Through a convoluted convergence of cosmic events we have an interesting twist of fate. We have two shoot-outs in Little Rock on the same night with identical wounds but one wound is received in compliance with police advice and the other avoided by ignoring police advice.
In one, the clerk was shot in the back by a cowardly crook. In the other a clerk wrested a gun from a crook and shoots one in the back, resulting in the subsequent arrest of two of the three miscreants.
And what does Police Spokesman Lt. Terry Hastings have to say about these events? Per the local paper, “Hastings said the department urges business owners to exercise caution when threatened by armed criminals. Shootouts like the one at Hip-Hop Sportswear [this shootout was where the perp was shot] could have injured customers or bystanders outside the business, not to mention employees, he said. [Business owners] are not trained officers, they don’t handle firearms much and a situation can turn deadly pretty quick, Hastings said. A little bit of money is not worth your life.”
Just for the heck of it, let’s review the details of both occurrences as reported in the local paper.
Robbery #1: “… a 5-foot-8-inch black man wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and dark pants held a Pizza Hut employee at gun point at … The gunman forced the employee,…, to the back of the restaurant and made him open the safe, police reports said. [Apparently having attended Lt. Hastings’ class on ‘Behavior when Faced with Crooks’ and heeding Lt. Hastings’ suggestion, the employee didn’t put up a fight; after all, you might hurt someone else. That didn’t happen here, he got shot.] When officers arrived, they found [store employee] shot in the lower back. … he was in critical but stable condition [at the hospital]..
Robbery #2: About 8:30 p.m., [at Hip-Hop Sportswear], the store’s lone employee was confronted by three black women dressed as men, police said. While a ‘thinner’ and ‘more feminine’ black woman stood by the store’s front door as a lookout, two other black women dressed in all black approached the employee and pulled out a gun and a can of pepper spray, reports said. The women sprayed the employee, but the clerk knocked the black automatic out of the armed woman’s hands, according to the police reports. (In complete disregard of Lt. Hastings’ advice to not attempt to do such a thing). As the gun fell to the floor, police said, the third woman started firing toward the employee, who picked up the gun from the floor and ‘fired random shots’ at the women, hitting one of them in the back, according to police. (Isn’t it interesting that the employee, surprised at the attempted heist, probably terrified, hit with pepper spray, fighting with a perp, grabs a gun with which she probably has no experience or familiarity, fires off a round or two and hits one of the perps in the back and is characterized as having fired ‘”random shots”. Yet the third perp, in on the planned heist from the start, armed and obviously prepared for violence, calmly not involved in the fray for the loose pistol, fires several rounds at the struggling clerk and yet her shots, all of which missed, are not termed ‘random’ by the police.) “… who was shot in the back, was taken to[hospital]. Officers arrested [driver?] at the hospital. …[the one shot in the back] remained in the hospital… with a gunshot wound that was not considered life-threatening and had not been arrested.
So the clerk who acted per Lt. Hastings’ advice is lying (face down?) in critical condition at the hospital with a gun shot wound in his back despite apparently having done all that the crook demanded; giving up money so as to not be harmed. The other clerk resisted an armed robbery attempt, seize the miscreant’s weapon and per the police, fired “random shots”, one of which “randomly” struck one of the miscreants in the back. In complete disregard of Lt. Hastings’ advice, the crook is the one in the hospital with a "random" gunshot wound in the back and the clerk is a bloody hero in my book and probably doing aerobics as we speak!
The shooting range at Don’ Weaponry opens at noon so I must close out now and go practice with my Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm black semi automatic to improve the accuracy of my “random shots”. After all, one never knows what may happen when picking up a pizza. It’s getting dangerous out there since Governor Beebe passed the “Commit the Crime, Pay No Time” bill.
No comments:
Post a Comment