, Justice has arrived for the monster Michael Hance.

Keith Lavery’s Perspective

Keith Lavery, 40, had stayed home that quiet Sunday morning to tend to his 10-year-old son, who was sick in bed, while his wife, daughter and younger son went to church. They were blessedly spared from the morning horror about to unfold. When he heard the first gunfire and screaming, Lavery thought it might be a suicide, but the next volley convinced him otherwise.

Now a criminal justice instructor, Lavery had spent 20 years as a sworn law enforcement officer, beginning as an MP. As he called in to 9-1-1 to report shots fired, he raced upstairs to scoop up his son and bring him downstairs to ground level, where he tucked him away behind a sofa and told him to stay there.

Then, he ran back upstairs to the master bedroom, where the Glock 23 his wife carried on duty as an officer was secured on a high shelf in the closet. In the agonizingly long seconds it took him to retrieve the separated magazine, insert it into the pistol and rack the slide, he felt things start to go into slow motion. By the time he confirmed the .40-caliber pistol had a Hydra-Shok cartridge chambered, his police training had kicked in.

Rushing downstairs, he told his son to stay put behind cover, then cautiously made his way out the front door with his phone and pistol toward a solid fence for some cover. In moments, he saw a tall man running down the street. Though he had lived in this neighborhood since 2005, he hadn’t been acquainted with the reclusive Hance. All he saw was a man with a black semi-auto.

As they make eye contact, Hance did a stutter-step, seemingly to ready himself to shoot. Lavery told me he didn’t think Hance noticed the gun in his hand until he raised the Glock and took aim — prompting Hance to run out of sight. Lavery again called 9-1-1 to describe the suspect and his approximate location.

Seconds later, the first responding patrol car pulled into Lavery’s view, driven by Copley Police Officer Ben Campbell, who emerged with his Colt AR-15 A3 Tactical Carbine patrol rifle. Campbell and Lavery recognized each other immediately — they had worked together in the past when Lavery was still a cop.

They moved together toward where Lavery had last seen the suspect. They heard gunfire, and literally “went to the sound of the guns,” covering each other as they rapidly but cautiously advanced. They were now at a big tree near the house where they’d heard the gunfire, the Bagley home.

As they were moving, Campbell told Lavery he ought to go back to his house and protect his son. Lavery responded he wasn’t going to leave Campbell alone to deal with this monster.

At this point, Dan Gannon, a retired officer who lived in the neighborhood and was unarmed, arrived to help. Knowing an unarmed man couldn’t help with this, Lavery asked him to go to his home and keep an eye on his boy. The man complied.

And then, Michael Hance burst from the house in which he had just murdered little Scotty Dieter, his .45 in hand. Keith Lavery now had a focused crisis to deal with.

Killer Down

As the mass murderer explodes into view, 20 years of policing make Keith Lavery a creature of his training and experience. “Get on the ground,” he roars in command voice. “Get on the ground!”

He is aware Officer Ben Campbell, beside him, is shouting something similar. But instead of obeying the commands, the running man swings his pistol up, aiming it toward them and — it seemed to Lavery — toward him in particular.
Lavery fires without a sight picture, opting for point shooting. In his mind, he thinks he fired twice, though in actuality it was three times. He hears a very loud “crack” to his side and realizes Campbell has triggered his .223, though he doesn’t realize the officer has also fired three shots. Hance keeps running, and for an instant, it seems to each of the good guys as if Hance hasn’t been hit, but then he pitches to the ground and lies still.

Their guns still up and covering the threat, Lavery and Campbell cautiously approach. The black Hi-Point pistol has wound up in the armpit of the gunman’s crumpled body, not in-hand. Carefully, Lavery passes his Glock to Campbell and swaps for the officer’s handcuffs, and moves in to secure the suspect. There is no resistance as he clamps the bracelets on.

In the emotion of the moment, Lavery snaps, “Why did you do it?!” He hears Campbell utter something similar. But there is no response. He sees Michael Hance’s labored breathing cease. The man’s eyes appear to glaze over and Lavery knows he is watching the monster die.

There are sirens in the distance, coming closer. From the volume of the gunfire, neither man can be sure this murderer was the only predator. Campbell hands the Glock back to Lavery, who carefully circles the outside of the house to make sure there are no more perpetrators in sight. Backup officers are arriving now. The scene is pandemonium. One of the first responding backups enters the house, and discovers the bloody corpse of little Scotty Dieter.

In the following hectic moments, one uniformed lawman asks Keith Lavery what he’s doing there and then tells him to get out of the crime scene. It’s a sign of things to come.

Aftermath

It was later said Hance’s rampage was the worst mass murder to take place in the state of Ohio. In September of 2011, the prosecutor’s office publicly ruled the use of deadly force against Michael Hance by Copley Police Officer Ben Campbell and by Keith Lavery was justified.

The autopsy showed two Hornady TAP .223 rounds — fired by Ben Campbell — struck Hance: one of which caught his arm, while the other pierced his torso, striking him dead. It was later reported a private citizen with a concealed carry permit and a handgun on his person was driving through the neighborhood with his lady on a motorcycle when the shooting took place and, when he heard the gunfire, exited the scene.

In May 2012, Ben Campbell’s courageous and decisive action earned him a place among 34 law officers presented the America’s TOP COPS award at the White House by President Barrack Obama. In March 2013, he received the Congressional Badge of Bravery. In April 2013, the Summit County Council presented commendations for bravery to Officer Campbell and to Dae’Shawn Bagley, the little boy who watched in horror as Hance murdered Scotty Dietz.

No such public recognition has been given to Keith Lavery, or to the unarmed retired cop (and another unarmed, off-duty policeman) who responded to the scene.

Lessons

Reading through the police reports on this incident is a horror story and a profound lesson is revealed: the strength of the armed trumps the helplessness of the unarmed. There were people who locked themselves in their home, while others ran into the nearby swamp behind the neighborhood and climbed out of windows. There was the brave, but helpless, mom who screamed, “There is no little boy!” Who can blame them for not stopping a monster they had no wherewithal to defeat?

Nor can I fault the armed citizen who unknowingly drove into the situation, not having any idea what was going on, and exited the danger zone with the woman he loved. Most CCW instructors tell their students to do exactly this in such cases.

It was fortunate Lavery and Officer Campbell knew each other. An unidentified citizen with a visible gun approaching a responding officer could create a mistaken identity issue.

We live in a nation of more than 300 million citizens policed by some 800,000 cops, who work 40 hours of a 168-hour week — of course not counting time spent in court, training or while away on leave. To their credit, the Copley Township Police got there quickly.

According to the official report, the first 9-1-1 call came in at 10:55:57 a.m. Police were dispatched to the scene at 10:57:11. Lavery’s first call came in at 11:00:19 a.m., describing what are now believed the shots at Rebecca Dieter. Campbell reported on-scene in the neighborhood at 11:00:37. Lavery’s second encounter after he drove the killer away at gunpoint was phoned in at 11:01:01. And, at 11:05:21 a.m., Ben Campbell radioed in the suspect was down.

Yes, this is how fast these things happen. The cops got there 21/2 minutes after the dispatcher picked up on the first call — an excellent response time. But, it was still too late to save the victims.

Other lessons: If a crazy neighbor hates you, it might be a good idea to carry a gun on your person and be ready to instantly respond if he acts out homicidally. A reconstruction of the crime scene shows the running Hance was 49 to 58 feet away from Campbell and Lavery when they fired on him; no easy target.

Campbell, with an AR-15, hit him two out of three shots and dropped him, while Lavery did not score a hit. Does this provide a rationale for good guys to have AR-15s maybe? Lavery was point-shooting instead of precisely aiming at a fast-moving man over 50 feet away — a lesson there, too.

Don’t ignore crazy people. Many who saw Hance’s aberrant behavior did nothing about it. He wound up murdering seven people, including three innocent children.

Have your gun ready to go, where you can reach it swiftly. How many of Hance’s victims might have survived if they had done so?

Finally, remember in the politically correct world of American politics and media, heroism may go ignored. Ben Campbell deserved every award he received; he is one of a growing list of cops who saved lives by riding alone to the sound of the guns and not waiting for backup.

But, in a world smart enough to recognize Campbell’s courage, how can our society be foolish enough to ignore the courage of armed citizens like Keith Lavery? Or the unarmed retired cop Dan Gannon, who still went toward the threat instead of away from it on this terrible day in Copley?

G. Gordon Liddy once wrote current cops talk about retired lawmen in the past tense, as if they were dead. Keith Lavery, who first used a Glock to drive the wolf back from the bunny it was chasing, put himself back in the line of fire to end the threat to his neighborhood. The fact he was then promptly ignored and marginalized in the aftermath says a lot. If it was because he was merely an armed citizen — no longer an active police officer — then the failure to recognize his contribution is nothing short of disgraceful.
By Massad Ayoob

Situation:

Artful manipulation by the mainstream press turns a routine shooting into a media lynching, complete with show trial.

Lesson:

There are many — tactical, legal and even social.

On the night of Feb. 26, 2012 in Sanford, Fla., a single 115-gr. 9mm Sellier & Bellot jacketed hollowpoint bullet exploded from the muzzle of George Zimmerman’s Kel-Tec PF-9 pistol. It was a shot that would divide a nation and begin a chain of events to captivate our country like no murder trial since the one involving O.J. Simpson. It ended the life of a 17 year old who was led to the bullet by a downward-spiraling lifestyle of drugs, violence and machismo.

The evidence, including cell phone records and Facebook messages of the deceased Trayvon Martin, showed he called himself a “gangsta” and nicknamed himself “No Limit Nigga.” He was negotiating to illegally buy a handgun, and was apparently involved in marijuana trafficking. These breadcrumbs also revealed his interest in street fighting, and he was angry an opponent beat him using a “martial arts mount” — making him want a rematch. Also, he was disappointed one person he punched out didn’t bleed enough.

Trayvon had been expelled from high school and was caught with drugs and stolen jewelry. These acts didn’t go through the criminal justice system because school authorities wanted to keep their crime statistics down. He was so out of control his mother kicked him out of her home in Miami Gardens, and sent him to live with his father, who was seeing a woman in Sanford. Hence, why young Mr. Martin was there on the fatal night. Evidence revealed he had a penchant for “lean” — a drug cocktail made with codeine or other cough syrup, and candy and sweet beverages such as the Skittles and Arizona Fruit Juice Cocktail Watermelon drink he was carrying at the time of his death.

None of those facts would be seen by the jury in the Zimmerman case for the simple reason he didn’t know about them when he shot Trayvon, and therefore weren’t foundational to the act for which he was being judged. Trayvon’s grieving parents hired plaintiff’s lawyers Natalie Jackson and Benjamin Crump, who in turn brought in public relations expert Ryan Julison, who brought their theory of the case to TV talk show hosts and other powerhouse media personalities. Almost overnight, the plaintiff’s theory had been presented to the entire country as if it was fact. The evidence showed otherwise.

The Prosecution Meme

The plaintiff/prosecution theory was this: Trayvon Martin was a harmless child (1) walking home from the store with Skittles and iced tea (2). He was then profiled for being African-American and for wearing a hoodie in the rain (3) by a white racist vigilante (4) named George Zimmerman, a wannabe cop (5) and self-appointed captain of the Neighborhood Watch (6). Zimmerman called the police (7), who ordered him not to follow Martin, but Zimmerman got out of his car (8) and pursued him anyway — violating a lawful police command (9). He then confronted Trayvon Martin (10). There was an altercation (11) during which Zimmerman sustained some minor injuries (12), before he shot the unarmed youth (13).

The issues were parsed more finely in the trial, which began with the opening of jury selection on June 10, 2013, and ended with a complete acquittal on the following July 13. Those 13 issues cited above were the foundation of the State’s charge of murder in the second degree — a foundation needing to be destroyed, brick after hollow brick, and replaced with facts and reality. The defense team, led by attorney Mark O’Mara and his co-counsel, Don West, went to work with this angle. Let’s look at their success, and some teachable moments for law-abiding armed citizens.

Issue By Issue

Part 1 and 2 above have already been discussed. Though legally a minor, Trayvon Martin was old enough to enlist in the Marine Corps at 17. He was at least 5’11″ tall, according to the autopsy. But according to reporters, his mom described him as standing between 6’2″ and 6’3″.

In a family portrait, Trayvon is the tallest person in the picture, while in the security camera inside the 7-Eleven where he bought the Skittles and watermelon drink, appears to tower over the clerk who is on record as being 5’10″.

Profiling? Scratch this third point. Zimmerman explained, on the night in question, Martin’s aberrant behavior — loitering in the pouring rain, walking aimlessly and looking in windows — made him suspect a possible burglar casing a future job. Though one TV network edited the dispatch tape to make it sound otherwise, Zimmerman didn’t even mention Martin was black until the dispatcher asked for a description.

What about Zimmerman as white racist? Au contraire. Zimmerman was one-eighth black himself, on his mother’s side. Just 60 years ago, he wouldn’t have been served in a white restaurant in Sanford. With the Klan riding high, the sheet-heads would have called him an “octoroon.” He was first deemed “white” by the press, but when they learned he was listed on official documents as Hispanic (his mother is from Peru), the media coined the term “White Hispanic.” One fellow claimed to have searched the computer archives of the entire history of a major newspaper, and learned the paper had never printed the term “White Hispanic” until this case.

A squad of FBI agents assigned to thoroughly investigate Zimmerman for evidence to make this a hate crime, determined in the spring of 2012 there was nothing there. Zimmerman had many black friends, had mentored African-American children and had publicly taken up the cause of a black man who had been beaten by a white — and Zimmerman thought the police were covering for him. This pushes the fourth issue off the table.

The jury was able to see there was no vigilante element to this incident. Vigilantes dispense their own justice; they don’t call the cops as Zimmerman did. Besides, Zimmerman knew those cops could appear at any moment — and they did, about a minute after the fatal shot. While Zimmerman had taken relevant classes in the past and considered a career in criminal justice, the Sanford Police Department’s Neighborhood Watch coordinator had offered him a uniform and a patrol car, and he turned both down.

He had also been elected to lead the Neighborhood Watch by his neighbors, and was not at all self-appointed. In any case, at the time of the shooting, he was not on any kind of patrol, but merely driving to Target to buy groceries. He was wearing the pistol he was licensed to carry, just as any of us reading this magazine might likely do. Cross off allegations 5 and 6, above.
“Pursuit”?

Zimmerman did call the cops (actually, the non-emergency dispatch number), hardly the act of a man filled with malice or intending a crime (item 7). However, he never violated a lawful order because no lawful order was given. The dispatcher testified he had no authority to give orders, and it was policy not to. The dispatcher asked Zimmerman what direction the suspicious person had gone.

After, Zimmerman can be heard exiting his SUV on the dispatch tape. He becomes short of breath and there’s wind in the background. The dispatcher figures out what’s happening and asks if Zimmerman is following the man. Zimmerman replies, “Yeah.” The dispatcher says, “We don’t need you to do that.” Zimmerman says, “Okay,” and the wind quickly stops and normal breathing returns. This is solid evidence he stopped following at this point, and is consistent with his statement to police. He then began to return to his car … and was ambushed en route.

Those who sought Zimmerman’s conviction said he “pursued” Trayvon Martin. No, he merely followed him briefly to see where Martin was going, and then stopped and turned back. “Pursuit” implies intent to capture: Police pursuit is intended to end in arrest, pursuit of game implies intent to kill and eat the quarry, and we’re allowed the pursuit of happiness so we can possess happiness. Whether or not it’s smart or tactically sound for the private citizen to follow someone who might be a burglar to report a location to police, it is in no way against the law.

Why did he do it at all? Consider while the dispatcher has no authority to give orders, a dispatcher is the one who answers and is therefore a voice of authority. This voice asks you for information. You have been through Neighborhood Watch training, which emphasizes you act as eyes and ears. Would you not feel a need to gather the information to answer this question? This is why points 7 through 9 carried no weight in court.

The Confrontation

Even among gun owners and the concealed carry community, Zimmerman received heavy criticism for confronting Martin. However, the overwhelming majority of the evidence indicates it was Martin who confronted Zimmerman. Rachel Jeantel, the female friend Trayvon was talking to on the phone in the moments before his death, said he told her he was almost to the place where he was staying.

Trayvon was a long-legged athlete, a 17-year-old football player. The 5’7″ Zimmerman, 11 years older with a long-standing weight problem, wouldn’t have been able to chase him down — especially with Trayvon having a head start to get out of view. Therefore, the location where the deadly encountered occurred meant Trayvon Martin would have doubled back.

In the brief exchange of words before it went physical, both Ms. Jeantel and the defendant said Trayvon uttered the first challenging words. Put it all together, and the instigator of the confrontation has to be Martin, not Zimmerman. The only injuries on Martin — except for the single gunshot wound — were on his knuckles; Zimmerman’s nose was smashed and swollen in the pictures taken at the scene, and the back of his head lacerated and bloody, consistent with having been banged on the sidewalk as Zimmerman described. Ms. Jeantel testified before the phone went dead, she heard Trayvon shout “get off.” In street slang, “get off” can also mean a command to fight, short for “get off the fence,” and would be consistent with the evidence of Trayvon Martin’s fascination with, and participation in, street fight culture.

Being watched or followed with obvious suspicion, solely because of your race, is a common experience among African-Americans — and enough to make anyone legitimately angry. Ms. Jeantel testified Trayvon told her he was being followed by a “creepy-ass cracka,” and young Martin also referred to Zimmerman as a “nigga.” She later said on “Piers Morgan Live” in her culture, “cracka” was no longer a derogatory word for white people, but a term to identify someone like a security guard. I have yet to hear this definition anywhere else.

However, if one accepts the definition of Ms. Jeantel, we have it from her own lips Trayvon thought he was being followed by someone with a security-related function … and knowingly attacked him anyway. Ms. Jeantel also told Morgan “nigga” was not a racial pejorative, but merely a word for any male. If Mr. Morgan believes this, he’s invited to drop by the New Black Panther Headquarters, shout “Hi, niggas,” and get back to us with his report of how it went for him.
The overwhelming weight of evidence and common sense alike tell us Trayvon Martin initiated the physical confrontation. And that’s what counts in both law and logic. No matter how righteous it may seem at the time, anger never justifies physical assault. Thus, the 10th point of the plaintiff/prosecution trope is struck off the list.

Altercation & Minor Injury

Elements 11 and 12 as listed above are classic examples of minimizing the other side’s argument to make your own point — which is something of a “dirty debate trick.” Words mean things. One could call the Vietnam conflict an “altercation,” but the word insults the loved ones and the memories of the more than 50,000 Americans who died there. Surviving Vietnam vets will tell you, “No, sir, it was a war.”

This is why so many in the criminal justice community rolled their eyes when they heard this event called an “altercation.” Within the first 48 hours, trained and experienced police investigators determined Zimmerman had been beaten by Martin, was down under his attacker in a martial arts “ground and pound” he could not escape, and was getting his skull smashed against a hard surface.

It was, in my opinion, disingenuous for the prosecution to try to convince the jury the shooting wasn’t justified because Zimmerman hadn’t been hurt badly enough yet. Any graduate of Logic 101 — let alone law school — knows or should know the whole purpose of self-defense with lethal force is to prevent death or great bodily harm. If you wait until you’ve been shot to return fire, for example, you’ve failed in prevention.

Similarly, if you wait until your brain has been turned to jelly or is leaking out of your head through an open skull fracture, you’re too late. Indeed, an unscrupulous lawyer might argue if you waited until after you believed you were mortally wounded to pull the trigger, you acted out of unlawful revenge rather than perfectly legal prevention. The extent of injuries already received — except as a reasonable predictor of more and worse to come — was irrelevant, and it appears the jury saw it as well. Scratch elements 11 and 12.

Disparity Of Force

Many people, even some who should have known better, could not get past the 13th and last element mentioned earlier here: the perception if an armed person kills an unarmed person, it must be wrong and punishable. The courts have long since recognized a principle called disparity of force. This is a situation in which the ostensibly “unarmed” person has such a great physical advantage over their opponent, death or crippling injury is likely to result the longer the conflict continues. This disparity becomes the equivalent of a deadly weapon, warranting the other person’s choice to use a deadly weapon in self-defense. (See American Handgunner’s Ayoob Files entry titled “Fist Vs. Gun” in the Sept/Oct 2013 issue in the online digital editions, for more on this topic.)

Disparity of force can be illustrated in a variety of scenarios: unarmed attackers outnumbering a victim, huge size and strength disparity, much greater skill in unarmed combat or any of several other elements. One such element is position of disadvantage. Here, pinned in what eyewitness John Good described as a “ground and pound” by Martin, Zimmerman was all but helpless to stop the beating.

Zimmerman couldn’t escape — the reason why the “stand your ground” principle was not applied by the defense, even though the pundits erroneously linked this hot button topic to this case — and he had no reason to believe the potentially fatal beating was going to stop. Moreover, his head being smashed against concrete was really little different from a man with a concrete block smashing him in the head; either way, the contact was likely to result in death or great bodily harm if not brought to a halt immediately.

Defense co-counsel Don West alluded to this in his opening statement, when he told the jury Martin was “armed with the sidewalk.” And this is all before you look at Zimmerman’s statement declaring Martin saw his gun and was reaching for it! The jury came to understand this, too — which is why the clueless meme of “unarmed murdered by the armed” fell on its face in the end.

Lessons

There are several learning points here. After this highly publicized case, I wouldn’t be surprised if enrollment in Neighborhood Watch programs dropped significantly. Lesson: Few good deeds go unpunished.

Despite the furor this case raised among gun prohibitionists, the Kel-Tec PF-9 obviously saved Zimmerman’s life. Lesson: You never know when you’ll need the gun you’re licensed to carry — so carry it wherever you legally can.

It’s popular to say, “Never talk to the police.” But if Zimmerman hadn’t, he likely would have been arrested that night. The recorded interviews and reenactment saved him the ordeal of testimony and cross-examination, while still getting his story across. Hell, Zimmerman even took a lie detector test at the police station (voice stress analysis) and passed. Had it not been for the freak firestorm of politicized publicity, it’s unlikely he would have ever been charged. I personally would have said much less before having legal counsel with me, but talking to the police worked in this case. Lesson: Let the police know it was the other guy who attacked you, so they know what to look for as they investigate.

In the world of iPhone cameras, consider using yours to record at least sound and even video if possible. If Martin’s attack on Zimmerman had been recorded, I doubt he ever would have gone to trial. Conversely, if the plaintiff’s meme had been true, a discreet camcorder in Trayvon’s pocket would have sent George Zimmerman to prison by now. Lesson: Patrol car dash cams and TASER Cams have saved many cops from false allegations … and can save you, too.

There’s much to learn from this case. Books will be written about it, and I hope my friend Attorney Andrew Branca writes one. He sat through the trial in the courtroom and blogged about it daily at www.legalinsurrection.com. His insight as a lawyer, and particularly the comments of the countless trial attorneys who posted their take on things there, are most instructive. My own observations on the matter are found in more detail in my blog, beginning mid-July 2013, at www.backwoodshome.com/blogs/massadayoob.

I wish to express condolences to the families involved on both sides. If Trayvon Martin’s mother didn’t love him, she wouldn’t have practiced tough love and kicked him out and sent him to his father when he became uncontrollable at home. The Zimmermans have been through financial devastation, death threats and public excoriation — all undeserved. There are no winners in things like this. Finally, congratulations to Mark O’Mara and Don West for the defense, and to the honest witnesses called by both sides … and to a jury, which I believe did Justice.
By Massad Ayoob

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Situation:

Several police officers use necessary deadly force in the line of duty … and unwarranted legal actions are lodged against them.

Lesson:

Veteran street cop, SWAT Team member, police trainer and expert witness Kevin Davis offers life-saving and career-saving tips in a new book on how to investigate, analyze and most importantly, understand, such cases.

Police work has often been described as boiling down to “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” In southern New England, a wife abuser stabs his spouse and when she falls, stomps on her head and neck in front of a police officer. The cop leaves his gun in his holster when he could have drawn, fired and stopped him. When the horribly crippled woman sues the police department, she wins a seven-figure judgment. Frankly, I have no problem with this.

Down the eastern seaboard, another man with a knife takes a woman hostage. The cop involved in this case takes a carefully aimed shot and drops him with a well-placed .45 slug from his HK service pistol, saving her life. She sues him and the police department for the trauma of it all. I have a problem with her.

And, please, don’t think if you’re not a cop, you can’t be put in the same position.

Less than a week before writing this, I spoke with a young man who was working in a high-risk retail establishment when an armed robber came in with a drawn gun. When it became apparent the gunman was endangering one of his female coworkers, the young man simultaneously pulled her down out of the line of fire with one hand and drew his own legal carry pistol with the other — and shot the armed criminal dead.

Yes, you guessed it: she filed a lawsuit against him for — in essence — saving her life in too much of a violent and scary fashion.

Cops have more experience dealing with this sort of aftermath than “civilians,” and therefore can offer some valuable lessons to armed private citizens. At the annual International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers (ILEETA) conference, I have the privilege of running the panel discussion of experts on firearms and deadly force training. Of late, I’ve made sure one of the panelists is Kevin Davis.

Davis is a contributor to Law Officer, which describes him as a full-time officer with more than 25 years in law enforcement. His previous assignments include patrol, corrections and plainclothes narcotics investigations. He’s a former SWAT member, team leader and instructor — currently assigned to the training bureau where he specializes in use of force, suspect control and firearms training.

Kevin has a new book, Use Of Force Investigations: A Manual For Law Enforcement. It’s available in print or for download from Amazon. I recently finished reading it, and whether the reader is a law enforcement officer, a security professional or a law-abiding armed citizen, there is much we can learn from it.

Kevin goes to court, you see, as one of those police trainers serving as an expert witness for other cops who are falsely accused — whether criminally or civilly — of having wrongfully used force. He’s “been there, done that.” The lessons he’s learned are applicable to anyone who keeps or carries a defensive firearm.

Lessons Learned

“The worst report of investigation in a use of force case is — no report whatsoever,” writes Kevin Davis. “Quite honestly, if your people did the right thing, they, and you, need to properly document it.”

Lesson: There is an old axiom, which holds, “If it’s not written down, it didn’t happen.” He who waits until he’s in court to explain his use of force is open to the accusation he is making up late excuses, and if what he’s saying were true, he would have said it earlier. Kevin warns us this is particularly the case if we’ve been injured in the incident, and obviously can’t draft a report while receiving medical treatment.

He writes, “Officers who are unable to complete a report due to injury, for instance, should still be interviewed by a supervisor and make an official statement. On one case I worked, the officer’s statement was never taken in the months after the incident and he was subsequently charged with criminal offenses. If the investigating supervisor had interviewed the officer (who went to the hospital that night with his injuries) he would have found the officer had a perfectly sound explanation for his actions.”

Kevin writes about another case, in which he was hired by the Fraternal Order of Police as an expert witness on behalf of a cop who stood accused in criminal court of wrongfully shooting an “unarmed man.” The original report, poorly worded, simply described the officer struggling with a guy who had snatched some bills out of an open cash register. Does this sound like a situation to justify shooting someone? It apparently didn’t seem like it to the prosecutor’s office, either.

But, when Kevin dug into the facts, it turned out the incident went far beyond a simple description. The cash-snatcher turned out to be a crack monster stoked on rock cocaine, a substance known to infuse its users with what most of us would consider superhuman strength. The cop, a man of substantial size, later said the suspect threw him around like Hulk Hogan.

Moreover, the suspect had been trying to snatch the officer’s service pistol from its duty holster. Physically overpowered by the suspect, the cop was certain he was about to be disarmed and shot by a man he could not control — who then might use his service pistol to murder citizens. The trained policeman came to the logical conclusion the only way to end the deadly danger this man posed to him and the public was to shoot him. (Lesson: a man going for your gun is … a man going for a gun!)

It made all the difference, and the case against the officer went away — but not without another teachable moment. Kevin Davis relates: “I’ll cut to the chase and tell you we were, after interviewing the officer and examining the video evidence used to indict him, able to have the case successfully dismissed. Sadly, his elderly father had passed away prior to the dismissal and went to his grave without seeing his son vindicated.

“This type of result can occur when an ill-informed agency either: develops and maintains a poor policy; fails to train its supervisors in use of force investigations; fails to train its officers in use of force and proper reporting or fails to implement all of these things in an actual incident.”

And therein lies another lesson: we can pull the knife out of the back of someone who was stabbed, but the wound still remains. It’s true in the physical sense, and in the greater macrocosm of Life.

Supreme Court Decisions

Speaking of lessons: Know the rules. Davis reminds us we need to know the laws encompassing what we do, and we need to understand them as well as or better than those who judge us.

Davis relates, “I once testified as an expert in defense of a police sergeant who was charged with Felonious Assault in a use of force incident … The prosecutor, on cross-examination, handed me the Graham v. Connor decision and asked something like, ‘Well Mr. Expert Witness, here’s the Supreme Court decision in Graham v. Connor. Can you show me where it says (what you just testified)?’

“Reviewing the Graham paperwork he handed me, I found this section and quoted it to the jury. The prosecutor quickly grabbed the case paperwork away from me and said, ‘This isn’t what it means …’ I looked at the jury and asked, ‘Do you want me to read it again?’ The officer was acquitted. In the Graham decision, the court stated the test of reasonableness is, ‘not capable of precise definition or mechanical application.’ This means there is no single answer to a use of force examination.”

The bottom line was, Davis understood the SCOTUS decision better than the lawyer. This well served both Davis and the officer who benefited from his testimony.

Graham v. Connor is a guidepost in law enforcement. Among other things, this landmark decision held “reasonableness of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.”

In addition, “The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments — in tense, uncertain and rapidly-evolving circumstances — about the amount of force necessary in a particular situation.”

Garrity Issues

Most people are familiar with the Miranda rule, the warning that anything said to the interviewer can be used against the speaker in court, and the speaker has the right to remain silent. Police, unlike armed citizens, do not get this right. They get different warnings, which, like Miranda, come from decisions made by the Supreme Court. These come from Garrity v. New Jersey and Kalkines v. United States and are known generically as “Garrity Warnings.”

Such a warning sounds like, “You are being questioned as part of an internal and/or administrative investigation. You will be asked a number of specific questions concerning your official duties, and you must answer these questions to the best of your ability. Failure to answer completely and truthfully may result in disciplinary action, including dismissal. Your answers and any information derived from them may be used against you in administrative proceedings. However, neither your answers nor any information derived from them may be used against you in criminal proceedings, except if you knowingly and willfully make false statements.”

Kevin Davis writes, “Want to see a perfect example of this? Read 13 Minutes by R. Blaine Jorg. An officer was abandoned by his agency, charged and tried for involuntary manslaughter in the in-custody death of a suspect. He was subsequently acquitted in a jury trial.

“I strongly recommend the book for a realistic look at the politics of force at its worst. I have worked on numerous cases where officers did the right thing, operated within agency policy and used an objective, reasonable amount of force, only to be charged with crimes by their own agency. This is most often the result of inept investigators and flawed or political investigations.”

The book discusses the subtleties of Garrity issues, with lots of valuable insight. For example, Kevin points out an investigator from an outside agency cannot compel a statement from an involved officer via Garrity. Instead, it would take a supervisor from within the officer’s agency to make it happen.

Investigation Scars

The real-life OIS (officer-involved shooting) is far removed from what the entertainment industry has conditioned the public to believe. TV and movie cops seem to shoot people as a routine part of their workday, never so much as write a report and at the end, ride off into the sunset like a cowboy in a Western movie. When police shootings happen in reality, however, the sunset for the officer is far, far away.

Here’s the reality from Kevin Davis: “An officer is locked in a suspect holding room (cell without bars) at the station waiting for investigators to interview him after he was forced to shoot an armed robber. He then is forced to sit in the same room as the Chief of Police and Union President stand toe-to-toe and yell at each other about procedure and protocol.

“After a shooting on the nightshift, the involved officers are forced to stay at the station for hours until they are finally interviewed by detectives. When they are finally allowed to leave, they’ve been up for over 24 hours without sleep. Officers who’ve just fought and won a fight for their very lives have to endure these circumstances, conditions and treatment by their own agencies.”

Kevin points out, in the US, police officers kill less than 500 people a year — and in most years, it’s fewer than 400.
He writes, “For most agencies, serious uses of force as well as shootings are infrequent. Some agencies never experience an officer-involved shooting. It’s a bad thing as well — agencies do not have a ‘system,’ protocol or fluid policy and are forced to ‘wing it’ which can damage the process and the officers involved.”

Finding A Balance

The rights of the officer who fired must be balanced against the safety of the public. Kevin presents an example of a supervisor’s warning attributed to the LAPD.

It reads as follows: “Officer, I am ordering you to give me a public safety statement. Due to the immediate need to take action, you do not have the right to wait for representation before answering these limited questions.

1) In what direction did you fire pistol rounds? 2) If you know of anyone who was injured, what is his or her location? 3) If any suspects are outstanding, what are their descriptions? 4) What was their direction of travel? 5) How long have they been gone? 6) What are they wanted for? 7) What weapons do they have? 8) Does any evidence need protection? 9) Where is it located?

“Officer, in order to prevent the contamination of your statement, I order you not to discuss this incident with anyone, including other supervisors or staff officers, prior to the arrival of the assigned investigators, with the exception of your legal representatives.”

Understand Kevin Davis is not an apologist taking the position police can do no wrong. He writes, “I have been consulted or given testimony in a number of misdemeanor and felony cases involving police use of force or criminal trials of suspects involving force or firearms. I have testified both for and against officers.

“As a proud member of the profession, it saddens me to testify against a brother in blue, but if they are guilty of violations of policy or law, then it’s my responsibility to be honest and protect my profession along with my brothers and sisters in uniform.”

The several cases plucked from Use Of Force Investigations and discussed above represent just the tip of the iceberg of the many actual incidents and the extensive collective experience Kevin Davis put into his book. I would call it nothing less than required reading for police supervisors and detectives who have the responsibility for investigating shootings and other use of force instances. It is likewise a “must read” for those in the legal profession who try this type of case.
It is every bit as important to anyone working today with a badge and a gun. I agree with Kevin: a lot of cops don’t understand their rights, and people who are bosses but not leaders throw some to the wolves.

I would strongly recommend this book for any private citizen who keeps or carries a firearm for personal-defense. At the deadly force level, use of force guidelines is very similar — whether the gun is carried on the authority of a badge or permit. It’s also of great value beforehand to anyone who might find themselves on the jury of such a case.

Use Of Force Investigations goes through the entire spectrum of physical force, from non-lethal through intermediate force and of course, lethal force. While it is of great value to everyone I just mentioned, Kevin is a cop and wrote it for cops, so I’ll leave you with this final quote from his excellent book:

“Society expects officers to be ‘faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings with a single bound,’ to defy the law of physics à la The Matrix and to read a person’s mind ascertaining their intent.

“An officer must respond with the reflexes of an Olympian, shoot like Annie Oakley and have the endurance of an Ironman competitor. They are expected to reason with the unreasonable and talk to the manic, depressed, mentally ill, emotionally disturbed and hyper-violent with equal aplomb. When assaulted with verbal insults, spit, punches or targeted with human urine or feces, they must wipe it off with a smile and a deep understanding it was the uniform which was targeted and not them personally.

“They cannot feel fear or anger and must wait for a suspect to fire first. When they fire back, they should shoot the gun out of the suspect’s hand with one round. Their memories must be photographic and their written reports pieces of literature. When confronted with violence they must apply minimal levels of masterful non-injurious control like a Jedi Master.”

Kevin Davis is a realist. He knows his topic deeply and … he gets it.
By Massad Ayoob

Situation:

A black lawman fights prejudice and bad guys for more than three decades, filling several graves along the way while leaving a distinguished legacy.

Lesson:

Marksmanship enhances survival and the advantages of the “patrol rifle” aren’t a new discovery. There’s more to the survival mindset than a willingness to pull the trigger.

Last October I was in Fort Smith, Ark., once the bailiwick of “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker’s court. History painted Parker as a cross between Torquemada and Roy Bean, but the man presided over a vast and lawless area spanning several Indian nations and what is now Oklahoma. Trying more than 13,000 cases gave him extraordinary experience, and he was nominated by President Grant as chief justice of the Supreme Court in the Utah Territory. One of Parker’s deputies was Bass Reeves, the first black man sworn in to the post.

While in Fort Smith, I had the pleasure of meeting Jim Dunn, a retired lawyer who is now heading up a project to build a museum there dedicated to the U.S. Marshal’s Service. He mentioned the museum owns a Colt single action, which once belonged to Reeves. Afterward, I realized I was long overdue to write about the long-dead lawman.

Bass Reeves was born a slave in Texas somewhere between 1824 and 1840 — birth records were not kept for people who were viewed as property in those sad days. His descendants peg his birth year at about 1839. Reeves grew up to be a favorite of his master, a man named Stewart, serving as his valet, bodyguard and companion from age 13.

The day came when he suddenly fled — some say it was because he had struck his master, which in those days could have cost him his life. The escape path to freedom led him to Indian Country and then to the Civil War. Ultimately, he ended up with the United States Marshals, which he joined in 1875. Reeves was one of the few black men in America wearing a badge at the time. In the following decades, he would make thousands of arrests … and kill 14 men in the line of duty.

The First Kill

The following account of Reeves’ first justifiable homicide in the line of duty comes from the very detailed biography written by his great-nephew, Judge Paul Brady. Reeves was in the process of arresting a bootlegger and his conspicuously armed bodyguard who had been selling whiskey from a horse-drawn wagon.

Brady writes, “The peddler immediately raised his hands, but the gunman began cursing. ‘A Black badge don’t mean a damned thing to me!’ He swung the rifle towards Bass; in mid-swing, Bass fired two bullets into his chest. He was dead before he fell from the driver’s seat. Bass never forgot that first killing.”

This incident apparently inspired Brady to title his biography The Black Badge. It wouldn’t be the only time a white man’s refusal to accept the authority of a black man lead to trouble in Reeves’ career. Years later, he was one of several deputy marshals transporting a gaggle of Federal prisoners — some of them white — to a penitentiary.

One particular white man observing this loudly took exception to a black man with a gun issuing orders to white folks. A local police officer took up the complainer’s side. Guns were drawn. Only the timely intervention of a senior deputy marshal prevented what might be called today a “blue-on-blue” shooting.

The Guns of Bass Reeves

The Colt Single Action Army revolver was Reeves’ preferred sidearm. In his book Black, Red and Deadly, historian Art Burton points out, “Reeves was an expert with the old cap and ball guns, but favored the Colt .45 and .38-40 pistols with his Winchester rifle chambered for the same cartridge. Reeves was also known to sometimes carry a double-barreled shotgun in his arsenal. He wore two pistols, handle butts forward for a quick draw.”

The SAA in the Marshals’ Museum, Mr. Dunn advised me, is a .32-20. It passed from Reeves to his daughter Alice, then to his favorite nephew and finally to Judge Brady who donated it to the museum. Colt historians track it back to 1890’s production, shipped to a hardware store in St. Louis. Dunn believes there are two reasons why Reeves kept it as a souvenir from one of the countless felons he arrested.

First, the big deputy marshal normally carried .38-40, .44-40 or .45 Colt sixguns, and the .32-20 would have been light for his tastes. But, second, the revolver in question has six notches on the handle … and Dunn’s research has determined Bass Reeves never “notched” any of his own firearms.

Another gun Colt shipped to a St. Louis hardware store, this one in 1902, also has an origin tracking to Bass Reeves. Chambered for .45 Colt and wearing a 4¾” barrel, this well-worn Single Action Army bears serial number 233872 and was sold by Reeves’ daughter to collector Tom Odom of Alabama in the 1960’s.

An Adept Marksman

Reeves had a reputation of being one of the best marksmen on the frontier, and his path to becoming so was an unusual one. He was taught to shoot by the same master, Stewart, who didn’t allow him to read.

Judge Brady observed, “Demonstrating the contradictions of the times and his indulgence, Stewart did, however, allow his trusted slave the use of his guns for hunting. To Stewart, knowledge was a far more powerful and dangerous thing than a firearm. Stewart’s decision regarding reading had a profound effect on Bass’ life. He never learned to read or write, but the use of his master’s guns would prove to be closely tied to his destiny… It was soon apparent the young slave had a good eye and quick hands.

“This talent gave Bass a sense of self-confidence. He became an excellent marksman, easily surpassing his master who was himself a poor shot. Stewart was not concerned or intimidated with Bass’ prowess with a gun. On the contrary, the amused master took pride in Bass’ growing reputation as a marksman, and entered him in turkey shoots and other trials by firearms.”

Bass Reeves’ biographers are unanimous in stating he quickly became so unbeatable in these matches he was banned from competing. Skill in such events was something he had in common with a contemporary he probably never met, Wyatt Earp, and such famous lawman/gunfighters of later periods as Jelly Bryce, Col. Charles Askins and multiple members of the NYPD Stakeout Squad.

Having mastered the long gun in his teens, he did not reach the same level with handguns until he carried one for a living, tutored by a marshal named Arch Landon. According to Brady, “Though Bass was a crack shot with a rifle and shotgun, he was limited with a handgun. Landon offered to help his new friend hone his handgun skills. Bass readily accepted. Landon taught Bass the key to handling a gun was to quickly get it into action and fire accurately.

“True to form, Bass spent almost every day practicing. His diligence again paid off. His prowess with a handgun soon rivaled his ability with the long guns. D.C. Gideon later noted, ‘Bass handled a revolver with the ease and grace acquired only after years of practice.’”
This practice would save Reeves’ life on more than one occasion during his long career. Some of his shootings would sound like scriptwriter fiction from a cowboy movie — if they weren’t firmly lodged as historical fact.

The Dozier Shooting

According to his daughter Alice Reeves Spahn, Bass Reeves felt the high point of his career came in bringing to justice one Bob Dozier. Dozier was a skillful professional robber — and a serial killer and torturer. Reeves caught up with him in 1891, while leading his posse down a steep, thickly wooded ravine during a raging thunderstorm. Historian Art Burton tells the story in his biography of Reeves, Black Gun, Silver Star.

Burton writes, “The instant they reached the bottom of the ravine, the blast of a gunshot greeted them, and a slug whined past Bass’ head. Bass and his posse left their horses in a hurry for the cover of the trees, expecting more shots from the hidden ambushers. After a few minutes, Bass saw the dim shadow of a man slipping from tree to tree. He waited until the shadow was caught between two trees and fired two quick shots. The shadow dropped and fell.

“This eliminated one of the men but his two shots had given away his position to a second man who immediately opened fire. Bass jerked upright, took a reeling step away from the protective shield of the trees, and fell full length to the ground facing his attacker. He waited with his gun cocked and ready in his hand.

“For several minutes the ravine was relatively quiet, only the rain and the crack of lightning could be heard. Bass lay waiting in the mud and rain, fully exposed. Finally, a man stepped from behind a tree laughing aloud, convinced Bass was dead and his posse had run away. Bass smiled to himself as the lighting lit up the man’s face. The long trail was over. He was facing Bob Dozier.

“Bass waited until Dozier was only a few yards away before he raised up and ordered him to stop and drop his gun. Dozier stopped laughing, his eyes wide with surprise. He hesitated for a moment, then dropped into a crouch and attempted to shoot once again as Bass lay stretched out ready and waiting in the mud before him. Before he could level his gun, Bass shot first, hitting him in the neck and killing him instantly.”

The Brunter Brothers

Bass Reeves was a huge man for his time, described as standing 6′ to 6’2″ tall, and weighing about 200 pounds. He was as famous in his jurisdiction for his physical strength as for his marksmanship. On a day in 1884, he had reason to be grateful for both attributes. The big deputy marshal was surprised at gunpoint by three brothers named Brunter. He calmly told them he had warrants for their arrest. They burst out laughing … at which time he made his move.

Grabbing the barrel of the nearest man’s gun in a vise-like grip and holding the muzzle away from himself, Reeves drew one of his Colts with his other hand and opened fire, quickly dropping the other two brothers. By now, the first man had desperately launched three harmless shots from the diverted barrel of his revolver.

Reeves smashed his Colt .45 into the man’s head, ending the fight. By all accounts, Reeves’ bullets proved fatal to the two men he shot that day. Historians differ as to the fate of the third brother. In Judge Brady’s account of the incident, it appears the two who were shot died immediately, but the third is not said to have died. Describing the same incident, however, Burton writes, “Reeves proceeded to hit this outlaw in the head with his pistol and killed him instantly.”

Reeves’ ability to fight with his hands and his gun would save him another time, against a man with which he had two gunfights.

The Jim Webb Incidents

Jim Webb was a Texas ranch foreman gone bad, a bully who accelerated to arson and murder. The big deputy went after him with posse-man Floyd Wilson and caught up with him in a ranch house in their jurisdiction. Confronted by a loaded revolver in Webb’s hand, Reeves smacked the gun away and grabbed him in a chokehold with his left hand, while drawing with his right and shoving his gun into the man’s face.

Gasping for breath, the fugitive surrendered. But Webb’s partner Frank Smith fired two shots at Reeves, both missing. Judge Brady writes, “With Webb completely controlled by his left hand, Bass fired one shot. Smith fell to the ground, the fight burned out of him by a .45 slug in his abdomen. Still gripping Webb’s throat, Bass instructed Wilson to handcuff Webb, then mapped plans to return his prisoners to the court in Paris, Texas.”

Smith died en route from Reeves’ bullet; Reeves turned Webb over to the proper authorities and went on his way. Time passed — in that time the Dozier shooting occurred — and Reeves learned Webb had posted bail after he had been in jail for many months. Reeves went on the man’s trail again.

The trail ended in a rifle duel, with Webb firing the first four shots at Reeves, who was on horseback. Those bullets reportedly clipped the brim of the deputy marshal’s hat, grazed his saddle horn, cut a button off his coat and shot the reins out of his hands. His horse shied, and Reeves dove to the ground with his rifle and returned fire. Jim Webb fell to the ground. According to biographer Brady, “It was later discovered all three bullets had hit Webb’s body within a hand’s width of each other.”

The deputy approached the downed outlaw, as did eyewitnesses John Cantrell and Jim Bywaters. The latter wrote down the dying gunman’s last words on the back of a freight receipt. He said Webb called Reeves “a brave, brave man” and he wanted Reeves to have his revolver and holster. His last words, according to Bywaters, were “I have killed 11 men, four of them in Indian territory, and I expected you to make the 12th.”
Brady, perhaps significantly, doesn’t mention the distances involved in the Webb killing. However, historian Art Burton reveals Reeves’ account, “(I) shot twice. He dropped and when I picked him up, I found my two bullets had struck within a 1/2″ of each other. He shot four times, and every shot he kept running up closer to me. He was 500 yards away from me when I killed him.”

Braggadocio? Maybe. It’s “a far piece” for a pistol-caliber Winchester with iron sights. However, Burton also records another of Bass Reeves’ shootings in which he supposedly killed a fleeing felon from a quarter-mile away with a single shot from his Winchester.

Fast Draw Contests

At least two of Bass Reeves’ fatal shootings were fast draw contests right out of the cowboy movies. Dr. Jesse Mooney reported treating him for a gunshot wound of the left thigh, a few feet away from a corpse on the floor — still holding a gun in its hand. He said Reeves told him the other man had drawn on him, and “He was real fast, but like a lot of them, they couldn’t shoot both fast and straight.” One of Reeves’ most famous gunfights was the 1889 killing of outlaw Tom Story, who went for his own revolver while the marshal’s Colts were still holstered. Bass Reeves drew and killed him before he could fire.

Grim Times

For much of his career, Reeves preferred to carry revolvers and rifles of the same caliber. It wasn’t just about ammo logistics for him — it was also about hard experience. Next to a campfire in 1884, he discovered he had mistakenly loaded a .45 Colt revolver cartridge into his .44-40 Winchester. Trying to pry the jammed round out of the magazine with his pocketknife, he accidentally discharged the rifle. The bullet struck his cook in the neck, mortally wounding him. Reeves was subsequently tried for murder. Though acquitted at trial, his substantial legal expenses depleted his life savings and left him financially hurting for the rest of his life. Some things just don’t change over the centuries …
A time came when Reeves’ son shot and killed his own adulterous wife. A grieving Bass Reeves arrested him and personally brought him in. His son was convicted and served hard time.

After more than 30 years, Bass Reeves left the Marshals. He was in his 70’s when he worked for two years as a Muskogee, Okla., police officer — walking with a cane but still carrying one revolver on the hip and another in a shoulder holster. He died of natural causes (Bright’s Disease) in January 1910. According to legend, he was so feared by then no crime was ever committed on his beat in Muskogee.

Legacy

Remembered for killing 14 men in gunfights, those who knew him said Bass Reeves was most proud of the thousands he had arrested without having to harm them. Famous for clever subterfuge, he used more disguises than Sherlock Holmes to successfully serve his warrants. Ashamed of his own illiteracy, he made sure his children were well educated, and he memorized Bible passages he had learned from his devout mother to preach to his prisoners on the long ride to Judge Parker’s court.

Reeves believed in justice so strongly he arrested his own son. He left a legacy to the future showing how well-armed, well-prepared good people could develop the skill and alertness which allowed him to survive extreme criminal violence — which surely would have killed lesser men — and how good people could victoriously survive mindless prejudice.

The US Marshal’s Museum is still a work in progress, accepting contributions at www.usmarshalsmuseum.com. I hope to visit one day and take a look at the planned Bass Reeves exhibit. For now, I’ll make do with my long look at the statue on the grounds of Judge Parker’s historic courthouse.

Astride a horse 19 hands high is a proud Bass Reeves, Winchester in hand, Colt on hip and double-barrel shotgun in saddle scabbard — as immovably resolute in bronze as he was in life.
By Massad Ayoob

Situation:

You, a citizen, hear gunfire and learn a bank is being robbed and innocent people are in danger. Police haven’t yet arrived on-scene … and you have a gun at hand.

Lesson:

A danger ignored is a danger unleashed. Rifles are better than handguns for gunfights. Defensive firearms must be easily accessible and ready to go. And, yes, determined armed citizens absolutely can beat murderous criminals at their own game.

The “Great Northfield, Minn., Bank Robbery” of 1876 ranks among the most spectacular of armed citizens’ triumphs against violent criminals in the history of the US. On Thursday, September 7 of that year, eight men rode into Northfield, wearing calf-length duster coats to conceal the heavy handguns in their belt holsters — while mounted on fine thoroughbreds. By contrast, most Northfield residents used horse-drawn wagons and buggies for transportation, and dusters weren’t common local garb. Long after, one researcher would comment it was rather like a band of Hell’s Angels roaring into a quiet town on choppers, wearing their colors and expecting to go unnoticed.

It turned out they were noticed by townsfolk, but largely ignored. They had filtered in days before. As early as the previous Saturday, a townsman had recognized one of them as the notorious bank robber and killer, Jesse James. He tried to warn others. No one, apparently, took him seriously.

Shortly after 2:00 p.m., the robbery went down. Three men entered the First National Bank. Historians may debate this, but the general consensus is the three men were: Jesse’s brother Frank James, his cousin Bob Younger and Charlie Pitts. Cole Younger and Clell Miller followed this initial entry team, according to Carl Breihan, the historian and former police commissioner who wrote The Escapades of Frank and Jesse James. Other researchers believe they stood guard outside the bank’s front door. Waiting farther away as “outriders” — perimeter guards of the primary robbery team — were Bill Chadwell, Jim Younger and possibly Jesse James, though some believe he was with the gang’s “entry team.”
What happened next would take place on two battlefronts — inside the bank and on the streets outside it.

Inside The Bank

As the entry team burst into the bank, nickel-plated revolvers drawn, some of the employees initially thought it was a joke. The bandit later identified as Frank James clarified the situation for them by yelling, “Throw up your hands, for we intend to rob this bank, and if you holler we will blow your God-damned brains out!”

The employees stalled for time. When James insisted the cashier identify himself, acting cashier Joseph Heywood blurted, “He’s not in.” The robbers took time to give the bank employees a cursory pat down for weapons, and only found a jackknife in the pocket of assistant bookkeeper Frank Wilcox, which they ignored.

Frank James held his revolver inches from Heywood’s face and demanded he give them access to the money, but Heywood replied coolly there was a time lock on the safe he couldn’t open. This was a bluff: The safe door was unlocked and only a handle-turn away from being opened. It was at about this point the inside robbery team heard a commotion on the street outside, and then gunfire.

This predictably aggravated the mood of the criminals inside. Charlie Pitts drew a knife, put it to Heywood’s neck, and threatened to slash his throat if he didn’t get them the cash immediately. The cashier managed to break away from him and run toward the door, shouting “Murder! Murder! Murder!” Frank James furiously pistol-whipped Heywood to the floor.

Another bank employee thought about taking action. In his excellent book on the Northfield incident, Shot All to Hell, Mark Lee Gardner writes, “During the commotion with Heywood, (bank teller Alonzo) Bunker slowly edged over toward a shelf below the teller’s window — his eyes on a loaded .32-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver he could see there. But Younger saw the teller’s movement and also spotted the revolver. The outlaw snatched the pistol from the shelf. ‘You needn’t try to get hold of that,’ Younger said as he slipped the revolver into a pocket. ‘You couldn’t do anything with that little derringer anyway.’”

James fired a shot near Heywood, presumably to intimidate him. Bunker took advantage of the distraction to run to the back door. Charlie Pitts chased him and managed to put a bullet through his shoulder, but the teller escaped.

Roughly at this point, Cole Younger rode his horse up to the front door of the bank and screamed to his henchmen inside, “For God’s sake, come out! They are shooting us all to pieces.” Bob Younger and Charlie Pitts ran outside. Enraged, Frank James fired a shot at Heywood, missed, then walked up to him and shot him in the head point-blank — killing Heywood instantly — before he followed the others out.

In The Street

The robbery had blown up in the James-Younger gang’s face almost immediately. Two townsmen, J.S. Allen and Henry Wheeler, were among the first witnesses to spot what was going on. Gang member Clell Miller grabbed Allen and drew his gun, shoving it in the man’s face and snarling, “You son of a bitch, don’t you holler!” But Allen was able to pull away and run. As he did so, Wheeler shouted, “Robbery! They are robbing the bank!” The frustrated Miller fired at him, but missed. Wheeler sprinted around a corner and out of the line of fire as he raised a cry that would be remembered word-for-word forever after …“Get your guns, boys! They’re robbing the bank!”

The boys did exactly that.

Allen owned a hardware store nearby, and began handing out guns and ammo to all who were willing to fight. The first to get into the action was a farmer named Elias Stacy, grabbing a shotgun from Allen. Seeing Clell Miller mount his thoroughbred, Stacy cut loose with the shotgun. Witnesses said Miller appeared to be blown off his horse by the blast.

However, he was back on his feet momentarily: In the haste of the moment, the ammunition shoved into the shotgun had been birdshot instead of buck or ball. The tiny pellets hit Miller in the face, painfully disorienting him, but none penetrated through the skull or reached the eye sockets.
Up the street was another hardware store, owned by one Ansel Manning. He snatched a Remington rolling block single-shot rifle in one hand and a fistful of cartridges, stuffing one into the chamber on the run. Emerging onto the street, he and two of the robbers saw each other simultaneously. The gang members ducked down behind their horses.
Thinking quickly, Manning deprived one outlaw of cover by simply shooting the horse with a .45-70 bullet. As the animal collapsed, Manning took cover to reload, but found his rifle had jammed.

At this point, author Gardner recounts, “(Pharmacist George) Bates, positioned in the front door of a clothing store, had secured a shotgun and aimed it at the bandits. But try as he might, he could not get the gun to go off. Disgusted, he tossed the shotgun away and grabbed a fine revolver — only to discover it was unloaded. Still, whenever a rider came close, he pointed the empty revolver at him from the doorway, shouting ‘Now I’ve got you.’ Each time, the robber spun his horse and fired at the druggist, who ducked inside amid showers of glass and wood splinters.”

The Fight Continues

Henry Wheeler, who had shouted the call to arms, finally got one himself at a nearby hotel, the Dampier House. It was a Civil War-vintage Smith percussion carbine and the clerk only had four paper cartridges and caps for it. Quickly loading the rifle and running upstairs to a higher vantage point, he fired from a window at Jim Younger but missed both him and his horse. By the time he reloaded, his best target was Clell Miller, who was also mounted.

Bracing the fore-end on a windowsill, Wheeler squeezed off his second shot and Miller toppled off his horse. The gunman attempted to rise, but then collapsed. The .50 caliber slug from the old cap n’ ball had torn through his shoulder and transected the subclavian artery. Miller, out of the fight, quickly hemorrhaged to death.

Cole Younger dismounted, and seeing his friend was dying, stripped him of his guns. At this moment, he was hit in the hip: Ansel Manning had gotten his .45-70 back up and running. Gardner writes, “Cole was lucky the shot had not done more damage than it did, as Manning’s bullet first struck one of the stairway’s balusters, taking some of the energy off the lead bullet, as well as deflecting its path.” It was at this point Cole Younger began yelling to his cohorts inside the bank to come out and abandon the mission.
Manning reloaded the Remington again, and his next target of opportunity came in the form of Bill Chadwell. Firing offhand — from 80 yards, according to historian Breihan — he center-punched Chadwell, who moments later slumped off his horse and died in the dusty street. Another of the gang ran up to him and stripped his corpse of his revolvers, too. (“If you die, we get to split up your gear” may not be as new a meme as some think.)

Cole Younger — clearly enraged at the way things were going — took aim at a man in the street and fired. Nicolaus Gustavson, hit in the head, collapsed instantly. He would die some time later of cerebral edema induced by the wound. A new immigrant from Scandinavia, he most likely couldn’t speak English and therefore didn’t understand the warnings being shouted up and down the street.

By now, the “inside team” was emerging from the bank. Bob Younger, finding his horse dead, aimed at Manning. Gardner relates, “As Bob swung his revolver up to shoot Manning, the hardware dealer leveled his rifle at (the) outlaw, who promptly darted behind a box beneath the stairs. Bob kept his revolver up, its hammer at full cock, waiting for a chance to fire. For a few seconds, the two weaved back and forth in a deadly game of peek-a-boo, until Cole yelled at Bob to shoot through the stairs. Manning retreated behind the stone corner as Bob’s bullets popped jagged wooden splinters off the staircase.”

Meanwhile, Wheeler had reloaded his Civil War relic, and came to Manning’s rescue with a shot shattering Bob Younger’s right elbow. Younger gamely grabbed his revolver with his left hand and kept shooting, but to no avail.

By now, most of the gang was in the saddle. Bob Younger, one arm dangling and his horse dead, cried out “My God, boys, you’re not going to leave — I’m shot!” His brother Cole grabbed Bob by his good arm and swung him up behind him onto his own horse … and the gang galloped out of town.

The Pursuit

According to most researchers, what followed next was the biggest manhunt in American history at the time. Many in the ragtag posse were citizens who had taken up arms to pursue the thieving murderers. Though the fantasy would persist the James’s and the Younger’s were Robin Hoods who only stole from the rich — bank deposits weren’t insured in those days and the citizens knew the money the gang tried to steal was their own lifesavings.

The pursuit was far too involved to relate here, and I’d strongly encourage readers to peruse All Shot To Hell by Mark Lee Gardner, a book I’ve mentioned already. This work appears to encompass the most detailed research into this incident ever compiled.

The hunt lasted a week; most of the unseasonable, constant and chilling rain made it difficult for the fugitives with no shelter and little food. The James Brothers struck off on their own, abandoning their three cousins, the Youngers — two of whom were seriously wounded — and Charlie Pitt.

The posse caught up with Pitt and the Youngers on September 14 near the little village of Madelia, Minn., at the Watonwan River. They refused an order to surrender, and chose to shoot it out. If Cole Younger thought they were being shot to pieces in Northfield, he “hadn’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Watonwan County Sheriff James Glispin faced off with Charlie Pitts, five yards apart in a stand of willows. They fired simultaneously. Pitts, with a revolver, missed. The sheriff, with a single-shot rifle, didn’t. His bullet centered Pitts high in the sternum, dropping him instantly and fatally.

As the firefight continued, the posse outgunned the outlaws. Jim Younger was the first of the brothers to drop, rendered unconscious by a bullet shattering his jaw, lodging in his palate. Brawny Cole Younger went down next; hit multiple times including a bullet in the head, barely missing the brain. Bob Younger, his gun empty and wounded again, finally declared surrender. All had been shot multiple times. It was over at last.

Epilogue

The Younger brothers survived to go to prison. Bob died there of TB in 1889. Jim and Cole were paroled in 1901, Jim committing suicide a year later. Cole Younger made a living writing about his life and doing a Wild West show with Frank James. Cole died from natural causes in 1916. The James brothers escaped. Jesse formed a new gang and member Robert Ford later murdered him in 1882. Frank James surrendered to the Governor of Missouri with a sweetheart deal to keep him from facing trial for the Northfield raid. Tried and acquitted for two lesser crimes, he lived as a free man for decades, dying of natural causes in 1915 at age 72.

Chadwell and Pitts had been known to go by other aliases, creating confusion as to the names of the non-related gang members. Today’s historians generally agree it was Chadwell who died in Northfield, and Pitts, in Madelia. Henry Wheeler, one of the courageous armed citizens, was a medical student and reportedly ended up with at least one of the dead criminals’ bodies for study purposes.
The gang left the bank with only $26.70.

Lessons

When you hear gun prohibitionists claim armed citizens will have no chance against criminals, consider this: The armed citizens of Northfield blasted half of the 8-man gang, killing two and wounding two. None of those armed citizens were so much as wounded. The two innocents slain, and the bank man who was wounded, were unarmed and helpless to fight back against the murderers. Beyond those injuries were only cuts and minor graze wounds on the good guys’ side.

According to some accounts, the citizens inflicted even more damage. In Jesse James, Legendary Outlaw, Roger Bruns writes on September 17, 1876, the still-fleeing James brothers forced Dr. Sidney Moshier to “treat Frank James’ wounds. His left leg had been badly shot up at Northfield.” Another account has Jesse slightly wounded also, meaning the armed citizens may have shot as many as six of the eight bandits.

Danger ignored can quickly become danger unleashed. There had been ample warning, and ample time to call in authorities. It didn’t happen in Northfield. When a resident mentioned the ominous strangers to former Police Chief Elias Hobbs, Hobbs blew him off as being “too suspicious.” Hobbs, unarmed, had wound up impotently screaming at people to throw rocks at the robbers as the gun battle went down in the street.

Decrepit, obsolete weapons one must run to retrieve and load will terribly slow down response to criminals who strike heavily armed, with their guns loaded and in hand. Birdshot is not the munition of choice for dealing with homicidal criminals. You want a gun sighted-in for you. Manning wisely chose the one gun in his inventory he had personally fired, and knew where it hit: His Remington allowed him to shoot Chadwell out of his saddle at 80 yards.

It appears none of the good people were carrying their own concealed handguns that day. If they had been, the odds might have quickly evened on the street outside the bank when Clell Miller started the shooting there.

Inside the bank, the murderous robbers ruled. The one staged gun teller Bunker was hoping to reach wasn’t where he could easily access it before he was “under the gun” himself. Had the employees been trained and equipped to quickly draw and open fire when the trio initially burst in, the outcome inside the bank might have been vastly different.
On the hardware side, note the armed citizens with long guns prevailed against murderers with handguns. In an abstract from a paper presented at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences Conference in 2008, James A. Bailey, Ph.D., stated: “The attempted Northfield bank robbery led to the demise of the infamous James-Younger Gang. The bank robbers armed with revolvers were no match for the citizens armed with rifles and a shotgun.”

A tip of the Handgunner cap to Mark Lee Gardner, whose recent book Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the Wild West’s Greatest Escape is the “authoritative text” on this incident.
By Massad Ayoob

Situation:

A well-trained, experienced and gun-savvy cop experiences an unintended discharge — resulting in a severe injury and massive lawsuit.

Lesson:

Demanding circumstances sometimes collide with our standard rules of gun safety … “accidental” vs. “negligent” isn’t as clear-cut as you’d think. Light trigger pulls are for target guns, not duty and defense weapons.

You’re a veteran police sergeant and firearms instructor, chasing two suspects in a stolen pickup truck. You see them squiggling around in their front seat, as if reaching for weapons — and suddenly, the driver slams on the brakes.

You’re on high-level alert now. Your Ford CVPI (Crown Victoria Police Interceptor) has long since become an extension of yourself. You manage to avoid rear-ending the stolen vehicle, and pull up alongside, where the side of your vehicle may at least block the driver from making an escape on foot. You know you have to get your vehicle into Park before exiting, and you have to get out of your patrol car swiftly. You also know the two felony suspects may already have armed themselves with deadly weapons.

And … you have to deal with all these things simultaneously.

Your brain does what survival instinct has wired it to do. You go into automatic pilot, trying to do everything needing to be done. Your eyes are on the threat — the two dangerous felony suspects are parallel to you on your immediate right. Your world seems to go into slow motion and like a majority of people in such a situation, your brain is gathering and processing information much faster than usual and it seems time has slowed to a crawl.
And, in achingly slow motion, you suddenly see the glass of the passenger side window you’re looking through frost over in a haze of cracks, and then fall away in a crystalline shower. You can hear the glass break, strangely enough, but you never hear the gunshot inside the closed automobile, and you realize you have reflexively drawn your Glock .45 from its Level I thumbbreak holster … and it discharged through the window.

You’re out of the patrol car now, rounding the front. Your own dashcam will show you holding your service pistol properly, your trigger finger “in register” extended along the frame, completely clear of the triggerguard area. The driver surrenders at gunpoint, and you take him into custody. In the right front seat, bleeding from his head, the other suspect has slumped to his left, unconscious.

The driver cries, “Why did you shoot my friend?”

And you hear yourself answer, “It was an accident.”

The Whole Picture

You’re no Barney Fife. You’re Sgt. Jeff Williams, a cop of 17 years — now almost 13 years in your current job. You serve the city of Tomball, Texas, a Houston suburb with some 12,000 residents and a day population of more than 70,000, due to the strong presence of medical and oil industries. You are a firearms and tactics instructor for the 45 sworn officers of your department, a certified Glock armorer and a highly-trained gun expert by any standard.
The wounded man, Eddie Santibanes, was found next to a sheath knife he had taken from the glove compartment during the moments you observed him furtively moving. He had been struck in the left side of the head by a 230-gr.

Winchester SXT .45 ACP JHP bullet. He would survive, but with profound physical disabilities due to brain damage: a colostomy bag for life, and cognitive impairment similar to a severe stroke victim. Described by cops who knew him as a “wannabe gang member,” he’d later find ways to commit misdemeanors despite his handicap. He would also become the plaintiff in a massive lawsuit against the involved department, Santibanes v. Tomball, Texas.

How did it all occur? Judge Kenneth Holt, who reviewed the evidence when considering whether to dismiss the suit on a motion for summary judgment, determined the facts to be as follows:

Sergeant Williams is a police officer employed by the City of Tomball (“the City”). In the late afternoon hours of March 31, 2006, while on duty in an area near Highway 249, he was alerted via police dispatch to be on the lookout for a green, short-wheel base, GMC-model truck with dark-tinted windows, which had recently been reported as stolen. The dispatcher provided the location and time of the theft, as well as the truck’s license plate number.

Responding, Sergeant Williams positioned his marked patrol vehicle along Highway 249 to observe passing vehicles.
After several minutes, he spotted a vehicle traveling southbound matching the description of the stolen truck. Sergeant Williams proceeded onto the thoroughfare, and positioned himself some distance behind the truck. He confirmed the truck’s license plate number matched the stolen truck. He didn’t activate his emergency overhead lights at this time. Instead, he proceeded to follow as the truck turned onto Boudreaux Drive.

Sergeant Williams alleges by this time, he could observe two occupants in the truck. He also asserts the occupants engaged in furtive movements, suggesting to him they were indeed aware of his presence. Once on Boudreaux Drive, he activated his patrol vehicle’s dashboard video camera.

As Sergeant Williams continued to follow, the truck turned left onto Berry Hill Drive. At this point, Sergeant Williams activated his overhead lights. The truck slowed in response and proceeded toward the right shoulder of the roadway. As the truck came to a complete stop, Sergeant Williams hurriedly maneuvered his patrol vehicle to a position near parallel to the driver’s side of the truck. In the course of making this move — and before his own patrol vehicle had come to a complete stop — Sergeant Williams had unholstered his firearm and pointed it in the direction of the truck’s occupants.

Immediately after commanding one or both of the occupants to “get your hands up,” a single round discharged from his Glock, shattering the patrol vehicle’s passenger side window, and striking the plaintiff, who was a passenger in the truck. Police backup units hadn’t yet arrived, as approximately 10 seconds elapsed from the time the vehicles turned onto Berry Hill Drive and the time of the shooting. Sergeant Williams immediately reported the shooting and requested EMT’s and Paramedics. He then proceeded to take the driver into custody. As a result of the discharge from Sergeant Williams’ weapon, the plaintiff sustained a non-fatal gun shot injury to his head.

Adjudication

Reconstruction indicated, without realizing it, Sgt. Williams had been reaching over his steering wheel with his left hand to put the Crown Vic in Park, something he’d never done before. Apparently his subconscious — knowing it was imperative to bring the vehicle to a solid halt — had decided this at the same time he was reflexively drawing his service pistol against the great danger which now existed on his immediate right.

Long ago, the noted physiologist Dr. Roger Enoka determined unintended discharges like this tended to involve spasmodic movements associated with loss of balance, startle response or interlimb response. The latter is a sympathetic grip: when one hand closes forcefully on something (as the sergeant’s left hand did with the unaccustomed movement of the gearshift lever), the other hand sympathetically closes, as the fingers of his dominant right hand including the trigger finger did on his Glock 21.

Cops are taught not to do two things at once with a gun in their hand for just this reason. After the NYPD experienced several accidental discharges, some even with double-action revolvers, when a patrol car came to a sudden halt while a gun was drawn inside, they emphasized officers shouldn’t draw until they were out of the vehicle. Unfortunately, the actions of the suspects in this case forced Sergeant Williams into what is called an exigent circumstance, an immediate and extreme life-threatening emergency.

What the Common Law calls the doctrine of competing harms — also known as the doctrine of necessity or the doctrine of two evils — allows a cop (or, a law-abiding citizen for that matter) to break a rule if, within the totality of the circumstances, it’s clear following the rule would cause more injury to innocent people than breaking it.
The law enforcement entities and the DA’s Office who investigated this shooting understood this, clearing Sergeant Williams of any wrongdoing in the shooting of Eddie Santibanes. However, given the civil lawsuit standard of proof of preponderance of evidence is much less than the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal case prosecution, this exoneration was no bar to the lawsuit. What happened next, in the civil court arena, is a lesson for us all, police or “civilian.”

The defense, the lawyers for Williams and Tomball PD, requested a motion for summary judgment to excuse them from liability and kill the case. Judge Holt, who was quoted above, determined while there were many good reasons to dismiss, he couldn’t do so for two reasons. One was some of the Sergeant’s testimony was at odds with the facts. The other element, which turned out to be huge, was Sgt. Williams had retrofitted his privately-owned, department-approved Gen3 Glock 21 pistol with a 31/2-pound connector.

Conflicting Statements

Immediately after the shooting, Williams told investigating officers he thought his left foot was on the ground outside the car, and his left hand on the steering wheel, when the single shot was fired. It turned out his hand had actually been on the gearshift lever, and his foot hit the pavement a moment later. Police psychologists and veteran homicide investigators know human memory sometimes recalls things out of sequence after particularly high-stress events, but some plaintiffs’ lawyers either don’t know or ignore it.

One of the first questions investigators asked Williams was if he had “modified” his Glock 21. He answered he hadn’t. It turns out he retrofitted the gun with a steel recoil spring guide, an oversize slide stop lever … and the 31/2-pound connector from another Glock he owned, a Tactical/Practical model.

Later, in deposition (pre-trial testimony under oath) Williams explained the misunderstanding. To him, “modifying the gun” meant cutting springs, or something which would radically alter the gun’s function from what its designers intended. The oversize slide stop lever is standard on many Glock pistols, and is ordered on every one of the 10,000 or so Glocks issued by the FBI. The metal spring guide rod was simply a more expensive aftermarket part intended to assure reliability and longevity, and could in no way impair function or cause an unintended discharge. Plaintiff’s counsel understood all those things, and wisely did not harp on them.

The lighter trigger pull, however, was another story. What makes the gun easier to shoot intentionally makes it easier to shoot unintentionally, and it would be foolish to think the other side in a legal case wouldn’t jump on this.
Glock came out with the 31/2-pound connector in the late 1980’s with their first “target pistol,” the 17L. It has since been standard (for shipment to gun shops, not police departments), on their 5.3″ barrel Tactical/Practical models, the G34 and G35. Geared for tactical matches and practical shooting matches, the 9mm G34 became the dominant pistol at the IDPA Nationals and the .40 caliber G35 became hugely popular in USPSA competition.

However, what many people missed, including Sgt. Williams, was these guns were listed in the Glock catalog and website under “sport” — not “duty” or “self-defense.” It has always been Glock’s policy when police departments order these guns, they’ll be shipped with the standard 51/2-pound connector.

In reviewing Sgt. Williams’ deposition by an aggressive plaintiff’s lawyer, I couldn’t help but notice the plaintiff’s attorney always called it “31/2 pounds,” the original designation, which it did in fact measure on earlier models when measurement was taken from the toe, or bottom, of the pivoting trigger. Sgt. Williams, correctly I think, always called it “41/2 pounds,” which is what it measures from the center of the trigger, where the finger actually lies. It’s a leverage thing: both are technically correct. However, while Glock later changed the designation from 31/2 to 41/2, it’s the exact same part, and still forbidden by Glock for duty/self-defense pistols.

Williams doesn’t recall being given this warning in a Glock armorer’s class. I have no reason to doubt him. While most Glock armorers do remember it, some I’ve talked to don’t. It may be their particular instructor/trainer simply left it out, or it may be what adult education teachers tell us: We only remember a small percentage of what we hear in a class, as opposed to what we feel and experience. The 51/2-pound minimum pull weight for duty/defense Glocks remains nonetheless in company policy, and the policy carries incredibly powerful weight in court when opposing counsel is trying to show that you are negligent.

The Camel’s Back

A review of Judge Holt’s ruling, which can be found online at www.leagle.com, makes it clear the “hair trigger” issue raised by plaintiff’s counsel was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and led to the ruling that instead of being dismissed, this case would have to go to trial. Some $200,000 in legal fees had already been accrued by the defense, according to Tomball Police Chief Rob Hauck, and defense lawyers estimated it would run another $200K before trial began.

Having spent more than 20 years on LAPD, much of it in charge of the elite Metro Unit and SWAT team and seeing where civil lawsuits arising out of shootings could go, Hauck signed off on a $250,000 settlement to end the matter. He undoubtedly saved his community a great deal of money in doing so.

At the end of the day, one might say switching a 31/2-pound Glock connector out of a Tactical/Practical and into a G21 cost nothing. But, in this case, it cost almost half a million dollars, and could have cost a great deal more.

Lessons

The law doesn’t recognize any such thing as a “justifiable accident.” An unintended discharge is, at most, “excusable,” meaning it shouldn’t have happened, but it could have happened to any reasonable, prudent person in the same situation, knowing what he or she knew. This was, in essence, the finding of the criminal justice system after Jeff Williams unintentionally shot Eddie Santibanes. The felonious actions of Santibanes and his accomplice at the wheel were the true proximate cause of the injury Santibanes suffered.

Williams is proof you can come back from a disaster like this. Today, he is the lead firearms instructor and rangemaster for his department. He could have lied and said he fired intentionally based on the furtive movements inside the stolen car, but he didn’t, and his honesty earned him much. A good cop remains on the street, training what are now 50 other good cops — all of whom carry Glocks.

Sgt. Jeff Williams and Chief Rob Hauck will be the first to tell you: they all have standard factory-installed 51/2-pound triggers.

The philosopher George Santayana said, “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” The history on point here is Santibanes v. Tomball, Texas.
By Massad Ayoob

Situation:

A young woman is stabbed to death in the course of a long and brutal attack. Some people see it … more people hear it … and most of them do absolutely nothing.

Lesson:

Human monsters exist. Apologists cover for apathy. The helpless cannot stop violence. In situations like this, armed people can save lives when unarmed people can’t.

The year 2014 marked the half-century anniversary of a crime that shocked our nation to the depths of its soul. A little after 3:00 AM, a 28-year-old woman named Kitty Genovese was returning from the bar she managed to her home in Kew Gardens — a Queens, N.Y., suburb considered quiet, upscale and relatively crime-free. She was targeted by a monster who had set out to rape and murder whatever young woman appeared in his sights. She screamed when he came at her with his knife.

People heard. Some looked and saw what was happening. One man opened his window and roared, “Get away from that girl!” The monster scuttled away. The young woman slowly, clumsily got to her feet and staggered away. Some who watched from their windows thought it was a fight between lovers. Others thought she might be drunk.

Lights went back out. People went back to bed. No one called the police.

And the monster realized that. He put on a different hat, and proceeded to track his victim again. By now she had made her way around the back of the apartment building, and inside.

He followed her. Found her. Stabbed her some more. One witness opened his apartment door, looked out and saw the monster savaging the girl in the hallway. He went back inside. The monster went back to work.

He plunged his knife into Kitty Genovese’s neck to silence her screams, cut her clothes open, had his orgasm on top of her body and left her to die from more than a dozen knife wounds. In his subsequent confession he said he finished by shoving his knife into her vagina. Her ordeal had lasted for half an hour or more.

At last, someone called the NYPD. Arriving police found her soaked in blood and cradled in the arms of her friend, Sophie Farrar. By then, the monster was long gone. Kitty Genovese died in the ambulance.

When police asked the man who had looked out, watched, and ducked back in behind a closed door why he hadn’t done something then, he replied, “I didn’t want to get involved.”

Those words became a catch phrase that would forever more describe a sick apathy in the culture of urban America.

A Scar In A Nation’s Soul

At first, the death of Catherine Genovese was just another statistic in a violent city. But then Abraham Rosenthal, editor of the New York Times, had lunch with then-Commissioner of NYPD Michael Murphy. They were discussing another matter when Murphy mentioned the murder in Kew Gardens, and how sickened he was by the fact some 38 witnesses had been aware of what was going on, and had done nothing. The autopsy listed Kitty’s death as bilateral pneumothorax: the puncture wounds in her back and chest from a serrated-blade hunting knife had violated the thoracic vacuum, and air pressure had slowly shut down her lungs. Had help been summoned in a timely manner, she would have most likely survived. But reconstruction showed the half an hour or more between the first thrust of the knife into her upper back and the arrival of the ambulance precluded her survival.

Rosenthal assigned Martin Gansberg to do the investigative reporting. What Gansberg uncovered exploded the case and forced it into the face of the nation and the world. It made Americans in general, and New Yorkers in particular, ask What is wrong with us? How could good people let this happen?

About 18 months after the killing, running for Mayor of New York City, John Lindsay gave a speech in Kew Gardens near the murder scene. He said, “What the Kitty Genovese story tells us is something has gone out of the heart and soul of New York. And who’s to blame? It’s people who say, ‘What’s the use?’ It’s people who say, ‘Why get involved?’” Lindsay won the election and became the new mayor of New York.

Change came from this national self-examination. Some believe that the 911 emergency call system, introduced in 1968, was born in the murder of Kitty Genovese. If so, it was about time. Police in Canada had been using a similar concept, their 999 emergency number, since 1956.

Curtis Sliwa was nine years old when it happened. He would say later the Genovese incident was what inspired the dream he later made real, the formation of a group of martial arts-trained citizen community watch members who became famous as the Guardian Angels.

Covering Up

From the beginning, there were people who did not want to believe 38 ordinary Americans could let something like this happen. Apologists followed quickly on the heels of the accusers. By the 20th century, people emerged who were the equivalent of Holocaust deniers: “This couldn’t have really happened,” they said. “It didn’t happen that way.”

One man, some 40 years afterward, emerged to insist his father had called the police and they hadn’t come. But there seems to be no concrete evidence of that.

Some people want to be the amateur detective who solves the case, and proves the authorities to be bungling fools. And there are those who insist anything too painful for them to believe — particularly if they might have to believe it about themselves — must be an “urban myth.” Sure enough, there emerged those who claimed the entire story of a young woman murdered because her neighbors heard her screams and did nothing, had to be an urban myth.
“There weren’t 38 people who actually saw him stab her,” they said, as if they had performed a “gotcha” on the NYPD and the Times.

In 2014, two heavily-researched books about this incident appeared. One is Kitty Genovese: the Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime that Changed America by Kevin Cook, published by W.W. Norton & Co. The other is Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and its Private Consequences by Catherine Pelonero, from Skyhorse Publishing. One reviewer suggested Cook was an apologist who supports the “it was an urban myth” view, while Pelonero was an apologist for the NYPD and the Times who supports the original narrative. In fact, a careful reading of both books shows neither author was so simplistic in their approach.

The Witnesses

Known as “the gray lady,” the New York Times was one of the world’s most respected newspapers in the mid-20th century. Rosenthal was a highly regarded editor. Gansberg was known among his colleagues as a dogged seeker of truth, who had given up a high-level supervisory position at the Times to go back on the street and pursue his first professional love, investigative reporting.

The urban myth meme comes from people who belatedly realized the oft-quoted number of witnesses, 38, was questionable in some ways. The first major story on the case in the Times, datelined March 27, 1964, was under a headline reading, “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police.” The story, however, spoke of 38 witnesses. The reason for that discrepancy was clear: one of those 38 witnesses, at the very end, finally did make the call to NYPD, leaving 37 who never did.

The headline itself, however, was incorrect. Nowhere near 37 or 38 actually saw the murder per se. According to the current Wikipedia entry on the murder, “Only one witness, Joseph Fink, was aware she was stabbed in the first attack, and only Karl Ross was aware of it in the second attack.” Does this mean there were only two witnesses, not the purported 38?

No. More witnesses than that saw her battered to the ground, they just didn’t see the knife enter her body. Moreover, there are eyewitnesses, and there are earwitnesses. There were far more of the latter. Kitty Genovese’s screams echoed throughout the quiet neighborhood.

“‘Oh, God, he stabbed me! Help me,’ she screamed. Her shouts were loud enough to wake people on both sides of the street.” (Cook, hardcover edition, page 1.) Some witnesses said they thought it was spouses or lovers fighting, as if that made everything just fine.

How many people heard her screaming, and knew or reasonably should have known she was in terrible danger? Charles Skoller was second chair prosecutor in the case against Kitty’s murderer. Writes Cook on page 107 of his book, “By Skoller’s count, no more than five or six neighbors saw and heard enough to know Kitty was in mortal danger.” But Cook also says on the same page, “The prosecutors believed there may have been 40 or 50 neighbors who heard Kitty’s cries that night. But how many were half asleep? How many rolled over and forgot what they heard? How many went to their windows but couldn’t be sure what they were seeing? How many paced their apartments, wondering what to do, and then returned to their windows and saw nothing but an empty street?”

Author Pelonero sees things differently. At Location 2956 in the Kindle edition of her book, she writes, “(Times reporter Martin) Gansberg had not included persons in his witness count who had heard Kitty’s screams but had not seen anything. This would have made the count much higher: the police reports show 62 people who heard the screams.” At Location 2967 she adds, “Gansberg’s story can also be compared against existing DD5’s (NYPD reports) from the police investigation. Police reports obtained via the Freedom of Information Act have redactions. A few pages are entirely or almost entirely blacked out. On others, most of the names of those interviewed are blacked out, but their statements of what they saw and heard remain. These reports show a total of thirty-three persons who saw part of the crime: either Kitty and her attacker on the street together, Kitty struggling away after the first attack, and, in some cases, the foregoing plus (the killer’s) return to hunt for her. All of these 33 had of course heard her screams. Gansberg’s count of thirty-eight witnesses is remarkably close to what appears in the police reports. It is impossible to say with certainty whether the heavily redacted pages of the police reports would reveal five more witnesses, therefore matching Gansberg’s count of 38. It seems unlikely, given Gansberg’s professional standing and background and how close the numbers are, that he would have invented five phantom witnesses.”

In an NPR interview, Kevin Cook said, “Over the course of many months of research, I wound up finding a document that was a collection of the first interviews. Oddly enough, there were 49 witnesses. I was puzzled by that until I added up the entries themselves.” (“NPR Books,” 3/3/14.)

And there we have it. “Urban myth”? No. “Oh God, he stabbed me! Help me!” More than three dozen people heard the screams. One, after dithering interminably, called another neighbor and asked her to call the police … altogether too little, too late.

The Monster

Winston Moseley, married with two children, was also 28. Most of America, focusing on the “bad Samaritans” who failed to help, saw Moseley as a faceless demon. He was a married father of two small children, gainfully employed. He was also a serial burglar, a serial rapist and a serial murderer. Once in custody, he confessed to many rapes in which he used a knife or a screwdriver to intimidate his victims. He also confessed to two prior murders. One was a 15-year-old girl named Barbara Kralik whom he claimed to have stabbed to death. The other was a young mother named Annie May Johnson whom he shot six times with a single-shot .22 rifle, pausing to casually reload between shots. He then raped her corpse and set her genitals on fire.

When expressly asked if he had any remorse for what he had done, Moseley replied that he didn’t. Why did he prey on women? They were “easier” and “didn’t fight back.” Why did he flee from the initial attack when he heard the stern command “Leave that girl alone!” from witness Robert Mozer? Because he didn’t want to be hurt or captured. Why did he return and attack Kitty Genovese again? Because he saw the lights that came on go back out, and after no cops arrived, he realized no one had called them.

Moseley was tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Kitty Genovese. The trial judge, famous for his opposition to the death penalty, refused to allow a psychiatrist to testify for the defense during the penalty phase. Many legal observers felt this was a “poison pill” dispensed deliberately by the judge, who knew that higher courts would overturn the death sentence for this reason. That is exactly what happened, and Walter Moseley at this writing is, at 79, the oldest inmate of Attica State Penitentiary, having been turned down for parole some 13 times.

In 1968, Moseley escaped from prison, having shoved a meat can up his rectum so he’d be taken to the hospital. The guard he overpowered there fired one shot as Moseley ran away. It had no effect; Cook considers it a warning shot, and Pelonero says simply, “He missed.” Stealing cars and a gun, Moseley embarked on a spree of home invasion, kidnapping and multiple rapes. Finally confronted by a brave FBI agent named Neil Welch, he meekly surrendered his stolen gun and was returned to confinement.

A Better Outcome

Countless psychological and sociological studies were born in the Genovese incident. Most concluded there was a herd mentality at work, and people who would normally intervene in such an atrocity if they were the only possible rescuer would sit back and “let George do it” if there were other people around upon whom they could shirk off the responsibility.

Most of the media blatantly ignored another huge factor: Unarmed people are largely helpless to stop violent armed criminals, and they know it.

Catherine Pelonero found a very similar case on the same street in Kew Gardens occurring only five weeks before the Genovese murder, reported belatedly in the 3/29/64 edition of the New York Journal-American. Beginning at Location 3109 in the Kindle edition of Pelonero’s book, that case involved a 17-year-old woman terrorized at knife-point inside an apartment building by a man who molested her until an elevator operator saw her plight. He pounded on the door of an attorney’s apartment for help, and then went to her aid barehanded. Quotes Pelonero, “The elevator operator began battling with the assailant out on the street in the snow … The lawyer came out with his shotgun but the assailant fled.”

In that incident, the young woman survived with relatively minor knife injuries.
Someone did get involved.

And then an armed citizen with a shotgun got involved.

And then it was over, and the victim was saved.

Amid all the countless words and the many studies of urban angst and social anomie the Kitty Genovese murder triggered, there is a lesson there. A lesson which has been sadly lost, for far too long.

By Massad Ayoob

Situation:

Some gun grabbers seek magazine capacity limits, citing the theory it’ll force mass murderers to reload sooner — allowing them to be disarmed by citizens and thus reducing potential death toll.

Lesson:

There are faster ways to stop mass murderers; disarming is a risky strategy at best. In most cases, mass murderers and spree killers carry multiple guns — and they’re not going to give them up to unarmed citizens.

When legislation is introduced to ban or criminalize so-called “high-capacity magazines,” one argument always cited by gun grabbers is it will force mass-murderers to reload sooner — creating a window of opportunity in which some heroic citizen can disarm them and stop the killing. There are, of course, several things wrong with this hypothesis. One is the unrealistic assumption someone who’s willing to commit mass murder won’t be willing to access and use an illegal magazine.

Tactically, how likely is it there will be someone close enough to jump a gunman caught at slide-lock without the rescuer already (being in such close proximity to the murderer) shot before he could even make the disarming attempt? To find the answer, we have to look deeply into the history of such incidents.

Disarms During Reloading … or Not?

Two incidents seem to be most often cited by those who demand reduced magazine capacity. One is the capture of Jared Loughner after the murder spree in Tucson in which he killed six people and wounded a dozen more, including US Representative Gabrielle Giffords. The other is the capture of Colin Ferguson, which ended the Long Island Railroad train massacre, which claimed six lives and left 19 more people wounded.
In each case, multiple people were able to overpower the killer at a point when his weapon was no longer shootable. It should be noted, however, accounts of how it happened seem to differ among the witnesses. In the case of Loughner, we know Patricia Maisch ended up holding one of his magazines. Some of Ms. Maisch’s accounts make it sound as if she ripped it from his hand, while in others, she seems to say he dropped it and she picked it up.

However, Loughner was carrying multiple magazines, and at least one witness insists he had already reloaded a fresh magazine — but had somehow jammed the Glock 19 while attempting to complete the reload. In the Long Island Railroad massacre, Ferguson reloaded at least once and sustained fire. His Ruger P89 had apparently run dry at the time he was rushed and overpowered by unarmed citizens. Accounts differ as to whether Ferguson was attempting to reload a third full magazine at this time, or had shot all his magazines empty and was trying to insert loose cartridges into one of the empty mags.

Thus, it remains possible Loughner was successfully disarmed, not because he was reloading per se, but because he had jammed his already-reloaded gun. If in fact Ferguson had run out of loaded magazines, he was de facto more “out of ammunition” than he was “reloading” at the time he was overpowered and disarmed. Details, details …

There have been successful disarms in public shootings; let’s take a look.

Successful Disarms

In Moses Lake, Wash., 14-year-old Barry Loukaitis opened fire at the middle school he attended. Armed with a .30-30 rifle, .357 Magnum revolver, .25 auto and 78 rounds of ammunition, he killed three victims and wounded a fourth before a gym coach was able to wrestle the rifle away from him and hold him down. Note: the courageous gym teacher didn’t let the murderer keep shooting and killing until he ran empty — he got the .30-30 away from the young murderer while it was still loaded. If you’re going to attempt a disarm, this strategy would seem likely to save the most lives.

In June 2014, Aaron Ybarra, 26, opened fire at Seattle Pacific University. He killed one and injured three, and was then pepper-sprayed and overpowered by student monitor Jon Meis. According to one report, the killer’s weapon was a double-barrel shotgun, in poor repair and capable of firing only one barrel — for all practical intents and purposes, a single-shot weapon. While this in no way detracts from the courage displayed by the heroic Jon Meis, it’s not common for mass murderers to use single-shot weapons.

Another young hero to emerge from a mass murder atrocity is Jacob Ryker. Kip Kinkel, 15, murdered his parents and gained control of a Ruger 10/22 rifle, Ruger MK II .22 pistol and 9mm Glock 19. He took them to his school in Springfield, Ore., with an ample supply of ammunition and opened fire. His barrage had killed four people and wounded 25 more when one of those wounded students, young Mr. Ryker, jumped him as the killer reloaded the rifle.

However, Kinkel had armed himself with multiple weapons. During the struggle, he drew the 9mm and fired, wounding Ryker again and also another student. Then according to accounts, Ryker, now joined by six other students, was able to finally disarm him and gain physical control. By then, Kinkel had fired a total of 51 rounds, 37 of which struck human targets.

When It Goes Wrong

Getting a gun away from a killer isn’t easy. Good people have died in the attempt. In the Luby’s Cafeteria massacre in Killeen, Texas, George Hennard drove his pickup truck through the plate glass window of the restaurant and stepped out with a Ruger P89 and a Glock 17. He shot 43 people, 23 fatally. In the midst of the slaughter, Al Hupp attempted to disarm the madman.

He wasn’t successful. Hennard shot him in the chest with one of the pistols, mortally wounding him. As Hupp’s wife cradled her dying husband, Hennard shot her dead too. When police arrived and he tasted return fire, Hennard killed himself.

This atrocity occurred before the passage of shall-issue concealed carry in Texas. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp, the murdered couple’s daughter, had left her S&W .38 in her parked vehicle according to Texas law. She was certain she could have neutralized Hennard early in the encounter had her gun been within reach. Instead, she endured the horror of watching her parents murdered. Ever since, Suzanna Gratia-Hupp has been one of our most eloquent and poignant spokespersons for armed citizens and lawful concealed carry.

Perhaps the most glaringly conspicuous failure to disarm occurred during the mass murder that most tore at America’s heart: Sandy Hook. The first to die was petite school principal Dawn Hochsprung. As quintessential loser Adam Lanza blasted his way through the locked door of the school, she ran at him in what could only be construed as an attempt to disarm and restrain.

She apparently never got within touching distance before he shot her down. Later, with 20 helpless children and six brave but helpless adults dead at his hands, he blew his brains out as soon as police arrived.

In Colebrook, N.H., a bitter old man named Carl Drega went on a murder rampage, assassinating two state troopers and a female judge he hated. As he left the latter murder scene, newspaper editor Dennis Joos attempted to get his rifle away from him. Drega reportedly snarled, “Mind your own f—ing business,” threw Joos to the sidewalk, and killed him with multiple gunshots. After a manhunt in which multiple lawmen were wounded, Drega was shot and killed by police.

What about verbally convincing the gunman to just put down the gun? This strategy doesn’t have a promising history. In 2013, a 12-year-old boy came to school with a gun in Sparks, Nev. Teacher Michael Landsberry tried to “talk him down.” The boy shot and killed the teacher, and then committed suicide.

Physical Mismatches

If you’re close enough to grab the offender as soon as he starts shooting — and actually know how to do it — you have a reasonable chance of succeeding. Unfortunately if you’re close, you’ll very likely be one of the first victims of his criminal gunfire, perhaps before you can act. There is also the matter of relative physical strength. In the Loukaitis incident, an adult male gym teacher was able to overpower a 14-year-old boy who, judging by his photos, was physically unintimidating.

In the Drega murders, Dennis Joos wasn’t a physically large or especially strong man, and was up against a rugged, muscular killer who stood over 6’ tall and weighed well over 200 pounds. This disparity made Joos all the more a hero in his last moments, but at the end, a dead hero.
And let’s not forget, the opponent may have multiple guns; it’s going to be awfully hard to disarm him if he’s not in surrender mode. Though most accounts of the Drega murders have him killing Joos with the same .223 he used on his first three victims, the Wikipedia story on the case as of this summer states, “During the struggle Drega shot and killed Joos with a second firearm.” And we recall Jacob Ryker was wounded in the Kinkel incident when the punk he was disarming drew a second gun and shot him and another boy.

Multiple Guns

Ron Borsch is a retired career lawman and SWAT cop, whose second career was as head of the Southeast Area Law Enforcement Academy in Bedford, Ohio. A pioneer in the concept of lone-officer response to active mass murder incidents, he’s one of the nation’s leading authorities on this sort of terrible event. When he and I were both instructing at the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association (ILEETA) conference earlier this year, I asked him how many of the mass killers he studied had been armed with multiple guns. “Well over half,” he answered.

This isn’t new. One of the worst mass murderers in American history goes back to Civil War times, “Bloody Bill” Anderson, a senior officer in Quantrill’s Raiders. The trademark of these guerrillas was carrying multiple revolvers, usually .36-caliber Navy Colts. When he was killed in a shootout with Union troops, an eyewitness to Anderson’s death said, “Bloody Bill had four revolvers buckled around him and two very large ones across the saddle.”

In 1966, Charles Whitman ascended the Texas Tower in Austin with so many guns and ammunition he had them in a footlocker, which he rolled into the elevator on a dolly. He murdered 17 people and wounded 32 more from his lofty perch immune to .38-caliber revolver fire and 12-ga. buckshot from police, until rifle fire from armed citizens on the ground pinned him down. Another armed citizen led police to his sniper’s nest atop the tower, where they killed him.

The term “going postal” came in large part from Patrick Sherrill’s death orgy in the Edmond, Okla., Post Office (14 dead, six wounded, perpetrator took own life). Sherrill was armed with two 1911 .45’s he had been issued by the National Guard, and a .22 target pistol of his own.

The list goes on. James Holmes in the Aurora, Colo., theater: AR-15 with high-capacity magazine which jammed early on, 12-ga. Remington 870 and two Glock 22 pistols, one on his person and one in his car. He surrendered as soon as police confronted him. By then, he had shot 82 helpless people in his chosen “Gun-Free Zone,” a dozen of them fatally. He, like the other multiple-armed perpetrators discussed here, would have been tough to disarm.

A Better Strategy

When a monster with a lethal weapon attempts wholesale murder of the innocent, what’s a better strategy than expecting untrained potential victims to grapple with them?

Quite simply, have a trained, armed person in place to suppress them.

A few months before the Aurora theater atrocity, another incident happened in the same city, which the national media chose to virtually ignore. On April 22, 2012, Kiarron Parker opened fire outside a church in Aurora, killing the pastor’s mother. Instantly, one member of the congregation — an off-duty Denver Police officer named Antonio Milow — drew his own handgun and shot and killed Kiarron before he could wreak any more mayhem.

In 2007, also in Colorado, psycho loser Matthew Murray shot multiple people at one church then went to another, where he opened fire and shot more victims. Then, Jeanne Assam — a former cop, working as volunteer church security — ran at him with a Beretta 92 in her hands, firing as she went. She hit him with bullet after 124-gr. 9mm JHP bullet, and he went down with just enough life force left to shoot himself. The pastor of the church later credited Assam with saving 100 or more lives. A detailed account of this incident can be found in the Ayoob Files archives here at American Handgunner.

Luke Woodham, 16, stabbed and bludgeoned his mother to death to get the keys to his estranged father’s gun cabinet, where he took a Marlin .30-30 rifle and headed to his high school in Pearl, Miss. He shot nine of his teenage schoolmates, killing two.

As he drove out of the parking lot — on course to a nearby junior high school, and still armed with the rifle and more ammunition — Woodham was taken at gunpoint by Vice Principal Joel Myrick, who had sprinted to the parking lot to retrieve a Colt .45 auto from his truck. The killer stopped his car, exited and went to the ground in front of the armed teacher squealing, “The world has wronged me, Mr. Myrick!” A detailed account of this event is also in the Ayoob Files archives.

Lessons

Waiting for the gunman to run empty and then jumping him for the gun, no matter how many rounds it was loaded with, is simply not as viable of a strategy as it sounds. History teaches us another strategy works much better.

This strategy is born in reality: In almost every one of these highly-publicized mass murder/killing spree incidents, as soon as the gunman is met with return fire he ceases shooting innocent people and either is killed, kills himself or surrenders soon thereafter. Unarmed, untrained people attempting disarms sometimes actually prevailed, but oftentimes were hurt or killed in the attempt.

Those who would commit the most rigidly prohibited crimes in the history of civilization are certainly not likely to be deterred by a law limiting magazine capacity. The only people who can be realistically expected to obey such laws are, by definition, the law-abiding and not the law-breakers.

When in the wake of the Sandy Hook atrocity, NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre said the only thing capable of stopping a bad guy with a gun was a good guy with a gun, he was shouted down and excoriated by the mass media. Yet, history and reality combine to show he spoke the absolute truth.

After the Ma’alot Massacre, Israel put armed good guys into their schools; many of them school personnel and student family members who volunteered to be trained for the job by Mishmar Ezrachi, the Israeli civil guard. Terrorist attacks on schoolchildren plummeted.

Here in the US, intended mass school shootings have been short-circuited by armed SRO’s, school resource officers from local law enforcement agencies. An increasing number of school systems are, to the horror of the gun grabbers, quietly arming and training volunteer personnel to perform the same function as the Israeli model. Discreet arming of church volunteers for the protection of the congregation seems to have become even more widespread.

We can only wonder what might have happened if the courageous principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School, Dawn Hochsprung, had been armed and capable of dealing with Adam Lanza on that terrible day in December 2012. She died courageously, trying to defend the little children and the adult staff for whom she was responsible. Her empty hands rendered her brave spirit futile, and we all know what happened next.
If instead those empty hands had held Jeanne Assam’s Beretta 92 with the same skill. If …

Situation:

In a classic case of unintended consequences, supposedly “safe” gun-free zones become slaughter pens for the helpless innocent — at the hands of human monsters.

Lesson:

History and common sense show NRA’s Wayne LaPierre was absolutely correct when he said, “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

On September 27, 2014, I was asked to address the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Chicago on the subject of gun-free zones. I’ll say here what I said there: Gun-free zones have become hunting preserves for psychopathic murderers.

This was the unintended consequence of a well-intended idea, but outlawing gun possession among the law-abiding in hopes of thwarting lawbreakers was so clearly hopeless it should have been seen sooner. Lawbreakers, by their very definition, break the law — they’ve literally made it their job description. Only the most childish naiveté could lead an honest person to believe someone who would break the most stringent laws somehow wouldn’t break a much less important one with a much less serious penalty.

On December 16, 2012, John Fund wrote an article titled, “The Facts About Mass Shootings” in National Review Online. Fund said, “Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law enforcement officials say they’re actually counterproductive. ‘Guns are already banned in schools. This is why shootings happen in schools. A school is a helpless-victim zone,’ says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff.

“‘Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,’ Jim Kouri, the public information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me earlier this year at the time of the Aurora, Colo., theatre shooting.”

Fund continues, “Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found a common theme of mass shootings is they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools. I spoke with Lott after the Newtown shooting, and he confirmed nothing has changed to alter his findings.”

In Their Own Words And Actions

How do we know the murderers think like this? Sometimes, they admit it. On August 10, 1999, Buford Furrow — a member of the white supremacist group Aryan Nations — walked into the North Valley Jewish Community Center in the Grenada Hills section of Los Angeles. He fired 70-some shots and fled, wounding a teenage female volunteer, an adult worker at the daycare center and three 5- and 6-year-old children. A few miles away, Furrow paused in his flight to murder an unarmed postal worker of Filipino descent. After his later surrender, he stated his motive in shooting up the daycare center was his hatred of Jewish people; he killed the postal worker because he was a man of color and an employee of the Federal government.

A particularly telling point was found in his confession. According to the Wikipedia entry on this atrocity, “Furrow considered attacking three Jewish institutions: the Skirball Cultural Center, American Jewish University and Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance, but security measures presented too much of a problem.”

Sometimes, it’s too obvious to connect the coincidence. On July 20, 2012, James Holmes opened fire in the Cinemark Century Theater in Aurora, Colo., during a late-night preview of the then-new Batman movie. He killed 12 and wounded 70. Professor John Lott was one of the first to point out Holmes likely chose this particular target expressly because it was a gun-free zone.

“Most movie theaters allow permit holders carrying guns. But the Cinemark movie theater was the only one with a sign posted at the theater’s entrance prohibiting guns,” Lott wrote for Fox News. He continued, “There were seven movie theaters showing The Dark Knight Rises within 20 minutes of the killer’s apartment. At 4 miles and an 8-minute car ride away, the Cinemark’s Century Theater wasn’t the closest.

“Another theater was only 1.2 miles (3 minutes) away. There was also one just slightly further at 10 minutes away. It’s the ‘home of Colorado’s largest auditorium,’ according to the movie hotline welcome message. The potentially huge audience ought to have been attractive to someone trying to kill as many people as possible. But, all of those theaters allowed permitted concealed handguns.”

Lott concluded, “So why would a mass shooter pick a place that bans guns? The answer should be obvious, though it apparently isn’t clear to the media: disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them sitting ducks.”

Armed Citizens Fight Back
Arguments against gun-free zones beg the question: “So, what happens in the real world when an armed citizen fights back against one of these mass murderers?” Fortunately, it’s easy to answer. A while back on an anti-gun TV show, Diane Sawyer claimed she couldn’t find a case where an armed citizen had stopped such a death orgy. I submit she either didn’t look very hard, or her agenda overrode her journalistic approach. There are so many cases I didn’t have time to list them all when speaking at the GRPC, and don’t even have time to list them all in the pages I’m allotted here.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook horror, the media excoriated NRA Executive VP Wayne LaPierre for famously saying, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.” Yet his statement was absolutely true. Sometimes the good guy (or gal) is a uniformed cop, an off-duty officer or an ordinary private citizen legally carrying a gun. In the big picture, it doesn’t matter whether the celluloid card in the hero’s pocket is a police ID or a CCW permit.
Historically, when mass murderers encounter armed resistance — in the US or abroad — the slaughter of the innocent ends immediately or very soon after. Sometimes, they surrender at virtually the first sight of an armed Good Guy — like Holmes meekly did when responding officers confronted him outside the “gun-free” theater. In Norway, Anders Breivik gave himself up to the first armed LEOs to arrive on the “gun-free” island where he massacred 77 helpless victims and wounded 319 on July 22, 2011.
Sometimes, these murderers commit suicide as soon as serious, armed resistance confronts them. Cho, the mass murderer of Virginia Tech in 2011, did so. The same happened with Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School in 1999. Ditto for Adam Lanza when the Newtown police, with good response time, pulled up outside Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Case Studies
On July 25, 1993, The Church of St. James in Cape Town, South Africa, becomes the target of a massacre by four members of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army. Wielding fully automatic military AR’s and lobbing hand grenades, the terrorists kill 11 helpless victims and wound 58. However, among the intended victims is missionary Charl van Wyk. He always carried a 5-shot, snub-nose .38 Special revolver … and now, he deploys it. His return fire wounds one of the attackers, and all of them break off the assault and flee the scene. Against all odds, his snub-nose .38 has turned the tide of battle against four killers with explosives and machine guns.
On June 20, 1994, at Fairchild Air Force base near Spokane, Wash., disgruntled ex-Airman Dean Mellberg has been released from the USAF due to bizarre behavior. He returns to the base with an AK clone and an extended-capacity drum magazine. He opens fire at the base hospital, killing a psychologist, psychiatrist, military wife, an 8-year-old girl and the unborn child of one of the 22 people he wounds. The rampage ends with the first armed person he encounters on this base.
Air Force Security Police Officer Andy Brown, on bicycle patrol and the first to arrive, comes under fire from the killer. With no cover, Brown kneels and returns fire with his issue Beretta M9, killing Mellberg with a 9mm bullet between the eyes at 70 yards. Awarded a medal for his courage, Brown will never know how many more lives were saved by his skillful and decisive action.
In Pearl, Miss., on October 1, 1997, 16-year-old Luke Woodham has stabbed his mother to death to gain access to the gun cabinet and his estranged father’s Marlin .30-30 hunting rifle. He takes the gun and lots of ammo to school, opening fire in the “commons” area. He murders two young women, one a former girlfriend, and wounds seven more of his schoolmates. Vice principal Joel Myrick sprints to the parking lot and retrieves his loaded Colt .45 auto from his truck. He interdicts Woodham, who’s about to drive away — with the rifle and plenty of remaining rounds — in the direction of the local junior high.
As soon as Myrick takes the young murderer at gunpoint, the latter throws himself to the ground in surrender and wails, “The world has wronged me, Mr. Myrick!” The vice principal’s quick action saved countless lives. It will never be known how much suffering could’ve been prevented if the school itself, a gun-free zone, would have allowed staff to be armed inside. In theory, this might have allowed Myrick to stop the carnage much sooner.
Disgruntled by a divorce proceeding, David Arroyo shows up at the Tyler, Texas, county courthouse wearing body armor and carrying an AK-47 clone on February 4, 2005. He opens fire on the courthouse steps, killing his ex-wife and wounding his own son. LEO’s open fire on him with handguns, but he has the position of advantage and the rifle. He drives them back, wounding three lawmen. But concealed carry instructor Mark Alan Wilson has rushed to the scene, and with his Colt .45 auto shoots down Arroyo.
However, he doesn’t realize his bullets have been stopped by the killer’s concealed armor, and tragically, Arroyo shoots and kills him. Nonetheless, the armed citizens discombobulated the gunman’s plans, and he flees without inflicting further carnage. Police pursue, and Tyler Police Sergeant Rusty Jacks kills Arroyo in the subsequent gunfight. The martyred armed citizen is hailed as a hero whose actions prevented countless deaths. Today, a large plaque erected to Mark Wilson’s memory stands prominently in downtown Tyler.
Further Case Studies
I wasn’t kidding when I said there are a lot of these cases — let’s look at a few more. On February 12, 2007 in Salt Lake City, Sulejman Talovic shows up at the Trolley Square Mall with a 12-ga. pump gun, .38-caliber handgun and a backpack full of ammo. He opens fire, randomly shooting nine innocent victims and killing five of them before he’s stopped. His murder spree is stalled when off-duty Ogden police officer Ken Hammond, eating with his wife in a mall restaurant, hears the shooting and “runs to the sound of the guns.” Hammond is armed only with a subcompact .45 loaded with six rounds, but his return fire pins down the killer long enough for SLCPD to arrive, and the killer dies in front of their MP-5 and AR-15 fire.
Having earlier attacked a religious center in Arvada, Colo., which left two dead and two wounded, Matthew Murray resurfaces at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs on December 9, 2007. He opens fire, killing another two and injuring three. But this time, there’s an armed citizen who literally runs to the sound of the guns. A former cop, with a carry permit and working volunteer church security, Jeanne Assam draws her Beretta 9mm and rushes the heavily-armed killer, firing as she moves. He falls, riddled with her bullets, with only enough strength left to pull the trigger one last time to finish himself off. Jeanne Assam is hailed as a hero who saved countless lives with her courage and skill.
On April 22, 2012, three months before the infamous theatre massacre in Aurora, a man with a grudge and a gun shows up a the New Destiny Christian Center and shoots the pastor’s mother to death. Before Kiarron Parker, a 29-year-old with a substantial criminal record, can claim any more victims, an off-duty cop attending the church draws his own handgun and shoots the assailant dead. An estimated 30 other members of the congregation present may have been saved from a criminal’s murderous intent because a Good Guy With A Gun was immediately present.
Just days after the horror in Newtown, a mass murder is thwarted at a movie theatre and Chinese restaurant in San Antonio, Texas. Jesus Manuel Garcia opens fire at the movie theatre from the parking lot, causing people to flee in panic. He also takes shots at a police car before off-duty deputy Lisa Castellano, working a second job, ends the matter by shooting him four times. In this case, there was no loss of innocent life. It’s not a gun-free zone: Someone was able to shoot back and end the deadly danger before it could become another infamous mass murder.
Crazed narcissist Eliot Rodger goes on a long-planned rampage in Isla Vista, Calif., on May 23, 2014. He uses knife and hammer to kill three young men, and then races his car through the community on a deadly spree, shooting people and running them over. Three more victims die from his bullets, eight are wounded, and he strikes four more with his vehicle. As soon as armed police confronts him, however, he almost immediately kills himself. The media will virtually ignore the non-gun deaths he inflicted, focusing on the three he accomplished with gunfire. The media will also ignore the fact carry permits are all but impossible to get in this part of California, which in effect rendered the entire community a “gun-free zone” for any spree killer who chose to commit his murders in public.
A crazy man comes to the right place, but does the wrong thing in Upper Darby, Pa., on July 24, 2014. Richard Plotts shoots and kills a female caseworker at a mental health office, and wounds psychiatrist Lee Silverman. But Dr. Silverman has a small pistol within reach and returns fire. Three gunshot wounds later, the killer is down and out of action — though he’ll survive his wounds. There was talk of punitive action against Dr. Silverman for having the pistol in a gun-free zone, but after police publicly announce he undoubtedly saved many lives, the doctor suffers no punishment.

In Moore, Okla., on September 26, 2014, a recently fired employee returns to the workplace and attacks with a knife, beheading one woman and stabbing a second. The boss, whose office is apparently not a gun-free zone, grabs his firearm and rushes to the scene, shooting the killer down and stopping the carnage.

Lessons

If you want to know why the public doesn’t know, take the two shootings three months apart in Aurora. The atrocity at the theater lit up worldwide news for days and remains a cause célèbre; the thwarting of the killer at the church barely and briefly flickered across even Colorado media — and never made the mainstream at all. Part of it, certainly, is an inherent anti-gun bias, which the mainstream media has long made clear. But part of it’s simply because a killer being cut down as soon as he claims his first victim isn’t as “newsworthy” as a horrendous massacre of the helpless.

When a home burns down in your community, it probably makes front-page news in the local paper. When a homeowner uses a fire extinguisher to put out a kitchen blaze before it spreads, it may not make the news at all. An incident prevented isn’t seen as an incident. This is why, when the topic of gun-free zones comes up, we need to write letters to the editor and call in to the radio talk shows to spread the truth.

Many of the cases mentioned above were reported in detail here in the Ayoob Files. A complete archive is available online at www.americanhandgunner.
com/ayoob-files-archive. An excellent account of the Tyler incident appears in my friend Chris Bird’s book, Thank God I Had a Gun, available at www.
privateerpublications.com/book-tgi.html.

The unequipped and unprepared are helpless. Bring your business to places where you can legally carry and do carry. Even a subcompact can suffice. Van Wyk drove off four terrorists with his 5-shot .38. But consider something bigger and easier to shoot well under stress … and always have spare ammunition. Officer Hammond, who had only three cartridges left at the end of the Trolley Square Mall gun battle, urged other officers to always carry off-duty, and to carry spare ammunition as well. Jeanne Assam’s familiarity and skill with her 15-shot Beretta saved lives in Colorado Springs.

The lessons of history are clear. The facts are stark and can be easily found by someone who doesn’t have a personal agenda. It’s not about political correctness; in the end, it’s about the protection of the innocent from evil.

By Massad Ayoob

Situation:

The subject suddenly escalates a routine consensual contact by police, attempts to eviscerate a cop and is shot. Issues ensue.

Lesson:

In the wake of a fatal shooting, more than the pulling of the trigger may need to be explained, and motives other than justice may drive the inquiry.

It’s April 30, 2009, a routine day for the three members of the Yolo County Sheriff’s Department Gang Unit who are driving through Woodland, Calif., in an unmarked Ford sedan. They’re not undercover in the sense of maintaining false identities, but are dressed to “blend in.” Each is wearing jeans and an untucked T-shirt large enough to conceal their handcuffs, magazine pouches and the paddle-holstered Glocks riding on their right hips behind sheriff’s stars clipped to their belts.

The department issues Glock .40’s, giving individual deputies a choice of the full-size Glock 22 or the compact G23, with options for personal preference. All three are represented. Detective Hector Bautista, driving, is a big man who can comfortably conceal the full-size, 16-shot issue G22. In the shotgun seat, Sergeant Dale Johnson is carrying a privately-owned, department-approved Glock 36 subcompact .45 ACP with +1 magazines. In the right rear seat, Detective Hernan Oviedo has chosen the smaller department option, the G23.

Coming across an overpass, they observe a man walking down the sidewalk on the other side. His garb and shaven head fit the “gang dress code profile” of local members of the Sureños and Norteños. The man looks familiar to one of the officers, who says, “I think he’s on parole.”

The decision is made to pull to the curb and initiate a conversation, what is called in the profession a “consensual contact.”

In seconds, everyone’s day will cease to be routine.

The Incident

The pedestrian is Luis Gutierrez-Navarro, 26. The unmarked car glides to a stop abreast of him. Bautista remains at the wheel, his foot on the brake; Oviedo opens the right rear door and puts one foot on the pavement and Johnson steps out of the car. Johnson identifies himself verbally and asks if they can talk. As he does so, he raises his T-shirt to reveal the sheriff’s badge and gun, something the gang unit always does as part of the self-identification process when they’re not in uniform.

Gutierrez gives him a startled look. His eyes dart down to the badge, then back up to Sergeant Johnson’s face and suddenly, explosively, he turns and runs, back in the direction from which he came. Johnson sprints after him, and in an instant, Oviedo is out of the car and running behind both. Gutierrez-Navarro runs into the street, ignoring several moving vehicles in the roadway. Bautista wheels the car into a hard U-turn to follow as soon as traffic allows.

Gutierrez’s right hand dives into his front pants pocket. It’s a movement any experienced cop would associate with either reaching for a weapon or trying to grab evidence to throw away, and they have to assume the former. Both lawmen draw their Glocks, still running, still shouting their identity.

Gutierrez’s hand comes out empty. Johnson manages to holster his Glock 36 while still running. An athletic man, he is closing the gap. When he’s close enough, he reaches out and tries to grab the fleeing man’s shoulders. They have reached a point almost completely across the street at the edge of the bridge.

Gutierrez-Navarro ducks under the sergeant’s reaching arm, and suddenly, there is an open knife blade in his right hand. He slashes at Johnson, belly high, and the Sergeant “hollows out,” arching his lower back rearward and pulling his abdomen in, to barely evade being eviscerated.

Now Johnson has the Glock .45 in his hand, he is pointing rather than aiming, and firing, moving at the same time, trying to stay out of reach of the flashing blade. Running toward them, without breaking stride, Oviedo sees it happen and brings his own Glock up to eye-level and fires once, twice.

Gutierrez-Navarro suddenly goes rigid. He throws the locked-open knife deliberately away from him, and it lands in the dirt at the side of the road. Slowly, he crumples to the pavement.

The officers radio in for an ambulance and assistance and apply first aid themselves. Bautista, who has pulled in behind the shooting scene, strips off his own T-shirt to use as a hemorrhage-controlling, field-expedient wound dressing. While he’s doing so, Johnson disregards the personal danger of blood-borne pathogens and uses his bare hand to apply direct pressure, trying desperately to save the life of the man who just tried to disembowel him.
Paramedics arrive quickly. But Luis Gutierrez-Navarro, who has never spoken a word to any of the officers, including the one he tried to kill, doesn’t survive. The incident began and ended in seconds.

The aftermath will take much longer.

Criminal Investigation

The investigation of this incident was intensive and multi-layered. The Woodland Police Department did a thorough investigation. A parallel investigation was done by the lawmen’s employing agency, the Yolo County Sheriff’s Department. The District Attorney’s Office did its own investigation.

According to the toxicology report, Luis Gutierrez-Navarro had a substantial amount of methamphetamine in his system — a level commonly associated with irrational and violent behavior.

All the investigations came to the same conclusion: The death of Luis Gutierrez-Navarro was a justifiable homicide in the line of duty.

The local Latino community became enraged. There were demonstrations and an unofficial “commission” was formed, including some influential citizens “demanding action” and chaired by a former member of the California Supreme Court. As a result, the California Attorney General’s Office reviewed the investigation in its entirety. It endorsed the findings of the District Attorney: justifiable homicide. This did not allay the furor. The FBI and the Department of Justice under Eric Holder were called in. They came to the same conclusion: justifiable homicide.

But none of this was enough to prevent the grieving family of the deceased from making a Federal case out of it. It was filed under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging the officers had conspired under color of law to violate the civil rights of the deceased. The case of Gutierrez v. Yolo County, et. al., went to trial in Federal court in Sacramento in September 2012.

Civil Issues

There are lessons any peace officer, indeed anyone who carries a gun, can learn from this case. The lawyers for the dead man’s parents, the plaintiffs, alleged the cops had racially profiled Gutierrez and stopped him for no reason, had no right to chase him when he ran and they failed to ID themselves. Poor Gutierrez probably thought they were gang-bangers come to hurt him and when they realized they had shot an innocent man for nothing, they planted a knife on him.

In cases like this, those involved for the defense feel like the sailors in the Walt Disney movie of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea — they are submariners in the clutches of a giant squid and have to chop off the clutching tentacles one by one, destroying the other side’s case issue by issue.

Justification issues go back to before the trigger is pulled. I was asked by plaintiff’s counsel in pre-trial deposition what right the officers had to stop the man in the first place, let alone chase him when he fled. I replied under California State Supreme Court case law in People v. Souza from 1994, as well as the Supreme Court’s decision in Illinois v. Wardlow, when a man runs from identifiable police, there’s enough probable cause to sustain “investigative detention.” This means cops are allowed to chase him, detain him and determine what’s going on.

SCOTUS wrote in Wardlow, “Headlong flight — wherever it occurs — is the consummate act of evasion: It’s not necessarily indicative of wrongdoing, but it is certainly suggestive of such.” To a lay person, “indicative” vis-à-vis “suggestive” may sound like legal doubletalk, but the highest court’s statement can be translated to: “Running away may not be proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but it’s a damn good clue.”

I didn’t have to testify to this at trial. By the time, veteran police defense lawyer Bruce Kilday and his brilliant protégé, co-counsel Amie McTavish, had established through testimony of the officers if Gutierrez had said “No, I don’t want to talk to you” or had even just silently walked away, it would’ve ended there. What I did testify to in court was once he ran and his hand went into his pocket in a movement consistent with going for a weapon, they were justified in drawing their guns. Moreover, his running into traffic showed a disregard for his own life and the lives of others: cops who could have been run over, other pedestrians who could have been killed by cars trying to avoid hitting him and motorists crashing for the same reason. Such disregard for life is another clear warning signal you may be dealing with someone desperate and dangerous.

Explaining Intent

Yes, people can be justifiably shot in the back. The bullet that killed Gutierrez was fired from behind him by Oviedo. The 180-gr. Winchester JHP entered the upper right rear quadrant of his shoulder and coursed through his neck, severing the jugular vein, before it exited through his left lower jaw. Oviedo had seen Gutierrez attempt to disembowel his brother officer (and, from his vantage point, reasonably feared he had succeeded), and saw the knife was poised for another strike as he fired the fatal shot. The jury “got it.” Oviedo wasn’t shooting in self-defense, he was shooting to save the life of a brother officer, and his angle to the man trying to kill the cop simply didn’t matter.

Point out evidence at the scene: When responding officers and paramedics arrived at the shooting scene, the involved officers pointed out where Gutierrez’s knife had landed, and evidence technicians meticulously photographed it in situ (where it was found) and preserved it for testing. It was a cheap copy of a tactical folder marked “Firefighter” with a serrated blade. Plaintiffs’ counsel alleged it was a “drop knife” planted by the officers to cover up the wrongful shooting of an innocent, unarmed man, and to support the allegation brought in a retired undersheriff from Placer County as an expert to testify cops often carried such knives.

Physical Evidence

The well-preserved evidence knife didn’t have fingerprints, which was to be expected with its textured grasping surface. However, there was DNA. The DNA testing came into evidence before I got there, thanks to the California Department of Justice and defense team member Kevin Dehoff, so I was able to refer to it when I testified. The testing absolutely excluded any of the three officers, but tied to a very high degree of certainty to Luis Gutierrez-Navarro. Altogether, Kilday and McTavish had driven a wooden stake directly through the heart of the allegation of a planted “drop knife.”

Remember this the next time someone tells you “Don’t say anything to the cops after you shoot someone in self-defense.” I’ve seen departments where the chief was throwing cops to the wolves in such cases, where the union told the officers “Don’t say nothin’!” Had this advice been followed here, the critical evidence showing the knife had been in the dead man’s hand when he was shot might have been lost and couldn’t have been used to help exonerate the defendants.

Don’t expect the other guy’s “bad guy status” to be introduced to help your case. Gutierrez’s fingers sported “dot tattoos” indicating the number 13, a gangbanger symbol of “M,” the 13th letter of the alphabet — which in gang argot, stands variously for murder and/or marijuana. A warrant search of his home found gangbanger music, and he had a history of associating with a certain gang. However, none of this was known to any of the officers (there wasn’t time in the first few seconds to see the inconspicuous dots tattooed on his fingers), and Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) holds prior bad acts or associations, unknown to the shooter at the time of the shooting, can’t be used to defend the shooter’s actions. The standard is: what would a reasonable and prudent person (or, for cops under the SCOTUS standard of Graham v. Connor, a reasonable, prudent, trained and experienced police officer) have done in the same situation, knowing what the defendant knew at the time.

I didn’t expect this evidence to come in, and it didn’t. The trial judge was Lawrence Karlton. I had testified in his court before, and knew him to be very strict, but very strict with both sides, and therefore very fair. I can always live with that. However, the exclusion required the defense team to show the jury some other answer to the question, “Why the hell would he try to rip a cop’s guts out?”

The jury needs to know why! The evidence was allowed in — because it was scientific evidence and part of the autopsy and its attendant toxicology screen — included the fact the dead man had a large quantity of methamphetamines in his system at time of death.

Emphasize Impossibilities

Be able to explain why adverse witnesses couldn’t have seen what they said they saw. At trial, the plaintiffs put forth two young Hispanic women who claimed to have seen the shooting, and swore Gutierrez never had a knife when he was shot. While some on the cops’ side felt it was racially motivated false testimony, neither the Kilday/McTavish defense team nor I were convinced of it. Their testimony was destroyed much more cleanly, without playing the race card.

Kilday, while questioning the officers, showed the jury Johnson and Oviedo were watching Gutierrez’ hands, as they were trained to do, and were the closest to him when it all went down. Ms. McTavish, delicately but expertly cross-examining the adverse witnesses, got them to admit they weren’t watching the hands of Gutierrez, they were tunneled in on the cops who, after all, had guns in their hands and drew their attention. The defense finished this line with my direct testimony, where I explained of course you wouldn’t see something you aren’t looking for.

McTavish had also established one of the women was confused as to which side of the street it even happened on, and the other was driving at 40 MPH trying to watch it in a rear-view mirror which reduced the size of the reflected images and couldn’t have seen a knife if she was looking for it.

Identifiability is important. Plaintiffs’ theory, supported by their expert witness, was Gutierrez didn’t speak English, saw only the gun instead of the badge and assumed gangbangers instead of plainclothes cops were attacking him. Kilday and McTavish established Gutierrez did indeed speak English, and fortunately, investigators had photographed the officers in detail immediately after the shooting to document their appearance at the time. I showed those photos to the jury, who could clearly see the big gold sheriff’s star in front of Johnson’s weapon was far more obviously visible than the black holster with the dark gray Glock.

Understand not everyone on the plaintiffs’ side is malicious. Yes, there are cases where the man you have to kill is of a second- or third-generation crime family, and his relatives know he needed killing but they see a lawsuit against you as a lottery ticket. I honestly don’t think this was the case in the Gutierrez suit. I saw his parents in court, and I believe they were truly stricken and grieving. I suspect they believed what the people with agendas told them — jackbooted thugs killed their son simply for being Hispanic. Ask yourself: when you were young, did you ever do stupid things you went to great lengths to conceal from your parents? I believe this is what happened here, and I believe it happens a lot.

Don’t play the race card! An hour or two on Google reading what’s available from a search for Gutierrez v. Yolo County, et. al. will show the incredible amount of propaganda race-baiters applied to this trial. As you read all those allegations of “cops kill Latino out of racial hatred and police brutality,” consider these simple facts: Two Hispanic officers and one mixed-race officer (Japanese-American, Johnson) engaged a Hispanic man who attempted to murder the mixed-race officer and was killed by a Hispanic officer, who worked for a Hispanic sheriff named Ed Prieto. The defense ignored the invisible elephant in the courtroom, and focused simply on the indisputable facts in evidence. Which is one reason why the defense prevailed.

Epilogue

On October 24, 2012, the Federal Court jury returned a “complete defense verdict,” which totally exonerated the cops from any wrongdoing. The Sacramento Bee newspaper reported, “The parents of Luis Gutierrez have only their son to blame for his death at the hands of a Yolo County sheriff’s deputy, a federal court jury in Sacramento decided Tuesday.” The long ordeal was over at last.

The involved officers have all continued their careers, some of them receiving promotions. Their sheriff, Ed Prieto, stood strong for them throughout. Yes, life goes on after these things. But the odyssey of this case reminds us all of the foolishness of the saying, “A good shoot is a good shoot.”

By Massad Ayoob

Situation:

A heavily-armed lynch mob has you surrounded and under fire. You’re armed with two revolvers and whatever ammunition you had on your person when trouble started.

Lesson:

Cover and concealment can make up for a defender’s lack of firepower, but the day may come when you need more ammo than you thought. Remember “citizen’s arrest” can have unintended consequences.

The little village of Reserve, N.M., population 200 or so, was called Frisco in the latter 19th century. It sits a little over 60 miles west of Socorro. On December 1, 1884, it was the scene of a gun battle so epic in scope, three quarters of a century later, it would capture the imagination of Walt Disney. Like many of you, I was one of the millions of little boys who watched raptly when the Disney TV show ran its series romanticizing the life of Davy Crockett. (Yes, as a matter of fact, I did whine until my parents bought me a coonskin cap.) Realizing he was onto something, Walt Disney decided to do a couple more mini-series — this time based on real heroes of the “Wild West” cowboy epoch.

One focused on Texas Ranger and sheriff John Horton Slaughter. As I recall, it took some typical Hollywood liberties with actual history. The theme song for each episode ran, “Texas John Slaughter made ’em do what they ought ’ter ’cause if they didn’t, they died.”

The other series was The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca, and it had its own catchy theme song. My generation remembers the refrain, “… and the legend was, like El Gato the cat, nine lives had Elfego Baca.” Most memorable was the opening episode, in which he held out in a little sod shack against a big gang of gringo cowboys who riddled it with 4,000 bullets without hitting him or a plaster statue of a saint, which stood inside, as if to watch over him. He, however, racks up a significant body count of dead or wounded cowboys. At one point in the episode, Robert Loggia (playing Baca) looks at the unmarked statue and whispers in awe, “… a miracle.” He’s charged with multiple murders, acquitted and promptly becomes sheriff. Even as a kid I was rolling my eyes over this one.

I grew up, and got into history and stuff … and whaddaya know? Disney pretty much had it right.

Prelude To A Gunfight

Armed citizens in America have heard a lot in the last three years about “self-appointed wannabe cops.” It’s wrong to throw this appellation at a duly-elected captain of a neighborhood watch, but 130-some years ago, it pretty well fit Elfego Baca.

When Elfego Baca found himself in Frisco at age 19, he realized he was swimming with sharks. There was an outlaw element there which would have been called “ruffians” in the past and today would be characterized as, well, “scumbags.” Shortly before Baca’s own involvement, local bullies had gone over the top at an establishment called Milligan’s Saloon, castrating a young Mexican man in front of horrified onlookers. When one of those onlookers tried to defend the victim, according to one account, “the drunken cowboys tied him to a post and used him for target practice.” This part of the backstory, needless to say, didn’t make it to Disney’s show.

The clique involved seems to have been comprised mostly of Texans, and eventually, one of them picked on the wrong Mexican. A fella named Charles McCarthy decided to shoot up a Frisco saloon while young Baca was present, and after five bullets whistled past his general location, Elfego decided it was time to take matters in hand; according to one account, a round from McCarthy’s gun had shot Baca’s hat off. He disarmed McCarthy and arrested him — under dubious authority, it was believed then and now, but we’ll discuss this a little bit later.

The situation snowballed. McCarthy’s compadres attempted to reclaim McCarthy, Baca refused and shots were fired. (In the Disney version, it is Baca who opens fire, with warning shots.) In the ensuing melee, a horse fell upon one of the stockmen, crushing him to death. Some accounts have the horse shying from the gunfire, while at least one historian believes Baca shot the horse, which then fell on its rider.

In their 2003 article “Elfego Baca Lived More Than Nine Lives,” writers David Santana, Melissa Ann Villela, Rosalynn Torres and Michael Telles pick up the story: “After a brief trial where McCarthy was charged and fined for drunk and disorderly conduct, Baca made himself scarce. He eased through a crowd of cowboys, concealing his identity by lowering his hat over his eyes. Soon members of the angry mob sought out Baca and discovered he was hiding in a jacal, or shack.”

The stage had been set. Western history and folklore alike were about to be born.

The Shootout

The jacal was constructed of wooden poles and sod, with a wooden door. It would keep out the elements. It would not keep out bullets. The shooting began when one of the cowboy clique, rifle-wielding William Hearne, attempted to kick down the door and make entry on Baca. Baca fired two revolver bullets through the door and Hearne fell back, mortally wounded. Carrying their dying friend, the cowboys retreated to available cover and began shooting at the jacal. The siege was on. What was probably the highest volume gunfight in the history of the Old West had begun.

Round Counts

A majority of historical accounts agree the mob howling for the blood of Elfego Baca numbered 80 men or more. They were “area aiming” at the building itself, hoping to hit the hidden man inside. This man occasionally, sparingly, shot back.

As for the guns of the Baca shootout, which some historians called “The Battle of Frisco,” historical accounts are not as specific as we would like. The cowboys no doubt employed revolvers. Rifles also seem to have played a huge part: Historians refer to “Winchesters” emptied again and again at the jacal by the cowboy contingent.

It’s believed Elfego Baca was armed with two revolvers. One historian refers to his two Colts, and another to the 250-gr. lead bullets he fired through the door to kill William Hearne, which would place the caliber as .45 Colt. While the Disney version begins with Baca wearing twin Colt Single Action Army revolvers with 4.75″ barrels in matching holsters on a Buscadero belt, we know such gear was not likely to be found on the New Mexico frontier in 1884.

According to most accounts, Baca started out with his own revolver and the one he had taken from Charles McCarthy when he took him into custody. Indeed, his refusal to return the gun in court after McCarthy had been convicted of “drunk and disorderly conduct” and assessed a small fine was apparently one of the things to add fuel to the anger of McCarthy’s friends.

It’s unlikely Elfego Baca found ammunition compatible with his guns in the little shack he commandeered; the only cartridges he would have likely had would have been those on his person when he entered. I’ve found no historian who even implied Baca saw a siege coming and filled his pockets with additional ammunition. Given most wise handgunners of the Old West carried their six-shooters with only five rounds and the hammer down on an empty chamber, Baca might have had as few as 10 cartridges when the stand-off began, and only eight after shooting Hearne through the door of the jacal.

Some Westerners did carry six rounds in their SA revolvers, either with the firing pin of the hammer at rest between two cartridge rims, or just trusting to luck, since the half-cock notch was a weak thing if the gun was dropped with a round under the hammer. Some would load the sixth round only if they saw trouble coming, which would certainly “fit the profile” of Elfego Baca’s situation. So, we can say, perhaps 12 rounds.

Some Westerners did wear “cartridge belts” routinely in those days. If we give the benefit of the doubt to Walt Disney’s researchers — and it looks as if they did indeed do their homework — we can look at Disney’s recreation and see the Baca character’s Buscadero belt has 20 to 24 cartridge loops along the back. This, with two fully-loaded sixguns, would still have left Elfego Baca with a maximum of 36 handgun cartridges to hold off 80 antagonists, many if not most armed with rifles, and able to send some of their company “back behind the lines” for more ammunition.

On the cowboy side, the disparity of firepower was awesome. The lowest estimate of bullets unleashed at Elfego Baca during the siege in Frisco is 400, and this may have been a typographical error with a dropped zero.

The majority of historical accounts agree some 4,000 bullets were fired in hopes of hitting Elfego Baca. In his subsequent trial, the door of the jacal was brought into the courtroom as evidence, and it alone had somewhere between 367 and 400 bullet strikes visible.

Body Counts

What did those assorted bullets do? Well, historians agree no bullet ever hit Elfego Baca. Baca, on the other hand, is claimed generally to have killed four of his antagonists during the shootout, including Hearne at the outset, and to have wounded 13. One source claims he killed only one, and the four previously-cited historians note “he was charged with the death of Hearne,” and not for shooting anyone else.

Not being a statistics major, I’ll let all y’all do the math on this, but one thing is indisputably clear. In the end, against overwhelming odds, Elfego Baca decisively won the gunfight.

Back to the Shootout

Early on, at least one friend of Elfego Baca rode out to Socorro to summon duly-constituted law enforcement, but 60 miles takes time on horseback. The guys with the stars on their shirts responded as fast as transportation of the day allowed … which wasn’t very fast.

The shooting lasted throughout the first day. In his book The Shooters, historian Leon Metz wrote, “The cowboys tossed torches on the roof, but the dirt prevented a fire from starting. They hurled dynamite, and it went off with a shattering roar, collapsing part of the roof.” Night fell, and the gunfire tapered off. Some historians say the mob ran out of ammunition, or at least ran low, and sent some of its members to fetch more cartridges. Others believe the mob was collectively convinced Baca must be dead, but they wanted to wait until dawn to approach and make sure.

The sun rose again. Smoke was seen coming from the shack. Smells of cooking food wafted toward the surrounding contingent of the lynch mob. They realized Elfego Baca wasn’t just up and running — he was making himself some breakfast with food and cooking utensils he had found inside the jacal. I have to say — when I saw this as a kid in the late 1950’s I called BS. It turns out historians agree 100 percent it actually happened. Talk about “the last great act of defiance”…

On this day — somewhere between 30 and 36 hours after the shooting had begun, 33 hours by the majority of accounts — officially constituted law enforcement arrived at last in the form of Deputy Sheriff Frank Rose. The ring of cowboys was convinced to put up their guns, and Elfego Baca offered to surrender and stand trial … but only if he was allowed to keep his guns.

Incredibly to us today, it was agreed upon. Apparently still armed (and presumably still with some live ammo left) Elfego Baca was transported to Socorro, where he was disarmed, jailed and charged with murder. He remained in jail until August of 1885, when he was found not guilty.

Aftermath

Elfego Baca was, indeed, later elected Sheriff of Socorro County, largely as a result of this incident. He had become a hero, not only in the Mexican community, but also among those who believed in standing up for law and order. He later become an attorney, and would claim at the end of his life he had defended 30 clients on homicide charges, and won acquittals for all but one.

Baca would win various other elected offices. He also wasn’t done with shooting men to death. During the FDR administration, when WPA researchers were doing oral histories of Americans, he said of one chase of two shooting suspects, “We rode after them and I shot one of them about 300 yards away. The other got away — too many cottonwood trees in the way.” He also told the researchers to ask the then-current sheriff of Socorro County “to show you the records. You might see the place on the way down where they buried a cowboy I shot. It’s a little way off the main road though.”

Researchers Santana, Vellela, Torres and Telles report, “On January 31, 1915, Baca gunned down Celestino Otero on an El Paso street. He claimed Otero fired first, but the prosecution claimed Baca had purchased the gun from an El Paso pawnshop and placed it in Otero’s hand once he fell dead.” However, they add, an “all-white jury” tried Baca for the killing, and found him not guilty. Historian Metz claimed the shooting was indeed justified, beginning when Otero shot Baca in the groin, and Baca responded by shooting Otero twice in the heart.

Elfego Baca died peacefully in 1945 at the age of 80. In 1993, famed New Mexican Bill Richardson said of him, “The story of Elfego Baca demonstrates a man’s will to preserve justice in a land and time of rampant corruption and bullying. Baca’s bravery instilled hope to the native New Mexican people who upheld the laws of the land and refused to succumb to racial injustice.”

Lessons

The first lesson is, in the 21st century, “Don’t be a self-appointed lawman.” Baca’s trial for the Frisco shootout might have turned out far differently today. The previously cited quad of historians claim Baca was “carrying a mail-order badge and a stolen gun” when he made the arrest of Charlie McCarthy, triggering the cataclysm which followed. Some others say he was deputized.

Baca himself told a WPA researcher, “In those days I was a self-made deputy. I had a badge I made for myself, and if they didn’t believe I was a deputy, they’d better believe it, because I made ’em believe it.” Suffice to say today, “If you can’t document you are official, don’t presume you are.” In modern times, there’s no such thing as a self-made deputy.

The second lesson, from the tactical side, is best phrased in a quote from officer survival expert Evan Marshall: “Be a lover of cover.” How could Baca evade as many as 4,000 rounds? The floor of the jacal was below the visible foundation and door by as much as 18″. What the building could not stop, the earth did. The lynch mob was hitting too high; Baca is believed to have spent most of the shootout in a protected prone position.

And, by the way, I can find no historical information to contradict the legend none of those many, many bullets hit the plaster statue of the saint inside the jacal. Make of it what you will.

Finally, thanks to the American Handgunner reader who suggested a story on Elfego Baca. Yes, we do listen to your input.

By Massad Ayoob

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Situation:

A madman shoots dozens of people — until a citizen with a gun drops him in his tracks.

Lesson:

When NRA’s Wayne LaPierre famously said, “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he had the weight of history behind him.

Monroe Phillips was a big man physically who had always hoped to be a big man socially, but it hadn’t turned out well. His business interests in timber and real estate had failed, probably because people found him surly and unpleasant. He’d always spoken of many people conspiring against him, and paranoia doesn’t attract customers or business associates. On May 6, 1915, he and his lawyer had an appointment to sit down with a judge and the attorney for some of his creditors, Col. Harry Dunwoody, who was what Phillips had long wanted to be: one of the most prominent men in their town of Brunswick, Ga.

Phillips’ wife informed him of a phone conversation she’d just had with lawyer Dunwoody. The man had insulted her, she reported. She’d sold a lighter (a type of barge) for a $75 down payment, and the lawyer said property was attached, in essence accusing her of trying to steal the money.

“I’ll go and speak with Dunwoody,” Phillips told his wife. When she heard those words, she couldn’t have realized she would never see her husband alive again.

The Murders Begin

Dunwoody’s secretary, Ila Lee, was at the reception desk of Dunwoody’s second-floor law office at the corner of Newcastle and Gloucester Streets in Brunswick when the hulking Phillips strode through the front door and demanded to see Dunwoody. She told him the lawyer was busy and couldn’t see him. Phillips simply brushed past her.

She watched him kick open the door to her boss’s office, and then saw the shotgun he was raising to his shoulder. She heard a deafening blast and fled from her desk into the office legal library. Behind her, another shotgun blast exploded.

She heard Phillips leave and emerged from the library to peek into Dunwoody’s office. She saw her employer in his chair, what was left of his head lolling backward; he had taken a full 10-gauge charge of buckshot in the face, killing him instantly. On the floor lay the man he had been in conference with, A.M. Way, his face a bloody mask with a ruined eyeball hanging out of its socket. She didn’t know the killer was just outside the door in the second-floor hallway, reloading.

Death in the Stairwell

The roar of the powerful 10-gauge had been heard in the street, and passersby were gathering at the floor-level door and entryway to see what was going on. At this point, Phillips — who had thumbed two more big shells into the twin barrels of his huge Parker shotgun — looked down the staircase he had just ascended and saw his next victims.
The men below were caught in a fatal funnel. Phillips threw the shotgun to his shoulder and fired both barrels. One of the men he aimed at collapsed instantly, while the other, though visibly hit, remained on his feet.

On the floor, riddled with buckshot and dying, was C.L. Padgett. Padgett had been a Brunswick police officer. He was not on-duty at this time, having taken a job as a motorman, and historical accounts conflict as to whether he was associated with the BPD at the time Phillips shot him. However, Padgett was well known in town, and it’s reasonable to assume Phillips recognized him as “a cop.” The other man, whom Phillips had only wounded in the right leg, was attorney Eustace Butts.

It must have been an interesting tableau in the long seconds which followed: Phillips perhaps realized if the downed Padgett had a gun on him, Butts could reach it and shoot him before he could reload his empty shotgun. And Butts probably realized he couldn’t make it up the stairs and attempt a disarm with a wounded leg.

Instead, Phillips broke open his Parker to reload from his pocket, and Butts and other citizens quickly dragged Padgett back out the door and out of the line of fire.

The Rampage Continues

Phillips, having reloaded, now proceeded down the staircase to the office door of another nemesis, prominent businessman and real estate magnate Albert Fendig, whom Phillips had publicly accused of swindling him out of $25,000 in a real estate deal. He discovered the target of his hatred was not in, but Phillips did confront one W.K. Boston. “I’m not going to kill you,” he said to Boston. “You’ve been my friend.”
It was a courtesy the killer would extend to no one else.

Bursting out the front door of the office building, Phillips blindly fired a shotgun blast into Kaiser’s Store across the street, where a number of women were shopping. The buckshot shattered the display window, sending lead and glass flying through the store. No one was hit, but the customers fled in panic.

On the sidewalk, Phillips ran his big shotgun like an automaton. His sequence was fire once, open the action, pluck out the empty, replace it with another long shotshell pulled from his pocket, close the gun and fire again.

His eye fell upon a long-time local cop, George Asbell, who was moving across the street. Asbell had also left the police department to become a motorman, but the killer either didn’t know or didn’t care. Phillips carefully aimed at him and fired. The buckshot charge caught Asbell in the back of the head, killing him instantly.

As pedestrians realized what was happening and ran, the madman had fewer targets, but his spreading shot patterns were able to hit more victims at once at the greater distances. Evidence would later show when he filled his pockets with shells, Phillips had, perhaps inadvertently, included some small birdshot rounds in with the buckshot. This likely changed many victims who would have been “dead” to “wounded.”

Some of the wounded were also hit at distances far enough to render even Phillips’ buckshot impotent. “Several persons standing blocks away were struck by stray shots,” the New York Times would report the next day. The first L.E. officer to return fire on the mass murderer was special agent S.A. Ellard of the Southern Railway police. Shot from the front, “A number of buckshot (sic) lodged in Ellard’s face.

“When Phillips backed down the street loading and firing his gun Ellard ducked behind a telephone post, whipped on (sic) his revolver and joined in the fusillade which was being rained upon the madman,” the Atlanta Constitution reported two days after the shooting. If Ellard was far enough away buckshot pellets “lodged” in his face from the front, it is understandable his revolver fire took no effect.

By all accounts other than the Constitution’s, there was no “fusillade being rained” upon Phillips as yet.
But it was about to come.

Citizens Arm Themselves

Almost simultaneously, two citizens took it upon themselves to get guns. Both of them made their way to the nearest gun shop, the United Supply Company hardware store. One was Eustace Butts, still bleeding from his wounded leg, the lawyer who had dragged the dying ex-cop from the foot of the office building stairs minutes before. The other was a young man named Ralph Minehan.

Minehan got a .32-caliber revolver and cartridges to hastily shove into its five chambers; reports indicate he had to pay for it. Butts demanded a shotgun, and specifically requested #3 birdshot for it because, he said, he didn’t want to kill the gunman, just stop him. The counterman, either in a hurry or a helluva lot smarter than Butts, gave him buckshot. The record does not show whether cash was demanded for the scattergun.

Armed Citizens End It

It wasn’t far from where the shooting started to Branch’s Pharmacy, where the mass murderer next made entry. It was at this point the first uniformed Brunswick Police officer was able to run to the shooting scene. Young Rexford Deaver saw the gunman, and opened fire. It’s believed he hit Phillips. However, the bulky gunman didn’t go down. Instead, he was seen to aim his gun at the rookie cop and fire. The 10-gauge blast caught Deaver, only 60 days on the job, in the chest. He fell, mortally wounded.

Meanwhile, the two armed citizens had entered the drug store from behind the madman and pinpointed his location. Minehan fired first, emptying his revolver as fast as he could pull the trigger. It’s believed at least one of his bullets struck the gunman, but Monroe Phillips was big and .32-caliber bullets are small, and the raging mass murderer was still on his feet and armed.

It was then Butts discharged a single round. He said later he was trying to shoot the gun out of the big man’s hands, but his shotgun blast hit Phillips in the kidneys. Phillips dropped his gun and collapsed.

It was over. “Well, you’ve just about got me,” witnesses heard the murderer say. “Finish it up.”
No one fired again. It was already finished. The murderer quickly bled out and died on the drug store floor.

Aftermath

Five innocent people died at the scene from Monroe Phillips’ mad dog shooting spree. Mr. Way, the second shooting victim, amazingly survived, though he lost an eye and suffered horrendous facial injuries from the point-blank buckshot blast: remember, a 10-gauge dispenses about a “double dose” compared to a 12-gauge.

A total of 32 people were reported to be wounded by the killer’s fire, two of whom would die from their injuries, and at least one, many years later, would be said to have died sooner than he should have, at least in part from the old wounds inflicted on him during what became known as the Brunswick Massacre.

This atrocity occurred a century ago. We have to remember forensic investigation, then, was primitive compared to our standards today. Once the investigators knew “who killed who,” the case was closed and no further resources were wasted on research.

To this day, the records don’t seem to show what make, model, gauge or type of shotgun the hastily-armed citizen Eustace Butts used to stop Monroe Phillips. We do know from contemporary newspaper reports of the autopsy Butts’ shotgun blast was indeed the fatal shot, shredding the gunman’s kidneys. (The Glynn County Coroner’s Office did not return multiple phone calls, and we can’t be sure the autopsy report even exists today.)

Nor do we know what make and model of revolver Ralph Minehan used in his courageous attempt to stop the killer, but all reports agree it was .32-caliber and apparently 5-shot. Early accounts had Phillips murdering Padgett and wounding Butts outside the building, but later newspaper articles with info gathered after everything calmed down indicated the sequence described here.

A Mystery Solved

One mystery in all of this is no revolver bullet larger than .32-caliber was recovered, according to newspaper descriptions of Phillips’ autopsy report in 1915. Local Brunswick history and the lore of the Brunswick PD hold the heroic rookie cop Rex Deaver shot Phillips before the killer slew him. Yet it has been written Brunswick cops carried .38’s back then, which would have made it impossible for Deaver to shoot his killer before being murdered.

We found the answer, thanks to Captain Kevin Jones of the Brunswick PD, who among other achievements could be described as his agency’s resident historian. When I visited there researching this case a century later, Captain Jones told me in the early days of the department, cops bought their own guns and often went with whatever was cheapest. A grandson of the slain hero cop, also bearing the name Rex Deaver, was chief of the department in the mid-20th century.

Captain Jones was able to put me in touch with a still-living descendant, Kirk Quarterman. Quarterman, a career lawman himself, oddly enough, tells me the hero rookie’s privately-owned service revolver used on the fateful day is still in the family’s possession. He has seen it, a 4″ S&W Hand Ejector, with ivory grips — in .32.

Therefore, it would appear to be entirely possible slain hero cop Rex Deaver, and armed citizens Ralph Minehan and Eustace Butts, all had a part in putting bullets into the madman who finally stopped hurting innocent people when enough good guys with guns put enough lead into him. It remains uncontested it was the shotgun blast fired by armed citizen Butts which decisively dropped Monroe Phillips and ended his rampage.

Lessons

We’re reminded why American cops don’t carry .32’s anymore, even though they were quite common in the late 19th century, at least on the East Coast for this purpose, and fairly common well into the 20th. They use something bigger — ideally, something a lot bigger — to stop rampaging psychos. Brunswick, Ga., cops today carry Glock .40’s and have more substantial weaponry in their patrol cars for just such emergencies.

We learn “copycat mass murders” aren’t unique to the late 20th and early 21st centuries. One historian reports another mass murder was committed in Macon, Ga., 10 days after the Brunswick Massacre by an unbalanced young man who was reportedly obsessed with what had just happened in Brunswick.

We’re reminded of why first responders armed and ready to shoot back at a moment’s notice is important. If the courageous lawyer Eustace Butts had been armed when Phillips ran his shotgun empty in the stairwell, the toll in Brunswick could have stopped at only two victims killed and two wounded. Instead, Butts had to drag his wounded leg to a hardware store to get a gun, while a merciless clock was ticking and an equally merciless killer’s trigger finger was working.

Today, Georgia is a “shall-issue” state. In 1915, it would have taken a relatively significant amount of money to get a permit to carry a handgun. It’s not prohibitively expensive to carry there; had it been this way then, a citizen with his own gun might have been more likely to be present, and able to stop Phillips sooner.

Ex-cops who’ve served enough time on the job can carry guns under the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act of 2004. It wasn’t so back then. Had it been, former policemen Padgett and Asbell would’ve been legal to carry, and either might have been able to stop the rampage before Monroe Phillips could rack up the death toll he did. Instead, both ex-cops apparently died unarmed and helpless.

Today, gun-banners insist law-abiding citizens shouldn’t have “high-capacity magazines” in the name of preventing mass murders, and citizens don’t need guns at all because they can just jump mass murderers and disarm them when they’re reloading. A hundred years ago, the madman Monroe Phillips showed both ideas to be false. He shot some three dozen people with a 2-shot 19th century vintage Parker 10-gauge shotgun.

No one was able to disarm him because, as eyewitness Dr. G.W. Blanton told the Brunswick News a few days after the shooting, Phillips was running the double-barrel with what we would call today a “tactical reload.” Having been caught flat-footed with an empty gun in his second barrage when he stood at the top of a stairwell, the crafty murderer thereafter kept one live shell in one chamber, ready to fire with a quick movement — which simply closed the action. Dr. Blanton told the newspaper he had been waiting for Phillips to run dry so he or someone else could jump him and disarm him, but Phillips never gave them the opportunity. Never underestimate your opponent!

Let me close this history lesson with deepest thanks to Captain Kevin Jones of the Brunswick PD for his assistance. This article is dedicated to the memory of the courageous armed citizens and law enforcement personnel who ended this murderous rampage a century ago, an incident from which more should have been learned in the intervening years.
By Massad Ayoob

Situation:

A victorious survivor of more than one shootout with notorious gunmen makes a mistake that will be his last.

Lesson:

Don’t turn your back on people who think they have a reason to kill you.

The tall man stood in a desolate space in rural New Mexico. He had been having a difficult, argumentative day, and being in his late fifties, the aggravation of a full bladder wasn’t helping things. At the side of the road, he undid his fly to relieve himself.

We do not know exactly what was going through the tall man’s mind, but we certainly know what suddenly went through his brain: a large caliber bullet. It entered near the base of his skull, and exited through his forehead. For all practical purposes, he was dead even before his corpse sprawled supine in the dirt. He could not have seen or heard, moments later, when someone stood at his feet and fired again, driving a bullet into his abdomen and upward through his thorax, because he was already gone.

The year was 1908. Pat Garrett, the New Mexico lawman who had become famous as the slayer of Billy the Kid, had come to the end of his trail. Exactly who killed him is a matter of debate to this day.

A Ragged Path

Born in the Deep South in 1850, Pat Garrett left home in his late teens to work variously as a buffalo hunter, cowboy, ranch owner, and law enforcement officer. Though the shooting of one of the West’s most infamous outlaws made him famous, the incident also drew criticism. Some accused Garrett of having killed Billy the Kid in a less-than-fair fashion. Others seemed to feel Garrett had been made sheriff to clean out the bad guys, and having pretty much done so, they didn’t need him anymore. In any case, he lost the next election and was out of his job as High Sheriff.

Time went on. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt — an admirer of men like Garrett — appointed him customs collector in El Paso, Texas. Garrett blew the deal when he showed up at an important gathering with Tom Powell, a punkish gambler who had once beaten his own father into a coma, and arranged for the President to be photographed with him. When he found out who Powers was, the angry Roosevelt refused to renew Garrett’s appointment, and dropped him like the proverbial hot potato.
By 1908, Garrett’s career was on a severe downslide. He was in debt. One of his major creditors was W.W. Cox, who agreed to allow Garrett to pay off the debt by allowing a Cox associate to graze his animals on Garrett’s ranch. The ex-sheriff, apparently one of the old breed who loved cattle and despised sheep critters, was outraged to find the associate, Jesse Wayne Brazel, was grazing a huge herd of goats there.

A Gunfighting Career

It was his skill with a gun against dangerous men that earned Pat Garrett his place in history. Popular gun writer Bart Skelton apparently inherited his father Charles “Skeeter” Skelton’s penchant for meticulously researched Western history, and in the August 2012 issue of Shooting Times wrote a column titled “Pat Garrett: the Rest of the Story.” He commented, “It is said Garrett found himself in an argument with another buffalo hunter who allegedly tried to draw a gun on him, at which time he outdrew and killed the man.”

Garrett’s career was inextricably intertwined with his bete noire Billy the Kid. In 1880, Sheriff Garrett was leading a posse after the Kid and his gang, the Regulators. Writes Skelton, “Eventually, they caught the Kid at Fort Sumner, and a gunfight ensued during which Garrett shot and killed Tom O’Folliard.” O’Folliard was thought to be the Kid’s best friend. Billy escaped Garrett that night, but Garrett took him into custody later at Stinking Springs, and transported him back to jail in Lincoln, NM. Charlie Bowdre, another of the Kid’s companions, was killed at Stinking Springs by a fusillade of rifle fire from Garrett’s posse, though it is unclear whether or not Garrett himself launched any of those particular bullets.

There, William “Billy the Kid” Bonney paid Garrett back in kind for the death of his best friend. Somehow getting his hands on a revolver, he murdered Garrett’s jailer J.W. Bell, stole a shotgun from the sheriff’s office, and used it to kill another of Garrett’s deputies, Robert Olinger. Then, nonchalantly, the young gunman stole a horse and escaped from town.

It was Garrett’s turn. Months later, on July 14, 1881, Garrett caught up with the Kid in Fort Sumner, N.M. at Pete Maxwell’s ranch. The lawman was in a darkened bedroom at the ranch house when Bonney came to the door, with a Colt revolver in one hand and a large knife in the other, and asked, “Quien es? Quien es?” Here’s how Pat Garrett himself later described what happened next, in the moment that would make him notorious for the rest of his life, as told to Emerson Hough:
“There flashed over my mind at once one thought, and it was I had to shoot and shoot at once, and my shot must go to the mark the first time. I knew the Kid would kill me in a flash if I did not kill him. Just as he spoke and motioned toward me, I dropped over to the left and rather down, going after my gun with my right hand as I did so. As I fired, the Kid dropped back. I had caught him just about the heart … As I sprang back up, I fired once more, but did not hit him, and did not need to, for he was dead.”

Billy the Kid was apparently not the last man to die in front of Pat Garrett’s gun. Historian Mark Boardman has written, “(Sheriff Garrett) had tracked a wanted killer — and friend of the Cox/Rhode clan — to the Cox ranch in 1899 and killed the suspect while trying to arrest him.”

Who Killed Pat Garrett?

On the day of his death, Garrett was in the horse-drawn wagon with Carl Adamson, who Garrett hoped would buy Brazel’s troublesome sheep. Wayne Brazel was there, riding sometimes alongside and sometimes behind them on horseback. They had stopped for a roadside bladder-emptying when the gunfire erupted.

Different historians have different theories as to who ended the life of Pat Garrett. From C. F. Eckhardt in his December 9, 2008 column Charley Eckhardt’s Texas: “Garrett and two other men were in a wagon at a particularly desolate spot in Doña Ana County, either on the way to look over some sheep or on the way back from looking over some sheep Garrett was trying to buy. The stories differ. The wagon stopped and Garrett got down to relieve himself by the back wheel. As he stood, someone fired a single rifle shot. It struck Pat Garrett in the back of his head, just at the base of his skull. He was dead when he hit the ground.”

Eckhardt continues, “Wayne Brazeal (sic), who was along on the journey but was no friend of Garrett’s, rolled the dead man over and fired a single round from his pistol into Garrett’s chest. He then mounted a horse, rode into Las Cruces, confessed to murdering Garrett, and was arrested. However, he was acquitted of the crime since the third man testified Brazeal shot a corpse — Garrett was already dead from the rifle shot to his head when Brazeal shot him.”

Some believe Garrett’s death was the result of a wide-ranging conspiracy. From C. J. McElhinney, attorney and history researcher, at https://cjmlawyer.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/the-death-of-pat-garrett-self-defense-or-cold-blooded-murder-2/: “Here’s where things get interesting and, in my opinion, shows the fix he was in. Cox quickly secured Brazel’s release on bail. Albert Bacon Fall, the most notorious defense attorney in the territory and close friend of Cox, was retained to represent Brazel.

Adamson testified at the preliminary inquiry, but not at the subsequent trial, though he was available as a witness. The trial lasted one day. The prosecuting attorney did not seem to zealously present his case. He put physician William Field on the stand.”

McElhinney adds, “According to Dr. Field, who reached the site a few hours after the killing, Garrett was found lying on his back, arms outstretched to his sides and one knee drawn up, with a blanket or robe partially covering his corpse. The fly in his trousers was unbuttoned and he was wearing one riding glove, the right one, and his left hand was bare. Garrett’s Burgess shotgun was lying on the ground, disassembled and incapable of being fired, still in its leather holster a few feet from his body. Dr. Field noted no disturbance to the sand around the holster, as one might think would occur if someone suddenly dropped the weapon onto the ground. That is, unless it was placed there, which is what Dr. Field believed had really happened.”

It should be noted the Burgess was an early six-shot pump shotgun made from 1894 to 1899, which could be “folded” with a loaded magazine and carried in a huge holster. One would draw, snap it shut, and fire. It was “racked” by pulling back on its sliding trigger assembly instead of a forward pump handle. It is not made clear in the various accounts whether Garrett’s folded Burgess had a loaded magazine, but if it did, it could have been brought into action much more quickly than a conventional unloaded and “disassembled” shotgun.

It is critical to know, again from Attorney McElhinney, “Dr. Field also performed the autopsy on Garrett. Garrett had two gunshot wounds. The first and fatal shot was a bullet that had entered at the bottom rear of Garrett’s head and exited above Garrett’s right eye. The second bullet entered the front of his abdomen and was found by Dr. Field lodged in one of Garrett’s shoulders, meaning the bullet had traveled upward after entering through Garrett’s body. Interestingly enough, Field was never asked by the prosecutor to explain Garrett’s wounds or his other observations at trial. Adamson did not testify at the trial. Brazel testified he feared for his life and shot Garrett down while Garrett was going for his own weapon. The jury deliberated for about 15 minutes before pronouncing Brazel not guilty, apparently believing the self-defense claim. Cox would later purchase Garrett’s ranch from his widow, further consolidating his New Mexico land and ranch empire.”
From Mark Boardman, True West Magazine, 1/6/14: “It was a conspiracy. A contract murder. An organized crime hit … Bottom line: a number of men — powerful and successful men involved in organized criminal activities — were behind the assassination of Garrett. He had made too many enemies, and he posed too much of a threat to their lives and livelihood. All were guilty, even if they never faced a judge and jury. The crime syndicate led by Fall got its way.”

Finally, there is a contingent that believes Garrett was assassinated by James Miller, perhaps the most prolific “hit man” in the Old West. Known variously as “Killer Miller,” “Killin’ Jim Miller,” and “Deacon Jim” (the latter for his knowledge of the Bible and refusal to indulge in alcohol or tobacco), Miller claimed to have killed 51 men. His price to commit murder varied from $150 to $2,000, the latter a small fortune in turn of the 20th century money. Some speculate Garrett’s enemies put $1,500 on his head when they hired Miller to murder him. Miller was loosely related to Adamson, the man who drove the wagon and, some believe, set Garrett up for death on the lonely road.

Brazel said he himself killed Garrett, in self-defense when Garrett appeared to go for a gun. This is not consistent with the wounds reported by the doctor who did the autopsy. Garrett would have had to have been standing above him in the driver’s seat of a damn stagecoach to account for the angle of the wound track in his torso. The wounds are much more consistent with someone shot from behind while standing and looking downward when sustaining the head wound, and shot again in the abdomen while lying on his back by a man standing at his feet.

“Killer Miller”? It is said shortly before he was hanged, he confessed to pushing 51 people off the mortal coil, and conspicuously did not mention the man who would have been his most famous victim, the centerpiece of his trophy collection as it were. I’m not convinced Miller, however much of a stone killer he may have been, was the man who dropped the hammer on Garrett.

Lessons

Many who knew Garrett, particularly toward the end of his life, seem to have found him abrasive. He was said to have a quick temper. This and his gunfighter image made a lot of people afraid of him. He had accumulated many enemies. Remember the 1899 case where he had killed a homicide suspect on the Cox ranch? According to researcher Boardman, at the shooting, “Print (Rhode’s sister) was present and subsequently miscarried a baby; Print blamed Garrett. To make matters worse, Garrett arrested Rhode the next year in connection with a holdup. Rhode was acquitted, but he wanted vengeance — and he figured when it came to Garrett, it was kill or be killed.” Garrett owed a great deal of money to Print Rhode’s brother-in-law W.W. Cox, and Cox is said to have wanted both the money and the property.

Historian Boardman notes there were a great many men in the area, some of whom had been investigated by Garrett and others who perhaps feared he might investigate them, who would have been happy to see him gone. Boardman also points out, “All that brought a Democratic crime ring into direct conflict with a Democrat-turned-Republican lawman named Garrett — and set the stage for his ultimate assassination.”

The collected theories of what happened that day in 1908 could form a book. The tangled skein of people with reasons to wish Pat Garrett dead, most of them intertwined in some way, would require a large chart to lay out. For these reasons, and considering all who could have answered key questions have long been gone, the death of Pat Garrett is likely to remain an unsolved mystery.

That said, there are lessons we can learn from it.

One is, if you carry a gun, carry it all the time if possible, particularly if you know there are people who would like to see you dead, and most particularly if any of those people are in your presence.

While at least one account has Garrett on the day of his death carrying the very Colt he had used decades before to kill Billy the Kid, this is contradicted by the majority of accounts, in which Garrett’s only gun was the Burgess shotgun in its case on the wagon. Even if he had “seen it coming,” it’s unlikely Garrett could have accessed the Burgess and gotten it up and running in time to save his life.

Another lesson is, of course, the most obvious: don’t turn your back on people you know (or should know) have what they think is good reason to wish you harm. Even among rough-hewn outdoor men, it’s common courtesy to turn away from others when you urinate at the side of a lonely road. In doing so, however, Garrett turned his back on a man with whom he had just been arguing, and it turned out to be his last mistake. All he had to do was position himself with the wagon between himself and Brazel, with the wagon at least belt-high and probably chest high, and left a puddle on the ground by a wheel while keeping the other man in plain sight. He did not, and we know the result.

Within the second lesson above, we find a third. Consider the fate, before Garrett’s, of two other famous Western gunmen. On August 2, 1876 in a saloon in Deadwood, S.D., Wild Bill Hickok sat down at a poker table with his back to the door because his customary back-to-the-wall seat was occupied by someone else. Very shortly, a whacked-out loner named Jack McCall walked in, unlimbered a single action Colt, and shot Hickok in the back of the head, killing him instantly.

On April 3, 1882 in St. Joseph, Mo., the notorious Jesse James took off the gun belt holding his holstered revolvers, a Colt and a Smith & Wesson, and stood on a chair to adjust a picture on the wall. Behind him was his cousin and gang member Bob Ford, who shot Jesse James in the back of the head, killing him instantly.
Pat Garrett had to have known about those two assassinations of gunmen as or more famous than himself. He ignored history, and discovered, as George Santayana said, “Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it.”
By Massad Ayoob

In Pursuit

Hitting his lights and siren, Gramins radios in his situation. He knows other units will be responding, but has no way to determine how soon backup will catch up with him, particularly in late rush hour traffic. The suspect veers his getaway car across three lanes of traffic to hit the Touhy Avenue exit east, and then bangs a right onto Skokie Boulevard. In the powerful CVPI, Gramins expertly remains on his tail. The chase swerves onto Estes Street after a block, through the intersection of Keating, then right on Kilpatrick.
And then, the fugitive springs the trap.

Ambush!

Here, in a quiet suburban neighborhood right out of a Leave It To Beaver rerun, Gramins sees his quarry slam on his brakes and come to an abrupt stop in the street. Action beats reaction: Gramins responds quickly but by the time his squad car has stopped it is only 15 feet behind the fugitive’s vehicle.

The white car’s door pops open and out comes the suspect. Gramins sees a silver-colored auto pistol in the man’s hand as it rises over the steering wheel, coming out the door, and swinging toward him. As this is happening, training and practice send Gramins’ left hand across his torso to swiftly release his seat belt, and his right hand to unholster his GLOCK 21 service pistol. But Ray Maddox, a 37-year-old Gangster Disciple gang member who has sworn to kill the next cop who stops him rather than go back behind bars, gets the first shots off.

Bam, bam, bam, bam! Gramins can hear and even count all four of them, can see Maddox running toward him firing one-handed. Now, though, the cop’s own gun is up in both hands and he fires right through the windshield, indexed on his target, tracking the gunman as he approaches the patrol car door, still shooting.

Incredibly — perhaps, for Gramins, even miraculously — both men now run out of ammunition and go simultaneously to slidelock.

Second Magazine

Both combatants react instantly to the change in the situation. Maddox spins around and runs back to the Pontiac. Gramins explodes out the driver’s door of the squad car, seeking to escape the trap his vehicle has become, and runs between the cars to the right. He’s reloading on the run, ejecting the spent magazine, slapping in a fresh one, and closing the slide. At approximately this time in the gun battle, he is able to radio in: the suspect is out of his vehicle, shots have been fired and he (Gramins) needs help.

The gunfire has captured the attention of the residents on this quiet street. A 12-year-old boy skateboarding on the sidewalk runs into his house and tells his parents, “There’s a police officer in the street being shot at, call 9-1-1!” Gramins will later tell American Handgunner, the boy is “the bravest kid I’ve ever known.” Gramins can hear the boy’s dad yelling to him like a cheering section, “Get him! Shoot him!” In the heat of the moment, Gramins has time to take some comfort in this.

Reloaded, he charges the suspect, now on the other side of the vehicles. The officer fires as he goes. He will tell me later, “He (was moving) back toward my car. I don’t think he knew I was off to his left. I charged right at him, and ended up three feet away. I was shooting one-handed when I got close. As I ran toward him firing, I saw no effect.”

Third Magazine

Seeing his GLOCK at slide lock again, Gramins sprints to an angle where he can get his patrol car between himself and the gunman, who is still shooting at him but with a different pistol. Again the cop is reloading on the run, demoralized his gunfire has done nothing to stop his deadly attacker, and acutely aware he’s on his last magazine.

Gramins is now to the right of their two cars, and he sees Maddox is now to the left of his patrol car, using it for cover and crouching down low. An intensively trained SWAT team leader, Gramins tries to use the technique LAPD SWAT employed to successfully neutralize the machinegun-armed suspect Matasureanu in the infamous North Hollywood bank robbery shootout of 1997: he points rather than aims his G21 and fires as he moves, trying to ricochet his bullets under the car and into Maddox’s legs to bring him down. The angle isn’t right, though, and he sees his bullets hitting his own car and front right tire. Time to change the plan, he realizes.

Finale

Gramins sees a tree between the sidewalk and the cars in the street. He dives prone behind it, and — trained on the precision rifle as a SWAT cop — realizes he now has the best cover and the most solid shooting position he has had since the gunfight began. Maddox has been popping up and shooting at him like a jack-in-the-box and then crouching deep, watching Gramins from under the car. The cop sees Maddox looking at him now from under the police car.

Carefully, consciously focusing hard on his front sight, Gramins follows legendary Border Patrol shootist Bill Jordan’s advice (“Take your time, quick!”) and squeezes off three rapid but still carefully-aimed shots, holding on the would-be cop-killer’s head. On the third, Maddox collapses face down. He is no longer shooting. A large pool of blood begins to spread outward from the gunman’s head.
Gramins keeps him covered. About a minute later, the first responding officers, Detective (now Sergeant) Barnes and Detective Mendez, arrive. Both are fellow SWAT team members. Gramins feels a sense of relief as the backups kick the downed antagonist’s gun out of his reach, and handcuff him.

It’s over.

Reconstruction will show from the first shot of the gunfight to the last, 56 seconds have elapsed. During this time 54 pistol shots have been fired, 33 from Gramins’ GLOCK .45, and 21 by Maddox from two pistols.

Wound Assessment

Raymond Maddox did not survive. Autopsy showed he had been hit by 17 of Gramins’ 230-gr. Speer Gold Dot .45 hollowpoints. Some had hit extremities, including upper limbs as the officer’s bullets tracked up the gunman’s arms while he was firing at the cop. But Maddox had also been hit in one kidney, both lungs … and the heart. All three of Gramins’ last carefully braced, precisely aimed shots had indeed hit the head, but two had smashed into his face and only the last had pierced the brain and ended the fight.

Gramins did not emerge entirely unscathed. He caught a bullet fragment in one shin, and bullets going through the glass of the car had sent fragments into his face. He also suffered a significant hearing loss in his left ear, most likely due to firing 13 rounds from his .45 from inside the closed patrol car.

He, at the hospital in a room adjacent to where the medicos were trying to save Maddox’s life, also had to hear a doctor angrily cry, “Why did the cop have to shoot him so many times?” If only the physician had known …

The shooting death of Raymond Maddox at the hands of Officer Timothy Gramins was ruled a justifiable homicide. No lawsuit was filed. Gramins received multiple awards for his heroism in the encounter and was later promoted to sergeant.

Weapon Assessment

Both the would-be cop-killer and the officer who neutralized him were heavily armed. They had access to seven loaded firearms between them. Gramins deployed only one; Maddox used two.

Maddox opened fire with a stainless steel 9mm auto which Gramins first thought looked like a Taurus copy of a Beretta, but turned out to be a 16-shot S&W Model 5906. It was recovered, empty, from the front seat of Maddox’s Pontiac, its last spent casing stovepiped where Maddox had dumped it as he grabbed his second weapon. It was a Bersa .380 pistol. The .380 was apparently hit and, unknown to the cop, rendered inoperable by one of Gramins’ .45 rounds near the end of the gunfight. Also in the front seat of the gunman’s car was an SKS semiautomatic rifle, fully loaded with a 30-rd. magazine, and in a box. At least one analyst has suggested Gramins’ charging toward Maddox while emptying the second magazine in his GLOCK kept the gunman from accessing the high-powered semiautomatic rifle. Gramins was told later Maddox’s weapons were tied to four homicides in the city of Chicago.

Gramins had been carrying his primary sidearm, the 13+1 capacity GLOCK 21, with only 12 rounds per mag because he had found with his magazines, it was sometimes difficult to positively seat them loaded all the way up if the slide was forward. He had the two spare magazines on his duty belt, and also a 9mm subcompact GLOCK 26 backup gun in a holster attached to the Second Chance ballistic vest under his uniform shirt. A Remington 870 pump shotgun loaded with five 12-gauge slugs was racked above him inside the patrol car, and as a SWAT officer, he had an AR-15 in the trunk with several 30-rd. magazines. Like his opponent, he was never able to deploy any of the heavy artillery.

Lessons

There are many lessons to be learned from Tim Gramins’ incident, some more obvious than others.

Carry enough ammunition to finish a worst case scenario fight. After this event, which has been widely publicized among law enforcement, Tim Gramins put his .45 in his gun safe and went with a 9mm. He told me, “We are allowed to pick our weapon. GLOCK, S&W, Beretta and SIG are authorized, and we have our choice of 9mm, .40 S&W, or .45 ACP, all with department issue Gold Dot ammunition.” His duty pistol is now the GLOCK 17, loaded to full capacity with 17+1 rounds of 124-gr. +P 9mm, backed up by 11 rounds of the same in his GLOCK 26, which of course can feed G17 magazines. A slim-line Safariland triple magazine pouch carries three more 17-rd. mags in uniform, and he carries two 33-rd. 9mm magazines behind the trauma shield of his ballistic vest.

This adds up to 146 rounds on tap. A widely-circulated police article by our mutual friend Charles Remsberg made Tim famous in cop circles as the policeman who carries almost 150 rounds of ammo on his person. “I can carry a hundred rounds more ammo, and it only weighs a couple of pounds,” Gramins told American Handgunner. “Round count seems to be skyrocketing in police gun battles, police running out of ammunition. I don’t want to be in such position. I came close to it, with only four rounds left in my GLOCK 21.”

The dynamic movement required to escape the kill zone kept Gramins from accessing either the shotgun in the squad car’s cockpit or the AR-15 in its trunk. One lesson this taught him: what you have on your person may be all you have to fight with once a fight goes mobile.

Aggressive humans can soak up multiple lethal wounds and still continue homicidal action for surprising periods of time. People have taken multiple, massive wounds even from high powered rifles and shotguns, and stayed in the fight. Contrary to popular belief, a heart shot like the one Maddox sustained well before Gramins’ brain shot killed him does not necessarily guarantee the hoped-for “instant one-shot stop.” The medical journals devoted to treatment of trauma show multiple survivors of gunshot wounds to the heart, and forensic pathologists have recorded numerous cases of people who continued conscious, purposeful, sometimes successfully homicidal actions after being shot in the heart. Even if cardiac function is completely shut down, the recipient of the wound has up to 15 or 16 seconds of action left before blood pressure drops below the level it will no longer sustain consciousness, and not all wounds of the heart cause total shutdown. This appears to have been the case with Raymond Maddox in this shooting, who by the way had a “clean toxicology screen,” which showed no alcohol or drugs on board.

Forensic pathologists tell us there is no post-mortem artifact for adrenalin dump, and even if there was, its effect on the given person experiencing it cannot be precisely predicted. This shooting appears to be a classic example. Mortal wounds are not necessarily instantly fatal. The study of gunfights is replete with cases of “men who were dead, but didn’t know it yet.” It was not possible to reconstruct exactly when Maddox took the cardiac hit, but it is absolutely possible he was up and running for almost a minute despite a .45 caliber gunshot wound to the heart before the final bullet to the brain short-circuited his central nervous system and ended the encounter.

Training is critical! As a SWAT cop prior to this shooting, Tim had extensive experience shooting through barriers such as windshield glass, from both sides, and this stood him in good stead in the opening of the gunfight when he essentially “broke the ambush” by returning fire through the windshield from the driver’s seat. Extensive Simunitions-based “force on force” role-play had prepared him as best as possible for shooting a murderous criminal who was shooting at him.

Know what you’re fighting for! The day of this shooting was the eighth birthday of Tim Gramins’ son. Prior to hearing the emergency call over ISPERN, Tim had been pondering when he could take some break time to buy his son the Star Wars game he wanted for his birthday. Throughout the gunfight, Tim was aware of his need to survive for his son and for the rest of his family. He credits this determination for seeing him through the deadly gun battle. The very term “gunfight” is really a misnomer: the guns don’t fight, the people do, and those who know what they’re fighting for have a powerful psychological advantage.

Finally, the lost lesson of this incident seems to be the importance of aimed fire. At the end, from a solid prone position where Tim had his hardest “front sight focus” of the fight, was when three rapid shots to the head all struck the intended target, the last one “shutting off the computer” and bringing the death battle to a decisive close on the side of The Good Guy.

The author wishes to thank Sergeant Tim Gramins and the trainers of the Skokie Police Department for the outcome of this shooting, and fellow police writers Chuck Remsberg and Dave Scoville for first spreading the valuable lessons of this life-or-death battle to the law enforcement community.

In-Home Shootings

Vilos told the dozens of attendees at the seminar, “There are three types of defense generally not prosecuted. Home defense against an uninvited stranger. Also, shooting an attempted mass murderer. The third least-likely type of shooting to be prosecuted is defending yourself against armed robbery.”

He had a case where his client was asked to go to the home of a felon who was married to his client’s sister. The sister wanted her brother to take a firearm out of the house, because it was illegal. When the client came to take the gun, an argument ensued and escalated, and he wound up having to kill his brother-in-law in self-defense. Mitch explained, “The felon said, ‘Get out of my home.’ The client said ‘Make me.’ The felon ran into the bedroom. The racking of a gun was heard. My client drew and shot the guy five times. The felon was found dead with a handgun in his lap. My client said only, ‘I had to defend myself.’”

The shooter retained Mitch. Mitch wrote a letter to the prosecutor telling him everything, subsequent to an agreement with the prosecutor, nothing Mitch said could be used against the client. The outcome? Said Mitch, “The prosecutor brought the family of the deceased into his office and told them it was justified. Under Utah law the felon having a firearm was a forcible felony. He decided not to prosecute.”

In the above case, it should be noted the potential defendant was on thin ice, having gone into another man’s home, even though he was invited by another member of the household. The ice got even thinner when the homeowner ordered him to leave and he answered, “Make me.” Mitch Vilos reminded the class it happened in gun-friendly Utah, where he estimates there are more guns than people.

Mitch also noted curtilage — those areas attached to the home and/or immediately adjacent to it — varies state to state insofar as the degree to which it shares with the residence itself the ancient and honorable Castle Doctrine, which says in essence one’s home is one’s castle, and attacked there by an intruder the resident need not retreat. He offers the following Utah case to make his point:

“There was a break-in in the West Valley. The homeowner, his wife and their two children were asleep at about 3AM when the homeowner was wakened by a loud racket. He came downstairs with his 9mm pistol and discovered an aggressor was outside the house, a split level. A guy was trying to break in through the glass back doors. The homeowner shot through the glass and hit the guy in the heart. He ran a hundred yards. The homeowner, according to the prosecutor, had the right to kill the invader and will not be charged.”

It is important to take into account what is generally called “the mood of the courts” in any given jurisdiction, and this often encompasses “the mood of the prosecutor.” This writer joins with Vilos in cautioning readers a different prosecutor’s office might take a dimmer view of shooting the home invader while he was still outside the house. Not too long ago in Michigan, under somewhat similar circumstances, a man was convicted of murder for shooting through his door and killing a woman who was pounding on the door hard enough to convince him she was trying to break in.

Vilos points out juvenile perpetrators are more likely to be seen as victims than adult criminals when the intended victims harm them in the course of defending themselves and their homes. As an example, Mitch told the class, “In another case the defendant lived in a trailer. Some early teens broke in to steal candy and pop. He shot one of them, who died. Despite strong sentiment for the shooter in the community, the guy was prosecuted. He was acquitted, however.”

Convictions

Both in his book and in his lecture, Vilos warns of things which can compromise the defendant who acted in legitimate self-defense, and make the case look like something dark and dirty and worthy of a guilty verdict. He calls each of them a “Thumbs-Down Factor,” and devotes an entire chapter of his book to listing and explaining them.

In his lecture, Mitch focused on a case he considers so instructive he devoted an entire chapter to it in Self-Defense Laws of All 50 States. Larry Harmon, 57, lived in a neighborhood of five cabins in the sparsely populated rural community of Frampton Heights, Utah. There was no official neighborhood watch program, but Larry and those who lived around him had an informal agreement to keep an eye on each other’s properties when the residents were away.

The time came when he was awakened from a nap by a knock on his door. By the time he got there to answer it, someone was loudly trying to open the locked door. Larry shouted for them to identify themselves, and then told them to leave. Through a window, he saw them wander to his driveway, where they appeared to be eyeing his vehicles. Then, they walked away.

Concerned, Larry Harmon got into his truck, where he kept a 1911 .45 auto, and having lost sight of the two men drove around to check the other cabins. He found nothing amiss, and then, spotting the two men still on foot, he drove past them, stopped his truck, and stepped out to ask them who they were and what they were doing.

Moments later, the area around Harmon’s truck was littered with five spent .45 ACP casings. One of those men — Douglas Greer, 27, with a methamphetamine conviction on his record — was dead on the ground. The other, Ray Thomas, was fleeing with a gunshot wound through one arm.

State of Utah v. Larry Harmon quickly became a case of “he said/she said.”

Harmon’s story was when he asked them to identify themselves and state their business, they didn’t answer and instead came toward him, spreading out as if to outflank him, with menacing expressions. Both were larger, younger, and stronger than he.

Harmon said they ignored his requests to stop advancing on him. With his back to the truck from which he had by now retrieved the .45, he cocked the hammer, but no one was intimidated. When the man who turned out to be Greer was almost on top of him, he said, he fired in last-ditch desperation and Greer fell. Perceiving Thomas to also be attacking him, Harmon swung the 1911 at him and fired rapidly.

Thomas, the survivor, had an entry wound in the back of his arm and an exit in the front. His story was his and Greer’s vehicle had become stuck in the mud on a nearby road, and they had knocked on Harmon’s door hoping to find help, but left when he told them to. Thomas claimed Harmon had subsequently come up behind them and pulled his truck over in front of them, and emerged brandishing the .45. According to his account, “Harmon held out the gun and asked Thomas if he knew what it was. Thomas replied he did. Harmon then told him the gun was a .45 … Thomas heard the hammer go back on the gun and saw Harmon raise it and shoot Greer in the face from a distance of six to twelve inches. Harmon then pointed the gun at Thomas and asked him if he wanted to get shot, and told him to ‘take off running.’ As Thomas was running away, he heard the gun fire and felt a bullet strike his arm. He also heard several more shots and saw dirt flying in front of him.”

Shortening a long story, Harmon was found guilty of the first degree murder of Greer, and the first degree attempted murder of Thomas. In the chapter in his book on “Thumbs-Down Factors,” Attorney Vilos explains why he thinks it turned out this way.

“1. Harmon was armed with a .45 pistol,” Vilos begins. “2. He shot at and hit Thomas while Thomas was running away. Undisputedly, he had an exit hole in the front of his arm and jacket. Was he trying to kill the witness who ultimately testified against him? 3. Harmon had been drinking. 4. Harmon gave several seemingly inconsistent versions of what he claimed happened including the 911 call and multiple statements to investigators. Giving any statement, let alone multiple statements before re-visiting the scene with your attorney is a bad idea. 5. The DA argued Harmon had time to call the police before using deadly force. From the time he kicked the two intruders off his property until he confronted them with a gun on a dirt road outside of the cabin community, they had traveled a half mile on foot. 6. Although he denied saying it, there was testimony he had told his former girlfriend the law allowed him to ‘kill’ trespassers. Chasing down and killing someone after they commit a misdemeanor is excessive force. 7. The jury may have understood him to be the initial aggressor … the more thumbs-down factors, the greater likelihood of a conviction.”

Vilos’ points are clear. What is not clear to this reviewer is whether trial counsel (this wasn’t one of Mitch’s own cases) used a disparity of force defense. Mitch did point out at the seminar that in Utah, one can expect many of the jurors to be Mormon and not especially tolerant of someone who shoots people while under the influence of intoxicating substances.

Appeal of Harmon’s conviction failed. In affirming his conviction, the Utah State Supreme Court wrote, “The record indicates sufficient evidence upon which the jury could have based its verdict. The undisputed facts indicate Harmon pursued and confronted his victims. Instead of using his cellular phone to report Greer and Thomas to the police, Harmon left his phone at his cabin and took with him his .45 caliber handgun. He then drove his truck past his victims, blocking their passage back to Fillmore. The facts also indicate Greer was shot in the face at a distance of six to twelve inches from the end of Harmon’s gun and Thomas was shot in the back of his arm. From these facts alone, the jury was justified in concluding Harmon was the aggressor and he did not shoot the victims in self-defense.”

Moreover, the same appellate court opinion held, “This case demonstrates several instances of over-zealous advocacy as well as bad judgment on the part of the prosecutor. However, we are not persuaded the errors were substantial or prejudicial to the extent Harmon was denied a fair trial.” (http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ut-supreme-court/1189484.html#sthash.0h4xeelP.dpuf).

The outcome of this shooting incident was devastating to the man who pulled the trigger. Larry Harmon was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Between the wounded man and the family of the deceased, their lawsuit against him resulted in an award of $1.5 million, which effectively took the cabin he had tried to protect, and every other asset he had.

Mitch writes, “Did the jury completely discount a legitimate concern I hear from gun owners all the time — being rushed and overpowered by multiple unarmed assailants? Harmon claimed he only fired his gun because Greer and Thomas wouldn’t stop at his commands. Assuming it happened the way he described, what was he supposed to do then? Had they disarmed him, they could have killed him with his own gun. He had a right to confront them and find out why they were going around trying to get into houses. He had a right to arm himself before approaching them. If they rushed him, he had a right to use reasonable force to defend himself … They were obviously much younger, stronger, and more agile. It seems likely they could have easily overpowered Harmon and taken his gun. Why was Greer so close to Harmon unless he refused to stop or back off? I do not recall after reading any evidence in the 1,500-page trial transcript that Harmon, after he stopped his truck, approached the boys. The evidence was the .45 casings fell fairly close to the truck.”

Vilos concludes, “These are very troubling issues for those who carry a weapon for self-defense.”

About Mitch Vilos

Vilos is not just a seasoned attorney with considerable experience in gun cases and self-defense shooting cases. The man is One Of Us. He’s a shooter and a gun collector. He participates in IDPA (International Defensive Pistol Association) and SASS (Single Action Shooting Society) competitions, and in the book recommends IDPA as excellent practice for the law-abiding armed citizen.

He is also a strong, proven advocate of Second Amendment rights, and at the Legal Eagle seminar he urged all in attendance to become directly involved with the ongoing fight to keep our rights — and our descendants’ rights — to effective self-defense.

And, he’s a thinking man. During the heavy question and answer sessions he encouraged, one attendee at the seminar asked, “What do you carry?”

The answer surprised me: a purple SIG 1911 sub-compact, cocked and locked. His rationale was he has seen something I’ve seen go to court too: the lying SOB who thinks you might be carrying a gun, and falsely claims you pulled it on him when you didn’t. Mitch’s strategy is to tell the investigators, “Ask the complainant what the gun he alleges I pulled on him looks like.” If they don’t say “purple,” well …

Frankly, it was the first really good argument for a pastel pistola I’ve run across.

You would think a book titled Self-Defense Laws of All 50 States would be dry and boring. I can tell you, it isn’t. Mitch, his son Evan Vilos, and a crew of dedicated law students and law clerks spent two years laboriously compiling it. The second edition carries the subtitle With “Plain Talk” Summaries and it ain’t kiddin’. You don’t need to be a law school graduate or a Latin major to get a lot out of this book. Vilos distills complex legal principles into plain English, better than a lot of jury instructions do.

Like any good instructor, Vilos understands you can’t go through almost 600 pages of grimness without burning out unless you get some comic relief. His book isn’t a somber treatise. Here and there, he leavens it with humor, usually channeling his SASS alter ego “Pancho Vilos.” Like any good sound bite, it sticks in the reader’s or listener’s mind not just because it might be funny, but because it makes sense.

Consider this installment of Ayoob Files to be a review of Self-Defense Laws of All 50 States and also of Mitch Vilos’ instructive lecture material. You can order the book from Guns West Publishing, Inc., PO Box 1148, Centerville, UT 84014, or by phone at 1-800-530-0222, or from Amazon in dead tree or Kindle format.

And, if I may speak Pancho Vilos’ language, this reviewer gives it a BIG “Thumbs-UP”!

Situation:

A senior officer personally kills 30 of the enemy on the battlefield … and some more people elsewhere.

Lesson:

Great men often have great strengths and great weaknesses … and skill at arms can be as much a life-saver in the civilian world as in the military.

“There is much to dislike about Nathan Bedford Forrest; there is also a good deal to admire,” wrote Brian Steel Wills in his introduction to A Battle From the Start (p. xix), the more acclaimed of his two biographies of the Confederate general. Another author, Jack Hurst, divided the five main parts of Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography according to what he saw as the stages of his subject’s life: Frontiersman, Slave Trader, Soldier, Klansman … and Penitent. He said, “What sort of man did all this? By most accounts, two different ones: a soft-spoken gentleman of marked placidity and an overbearing bully of homicidal wrath” (Hurst, p. 6).

Forrest being born in a log cabin, becoming man of the house and providing for his family when he was a boy, is a story better suited to Reader’s Digest than American Handgunner. That he earned great wealth young, becoming a millionaire in mid-19th century dollars in an occupation even most Southerners of the time held in low esteem, I’ll leave to Bloomberg Business. His involvement with the Ku Klux Klan in its formative years, and his vehement repudiation of what the organization had become (which consumed much of his last years) would fit better in a sociology journal than a gun magazine.

It is the middle ground, the years of the American Civil War, we’ll focus on here. In macrocosm, whether they called it The War Between the States or The War of Northern Aggression, friend and foe and impartial outside observers alike considered Forrest one of the all-time great battlefield commanders.

For our purposes here, in microcosm, we’ll focus what allowed him to survive personal combat against sometimes overwhelming odds, just as he defeated better-equipped Union forces twice or more the size of his own.

We’ll focus also on the fact he was the rare general who had been a gunfighter before he put on a uniform, and was an armed citizen not only before the war, but after, when he killed a man and was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense.

Before the War: First Blood

In 1845, a 24-year-old Bedford Forrest went to Hernando, Miss., to visit his elderly uncle, who was having trouble with a family named Matlock. In the town square near the uncle’s place of business, he encountered three of the Matlocks and one of their associates, who had plainly come to “settle the score.”

Forrest explained it was none of his affair, but he wouldn’t stand idly by while his aged relative fought a lopsided battle with four angry younger men. The opposing party drew and opened fire on Bedford Forrest, one bullet missing him and killing his uncle as he stood in the doorway of his business.

A contemporary account in the Memphis area newspaper American Eagle said the young Forrest “immediately drew a revolving pistol and set it to work as fast as possible, shooting both of the Matlocks through; the younger T.J. through the shoulder and the upper part of the breast, and the other through the arm, which has since been amputated.” By all accounts, Forrest had only two cartridges loaded in his handgun, and after scoring with both and running dry, a sympathetic bystander tossed him a Bowie knife with which he charged what remained of the Matlock group, who fled.

Not long after, he was with lawyer James Morse when one of the latter’s enemies, James Dyson, shot and killed Morse with a single blast from a double-barrel shotgun. Forrest drew and cocked a handgun and leveled on Dyson saying “two could play the game.” The man lowered his gun and surrendered to face trial for murder, later saying he gave up because he didn’t think the one charge of buckshot he had left would be enough to keep Forrest from killing him. As a result, Forrest was later elected constable of Hernando and coroner of DeSoto County.

Against The Enemy

When the war broke out, Forrest enlisted at the rank of private and quickly rose in the ranks, initially perhaps because he used his own wealth and influence to recruit and equip a body of mounted troops, though his subsequent rapid promotions seem to have been due entirely to his battlefield performance. The fact he engaged in hand-to-hand combat alongside his men won the respect of the grunts and the Confederates’ supreme commander alike. After the war, when asked who he thought was the best general on either side of the conflict, Robert E. Lee answered, “A man I have never seen, sir. His name is Forrest.”

Leading from the front can carry you into the enemy’s midst prematurely, Forrest discovered more than once, the first time on December 28, 1861 in Kentucky. Writes Wills on page 5, “Forrest suddenly became engaged in a desperate fight with three opponents — a private and two officers, Captains Bacon and Davis. As his horse carried him past, he shot the Union trooper and, leaning forward in his saddle, managed to elude the saber thrusts of the two officers. Riding on beyond them, he pulled up and swerved in the saddle.

As Forrest turned, a Confederate private, W.H. Terry, rode up to help him, drawing Davis’ attention. Terry’s action gave his colonel the precious seconds he needed, but cost Terry his life. Forrest then sped back, mortally wounding Bacon and disabling Davis when his horse collided with the Union officer’s, separating Davis’ shoulder.”

History repeated itself for the Confederate commander at the Battle of Shiloh, in April of 1862. Rushing ahead of his troops on horseback, Forrest again found himself surrounded by Union infantry. “One bold Union soldier pressed his rifle muzzle against Forrest’s side and fired. The ball penetrated Forrest’s side and lodged against his spine. But in an instant, the Confederate commander turned his horse and broke free of the pack of angry Federals. As he rode clear, he grabbed an unsuspecting opponent and hoisted him onto the horse behind him. With the soldier as a shield, Forrest rode back to his waiting men, dumping the hapless rider when he got out of range” (Wills, p. 70).

Some historians are skeptical of the claim the General swept a union soldier off his feet and used him as a human shield, though conceding every other element of the account is genuine. Others totally believe it, pointing out in all such versions of the story the Union soldier is an unusually small man, and Nathan Bedford Forrest stood a brawny six-feet-two and was described by all who knew him as being unusually strong physically, not to mention what adrenaline can do for an outnumbered combatant surrounded and under fire.

No one ever accused Nathan Bedford Forrest of being a slow learner, but even the most hard-earned lesson can be forgotten in the red haze of anger and vengeance. Early in 1864, Forrest’s beloved younger brother Jeffrey, who had ridden with him for most of the war, was killed by a Union bullet through the neck. Filled with grief and rage, Forrest galloped furiously toward enemy lines. The surgeon, Dr. J. B. Cowan, who accompanied Forrest on the battlefield, rode after him and Wills recounts, “He ‘came upon a scene which made my blood run cold.’ Forrest and part of his escort had plunged into a line of Federals who were attempting to form as a rearguard of sorts. Cowan could see them in the road ‘in a hand-to-hand fight to the death’” (p. 164). Wills continues, “according to one account (Forrest) personally dispatched three men in the few moments of close-hand fighting” (p. 165).

The final such incident occurred near the war’s end, at the Battle of Ebenezer Church, shortly before Forrest’s ultimate defeat at Selma and subsequent surrender. Biographer Hurst quotes a Confederate cavalryman, Capt. John Eaton of Forrest’s escort, on the Ebenezer Church fight: “Each of us was armed with a pair of six-shooters, and I emptied the 12 chambers of my two army-pistols … not … more than five paces from the Federal trooper at whom it was aimed.

It seemed as if these fellows were bent upon killing the general, whom they recognized as an officer of high rank. I saw five or six slashing away at him
with their sabers at one time.” Lt. George Cowan said one saber slash “struck one of his pistols and knocked it from his hand. Private Phil Dodd spurred his horse to the general’s rescue, and shot the Federal soldier who was so close upon him, thus enabling General Forrest to draw his other pistol, with which he killed another of the group” (Hurst, p. 250).

In the course of that same battle on April 1, 1865, Forrest fought to the death with Union Captain James Taylor. Much later, he would tell Taylor’s commander, “A young captain of yours singled me out at Ebenezer Church and rained such a shower of saber strokes on my head and shoulders I thought he would kill me. While warding them off with my arm I feared he would give me the point of his saber instead of the edge, and had he known enough to do that, I should not have been here to tell you about it” (Wills, p. 309). Forrest killed Taylor with a one-handed shot from one of his Navy Colts. Wikipedia currently says Taylor was the last man Forrest killed, but Wills says this happened instead shortly thereafter in Selma, where “In this fighting, Forrest killed the last Federal soldier attributed to him — the 30th man he killed in personal combat during the war” (Wills, p. 310).

No serious historian disputes the count of 30 Union soldiers personally slain by Nathan Bedford Forrest, one-on-one, nor do they dispute some 29 horses were shot out from under him in heavy combat, nor that he was wounded himself several times. Rather, the number 30 — always applied to blue-clad combatants — understates the number of lives he personally ended.

At times, Nathan Bedford Forrest killed men wearing butternut gray as well as Union blue.

Killing His Own

The first authoritative biography of Nathan Bedford Forrest appears to have been written by a fellow Confederate cavalryman, and published in 1899. In That Devil Forrest, John Allen Wyeth wrote, “To his mind the killing of one of his own soldiers now and then, as an example of what a coward might expect, was a proper means to the end. At Murfreesboro, in 1864, he shot the color-bearer of one of the infantry regiments which stampeded, and thus succeeded in rallying the men to their duty. At Brentwood he did not hesitate to do the same thing in the effort to check some panic-stricken Confederates” (Wyeth, p. 571).

At the Masonic building in Columbia, Tennessee on June 13, 1863, he was shot by Confederate Lt. Andrew Willis Gould, who the previous April 30 at the battle of Sand Mountain, had left behind a cannon when forced to retreat. Forrest had considered it cowardice and ordered him transferred. (One of the general’s trademarks was “flying artillery,” a horse-drawn cannon that rode with his cavalry, and he had proven it to be a decisive battlefield strategy.) The two men argued over this in Columbia; witnesses said Gould fumbled for a gun in his pocket and it discharged, perhaps through the pocket, striking Forrest above the hip. Forrest grabbed Gould’s now-drawn gun and, with his other hand and his teeth, opened a folding pocket knife and drove it into Gould’s side. The Lieutenant fled.

Other officers hustled the general into the office of a nearby doctor, who told him an abdominal wound in the heat of summer was likely to turn mortal. Forrest was heard to shout, “No damned man shall kill me and live!” Seizing two revolvers from one or more subordinates, he tracked the badly hurt Gould to a nearby tailor shop and chased him outside, firing. He missed, and a ricochet wounded a bystander. Gould collapsed outside. Witnesses said the general contemptuously prodded the downed lieutenant with his boot, then turned and strode away. Further examination proved Forrest’s wound to be relatively minor, but Gould died of his knife wound two days later. In the interim, legend has it General Forrest went to Lieutenant Gould’s deathbed, where they tearfully apologized to one another.

In the one case, the Gould killing was clearly self-defense, and treated as such. The other? Today, an officer shooting one of his own soldiers fleeing a battle would result in a court martial, notwithstanding the fact contemporary Confederate cavalryman Wyeth seemed to feel the end justified the means. But let’s look at two other shootings imputed to Forrest. From Wills, on pages 76-77: “The record clearly indicates Forrest personally killed one black man at Murfreesboro, although his biographers have presented the story with various degrees of detail and accuracy. The earliest of these biographers, Thomas Jordan and J. P. Pryor, described the incident more clearly. According to them, as Forrest rode through the camps of the Minnesota troopers, a ‘negro camp-follower’ fired at least five times in an effort to kill the Confederate officer, before Forrest shot his assailant ‘with his pistol at the distance of 30 paces.’”

Justifiable under the circumstances? Few could argue otherwise. But consider this, from the same source: “ …Union Major General D. S. Stanley suggested to readers of the New York Times Forrest was involved in another more cold-blooded killing at Murfreesboro. Stanley attributed the story to ‘a rebel citizen of Middle Tennessee, a man of high standing in his community, who had it from his nephew, an officer serving under Forrest.” The account read, “A mulatto man, who was the servant to one of the officers in the Union forces, was brought to Forrest on horseback. The latter inquired of him, with many oaths, what he was doing there. The mulatto answered he was a free man, and came out as a servant to an officer, naming the man. Forrest, who was on horseback, deliberately put his hand to his holster, drew a pistol, and blew the man’s brains out” (Wills, pages 76-77).

If ever a set of circumstances would allow for a murder indictment, it would have been this one. Even in the 19th Century, there was no statute of limitations for murder, and Forrest being as hated as he was by victorious Northern forces, the absence of such an indictment indicates the “I heard it from a guy who heard it from his nephew” element was not taken seriously by authorities North or South.

But Forrest himself famously said “War is killing,” and we can’t talk about him and killing in the same breath, without discussing what history remembers as the Fort Pillow Massacre.

Fort Pillow

On April 12, 1864, Forrest’s forces surrounded Fort Pillow, 40 miles north of Memphis and when the Union commanders did not surrender, attacked. His men overwhelmed the fort and a massive slaughter ensued, after which Forrest himself said the river by the fort ran red with blood for 200 yards. Roughly half of the garrison was black Union troops, a disproportionate number of whom were killed, and there were claims many if not most were slain while attempting to surrender. It became a national scandal of similar proportions to the My Lai incident in Vietnam more than a century later, and blame was laid squarely on Forrest.

However, there was also credible testimony some among the slain were shooting at the Confederates when the latter returned fire, and the Union commanders had not, after all, surrendered. There was also testimony Forrest himself ordered the cessation of shooting, and at one point stood between his own forces and the Union troops with revolver in one hand and saber in the other. One account even has him shooting a Confederate soldier who disobeyed his order to cease firing. Suffice to say even though the mood of the times would have had Forrest swinging on a noose like a Nazi war criminal after the Nuremburg trials 80 years later had proof been there to convict him, he was never brought to court for anything to do with Fort Pillow.

After The War: Last Kill

At the end of the war, Forrest returned to a plantation where black subordinates were remunerated workers instead of slaves, he having freed his own slaves before the Confederacy’s surrender. It came to his attention one of those men, Thomas Edwards, was viciously beating his wife. Forrest went to Edwards’ cabin and told him such behavior would not be tolerated on his property. Edwards replied he would beat his wife whenever he wanted, and drew a knife; Forrest, apparently unarmed, grabbed a broomstick and hit Edwards with it; Edwards, according to testimony, came at him with the knife, inflicting a minor wound; and Forrest picked up an axe in the cabin and struck Edwards once in the left side of the head, killing him instantly. Forrest was tried, charged with murder, and on March 31, 1866, was acquitted on all counts by the jury. It was his last armed encounter. He died in bed of natural causes on October 29, 1877 at the age of 56.

Much later, a biographer would write, “General Richard Taylor, in his entertaining book Destruction and Reconstruction, says, ‘I doubt if any commander since the days of the lion-hearted Richard killed as many enemies with his own hand as Forrest’” (Wyeth, p. 570). We cannot help but note he was an armed citizen in his first gunfight at age 24, and an armed citizen in his last justifiable homicide once the war was over.

Lessons

We don’t learn morality lessons from a slave-trader and avowed racist, but combat survival lessons can be learned from Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Choose your weapons wisely, and develop skill with them. Albert Castel, writing the foreword for the current edition of Wyeth’s biography of Forrest, wrote on p. xxi: “Although he hacked down a large number of antagonists with his razor-sharp sword, thanks to his strength, size, and ferocity, he considered revolvers far more effective for hand-to-hand fighting and so retained sabers in his command only for officers as a badge of rank.” Wyeth himself says the General’s favorite weapons were .36 caliber “Navy sixes,” and records show on July 20, 1861 he purchased from his own pocket a large consignment of weapons and accoutrements for the troops he had assembled including “500 Colt’s navy pistols.”

His skill in wielding all of those weapons is made obvious by history. In one battle near Memphis, Forrest came upon a Union man about to kill a Confederate who had run out of ammunition, and he saved his comrade’s life by nearly decapitating the Northerner with a swing of his saber. I can find but one case in which Forrest killed an enemy with a long gun: In February of 1862, he spotted a Union sniper in a treetop and, commandeering a Maynard rifle from a nearby Confederate trooper, sent the sniper tumbling to the ground dead with a single shot.

Be armed and ready. It’s amazing a warrior like Nathan Bedford Forrest was unarmed in time of war (albeit in what he thought was a secure place) when one of his own disgruntled subordinates shot him. It is surprising when he went to confront a man he knew to be a violent wife-beater, he wasn’t carrying a gun. The bullet he took from his lieutenant and the knife wound he sustained from Edwards in his last death battle are timeless lessons for us all. The pocket knife he’d been using to pick his teeth shortly before the first such example, and the axe he was lucky enough to reach in the last, may not be there for the rest of us if and when we face such attacks.

“Get there the fustest, with the mostest.” This saying attributed to Forrest in the rural Southern dialect of the day, actually seems to track to something General Basil Duke wrote of his mentor General John Morgan’s interview with Forrest: “Morgan wanted particularly to know about his fight at Murfreesboro, where Forrest had accomplished a marked success, capturing the garrison and stores and carrying off everything, although the surrounding country was filled with Federal forces. Morgan asked how it was done. ‘Oh,’ said Forrest, ‘I just took the short cut and got there first with the most men’” (Wyeth, p. 568-9).

The opposing side got off the first shots in Forrest’s first gunfight in 1845, and it cost his beloved uncle his life. He appears to have taken the lesson to heart and adopted it in the military strategy that made him famous. In line with this …

Intimidation can prevent bloodshed, but it also has to be explainable. An older and wiser Forrest might have simply shot James Dyson instead of taking him at gunpoint in his second, early civilian encounter. As a battlefield general, Forrest’s habit of offering written terms of surrender to the enemy — stating in essence, if you give up you’ll be safe and treated with respect, but if you don’t, we’ll put you all to the sword — allowed his forces to capture more enemy personnel than they killed in many of his battles. However, the same terminology came back to haunt him after the Battle of Fort Pillow, when his men apparently did kill some helplessly surrendered troops and he spent the rest of his life accused of being a racist butcher. His explanation did, however, keep him from having to go to trial.

Be a good wizard, not a bad one. Even his enemies called Nathan Bedford Forrest a “wizard of the saddle,” but his becoming the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan would be remembered forever after his death, even though he spent the last eight years of his life disavowing the sheetheads. He’s seen today as a quintessential racist, even though the “Freedmen’s Bureau” of the post-War time chastised him for allowing blacks who worked for him after the Civil War to own and carry firearms. (See any hypocrisy there?)

The bottom line? Great men tend to have great strengths and great flaws. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s life experience tells us we should all learn from the former and assiduously avoid the latter.

Partial Bibliography:A Battle From the Start: the Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest by Brian Steel Wills, 1991, Harper-Collins, NYC; That Devil Forrest: Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest by John Allan Wyeth, first published 1899, current edition Louisiana State University Press, 1989; Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography by Jack Hurst, Alfred A. Knopf Publishers, NYC, 1993.

[Note: Correct purchase info for “Self-Defense Laws For All 50 States” (Ayoob Files, May/June 2016) should be: www.amazon.com.]