This one comes with video, so nobody has to take anybody’s word for it.

A black Honda blocked a white Chevy pickup on Indy’s southeast side, and the Honda’s driver didn’t stay in his seat. He got out with a gun already in his hand, walked up to the pickup’s window, and started yelling.

He punched the door — gun still in his hand — then switched it to his other hand and raised the one that was free. The driver of the truck shot him.

The man on the ground was Gavin Dasaur, 29. He’d been married two and a half weeks. Officers found him in the road, and he was pronounced dead at the hospital soon after.

The pickup driver stayed at the scene, cooperated, got detained and questioned, and was released. Detectives said at the time that it might have been self-defense, and defense attorneys who reviewed the tape came away agreeing.

Dasaur’s widow called it murder, but there’s no sign that anyone in the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office agrees.

It was, however, entirely avoidable and tragic. Keep your cool when carrying.

Sources

There are a lot of sources for this story.

WTHR 13 did a good job here, with direct IMPD sourcing, the widow’s on-record quote, attorney Daniel Vaughn’s video breakdown, and 2:28 of airtime.

Other sources include Fox59, WRTV, and the NYPost.

2A / specialist press

Brandon Curtis covered the story at Concealed Nation, giving the deceased aggressor a justified dressing-down for not understanding the need to de-escalate while carrying a gun.

Attorneys On Retainer gave an independent frame-by-frame legal breakdown, separate from WTHR’s own attorney interview.

Concealed Carry Classes of Denver isn’t press, but they posted a noteworthy article about this incident sixteen months later, and covered (among many other things) why the fact that charges weren’t filed only kinda/sorta means the incident is over.

The night before this incident, a woman walked out of her home thinking the fight was over. It wasn’t, and when she came back the next morning, Arturo Avila, 45, picked up right where he’d left off — going after her, a juvenile in the house, and another family member.

Somewhere in that scramble, just after 9 AM on a Saturday, she shot him.

San Antonio police got the call, finding Avila with a gunshot wound to the upper body. They rushed him to a hospital, where he died.

Whoever and wherever the bad guys are, being prepared with a firearm may be the only thing that protects your loved ones.

Sources

KSAT ran two stories about the incident: a same-day piece and a follow-up with Avila’s ID.

KTSA’s version is a brief rewrite of the same police account.

Fort Bend Herald’s piece is only readable via an archive on the Wayback Machine.

The San Antonio Express-News (paywalled) also ran a story.

Petit larceny is a misdemeanor. Robbery in the first degree is a Class B felony. The distance between the two turned out to be one sharp object.

Just after noon on a Sunday afternoon, a man walked out of the Brockport Walmart with a large amount of meat he hadn’t paid for. A customer in the lot saw it and walked over to intervene. Smart? Maybe, maybe not. Comments welcome.

Anyway, the thief pulled a sharp object, possibly a knife, which turned petit larceny into robbery and made the customer draw his own legally owned handgun. (New York hasn’t quite succeeded in getting rid of those yet, though darned if they’re not trying.)

Nobody fired. The man with the meat bolted. Someone caught the tense few seconds on a phone and sent the video to WHEC 10; the sheriff’s office spent the next ten days working leads on a suspect who’d vanished over an armful of groceries.

He turned out to be Ethan White, 23, of Rochester. On July 24, deputies learned he was at a business in Seneca County, and the MCSO Tactical Unit — with the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force riding along — took him in just after 8 that evening.

White was booked on robbery in the first degree, menacing, petit larceny, reckless driving, and unlawful fleeing a police officer in a motor vehicle — though I don’t see anything in the news about what he did to deserve that last charge.

“These are not just petty thefts,” Sheriff Todd Baxter said. “We are all paying the price for this lawlessness. The actions of this criminal and the chaos he created will not be tolerated.”

So, a great outcome: The customer never had to fire, and the police caught the criminal. For a good guy with a gun in a parking lot, that’s about as clean as it comes.

Sources

Primary

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office posted their report online. It’s only available through the Wayback Machine now.

Local news

WHAM ran it twice: the initial search and the arrest follow-up.

WHEC 10 did aired the witness’s cell-phone video — though there’s not much to see — and gave the initial story 30 seconds of airtime; then they followed up at the arrest.

WROC/Rochester First covered the incident and gave it 45 seconds of airtime.

Fingerlakes1 also covered this incident.

2A / specialist media

John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) picked up this story in a monthly roundup of defensive gun uses.

The man on the porch was calling for a woman who didn’t live there.

It was just after 3 AM on a Saturday when the doorbell rang. Then the pounding started, loud enough to wake Rodney Jester and his wife, Val.

Rodney got up and opened the door, and the man outside shot him.

Val threw her weight against the door to force it shut. The man shoved back, trying to get inside.

Bleeding, the homeowner reached for his own gun and fired once, through the door. The round hit the man in the head. That was the end of it.

The offender

The dead man was 74-year-old David Rose. And I’ll be honest — Rose doesn’t seem a likely character for this story.

I know obituaries don’t mean much. I’ve read obituaries of repeat felons who were killed during the commission of armed robberies, and the obituaries make them sound positively nice.

But this one describes a Navy veteran who served on the USS Enterprise in Vietnam, a retired National Guard Staff Sergeant with 25 years in, a thirty-year aircraft mechanic — and, after all that, a man who logged more than 3,200 volunteer hours building houses for Habitat for Humanity.

I know veterans can be dirtbags and don’t deserve special consideration just for the fact of their service. But this seems unusual, and hard to reconcile with the man who opened fire as soon as Rod Jester opened his door.

It seems likely that he was at the wrong address. Doorbell video shows him calling a woman’s name that didn’t belong to that address. A friend of the homeowner’s, who watched the footage, is sure Rose had come to kill an ex-wife and simply had the wrong door. Maybe. But Rose’s own obituary describes his former wife as a longtime friend, and mentions a home in New Bern, better than eighty miles up the coast from where he died.

What a 74-year-old was doing on a stranger’s Wilmington porch at three in the morning, armed, almost ninety miles from home, calling a name no one inside recognized, is a question I can’t answer — so I guess I’ll leave it there.

The aftermath

The round Rose fired went through Jester’s liver. Jester spent weeks in intensive care and underwent two major surgeries. A friend of his says he’ll walk, but won’t be the same. He started a fundraiser (still active, nothing donated recently) to help with the bills.

The neighborhood, which consists mostly of senior citizens, was shaken by the event. WECT interviewed local woman Cristina DiNatale.

“The only reason I moved here is because it’s a quiet neighborhood,” she said. “It’s a safe neighborhood. I mean, they never had a robbery. They never had any, I mean, crime around here.”

She also recognized the value of personal protection: “Thank God [he] had a gun and then protected him and his wife, you know, or it would have been a real tragedy.”

Sheriff Ed McMahon issued a press release discussing the situation, and it reads exactly how I would hope it would. (Johnny Carson could not be reached for comment.)

Last night, a homeowner faced a dire situation when a suspect attempted to forcefully enter his home. In defense of his life and property, the homeowner acted within his rights. Our investigation has determined that the homeowner used necessary force to protect himself and his family.

Under our state’s laws, individuals have the right to defend themselves when they believe they are in imminent danger. Our thoughts and prayers are with all parties affected by this incident. The Sheriff’s Office will continue to support the homeowner and uphold the laws that protect the rights of our citizens.

The DA agreed, and no charges were filed against Jester.

Sources

Primary sources

Rose’s obituary can be found here.

Local news

The Wilmington StarNews did a great job: It covered the initial story (find it at NewsBreak if that doesn’t load), then put out another story after viewing Ring doorbell footage, talking to Jester’s friend, and establishing the surgeries, the ICU stay, and the GoFundMe. (If that link doesn’t work for you, Yahoo! syndicated it.)

WWAY 3 ran the sheriff’s release essentially verbatim.

WECT got the response from the neighbor, Cristina DiNatale, and you can see a two-minute video at the link.

Around 5:45 PM at the Forest Creek Apartments, two men were in a heated argument.

One man pulled a gun and stole a firearm from the second man.

The victim pulled his backup gun1 and shot the armed robber. Then he fled.

The armed robber was taken to the hospital, where he died.

I’ll let Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons tell the rest, as recounted by WEAR News 3.

And then he did leave the scene, but then he called us up, told us where he was, told us where the gun was, told us how it happened. Told us that he was robbed and he felt like he was defending himself. We got the video and it seems to corroborate his saying.

Leaving the scene isn’t generally a great idea — as long as the threat has been neutralized, of course. But the fact that he contacted the Sheriff’s office, rather than forcing them to come looking for him, seems to have ameliorated what otherwise might have been a very bad look. Corroboration by surveillance footage of course doesn’t hurt.

Sheriff Simmons gave his assessment: “We are classifying it, at this point, as an act of self-defense.”

So, lessons learned: What’s better than having a firearm for protection?

Having two, of course.

Sources

WEAR News 3 has two articles about this incident. The first came immediately after the shooting, when little information was available. They got some community response, which I appreciate as a general approach. The second documented Sheriff Simmons’s approach to the case and his affirmation that the shooting was in self-defense.

The Pensacola News Journal has a paywalled article that was written after the police had determined that they wouldn’t recommend charges.

2A / specialist media

Sean Holt at USACarry covered this incident as well.

Nyema Norton, 29, had an ongoing feud with 23-year-old Akira Fletcher. Fletcher had even made a formal complaint saying that Norton had pointed a handgun at her on May 20.

At 2:30 AM on July 12, 2024, in a parking lot behind the Avondale Mall Center, Norton and her cousin smashed Fletcher’s car windows and slashed her tires. Fletcher was six months pregnant at the time.

Fletcher called 911. Later, in August, she posted to Facebook about the incident, saying “I was being punched in my face, rocks thrown at me, and Nyema trying to get in my car. She busted my driver side window out to attack me, she continued to try and get in my car to stab me and I let her hit me while I was on the phone with 911 asking for help.”

(I don’t see video evidence of that — she recorded video, but I would think that stopped during the call — and I haven’t heard the 911 call, but that’s her story.)

Then, when Norton and her cousin were walking away, Fletcher called out to them, “You should be happy you don’t get clapped. You should be happy you don’t get clapped.”

Let’s be clear: Fletcher shouldn’t have done that. She broke several common-sense rules of self-defense.

• Let the police do their job. She had called 911, and she wasn’t initially in imminent danger.

• When the other people are disengaging, don’t re-engage. She opened her car door and called out to the other two women. It doesn’t matter how emotionally involved you might be or how violated you might feel: She’s lucky that this didn’t count as “creating the situation” that led to the shooting.

• If you have video of an incident, keep it between you and your defense lawyer. She published her videos to Facebook, tagging a bunch of news outlets along the way, four days after Norton died. (We’ll get to that.)

That said, words don’t merit a violent response — and Norton, who had a brick and a knife, reached into Fletcher’s vehicle and started to swing something — it looked like a rock to me — while Fletcher was sitting in the driver’s seat.

Fletcher shot four times, wounding both aggressors. They both went to the hospital; Norton died on August 24, almost six weeks later.

She had called the police. Her windows were shattered and her tires flattened, and she hadn’t shot the women while they had been doing that to her car. The police even said it was self-defense. Despite all that, Fletcher was charged with murder, aggravated murder, and felonious assault. A grand jury indicted her.

WKRC Local 12 contacted Jay Clark, a local criminal defense attorney, and asked him to look at the videos.

I’ll be honest with you; I’m kind of surprised they charged her, seeing what I see now. Now, that said, we don’t know what that second woman told them. And at the time, police didn’t have this [video] necessarily.

He commented specifically on the line, “You should be happy you don’t get clapped,” indicating that it probably didn’t count as escalation: “Because in hindsight, she had the ability to “clap” her and did not.”

I recommend you check out the WKRC Local 12 article or watch the discussion here:

Ultimately, a jury saw things the same way: On June 10, 2025 — eleven months later — Fletcher was acquitted on all counts.

Her attorney, Brandon Fox, released a statement on her behalf.

Akira is doing extremely well post-verdict. She feels as if the weight of the world has been lifted from her shoulders. Returning home to her son without the pressure of an aggravated murder indictment hanging over her head felt like a new beginning.

I’ll bet. I’m no expert and I wasn’t in the courtroom, but based on what I see, that seems like the right result.

But she could probably have saved herself a year of burden by having a little more common sense.

Sources

Fletcher’s original Facebook post is no longer available.

Local 12 did a good job with the timeline: the initial shooting, before anything much was known; Norton’s death; the social media posts; Fletcher’s arrest; and getting to the legal angle.

I won’t claim to have found every piece of news on this story: Treat these numbers as minima. Fox 19 had at least three articles. WLWT 5 had at least three as well. The Cincinnati Enquirer’s two articles are paywalled. WCPO 9 and The Wiz 101.1 also had articles.

Finally, there was coverage from across the pond by the Mirror and the Daily Mail.

It was after 11 PM on a Wednesday in Topeka.

A man entered a business. The staff told him it was closed. He didn’t like that very much.

He pulled a weapon and threatened the staff.

An armed employee didn’t like that very much. He pulled his gun and shot the man.

The man fled, and later wound up at a hospital.

Fortunately for him, the hospital was open, and he was in stable condition after medical staff treated him.

We don’t know about you, but to us, it looks like an open-and-closed case of self-defense. (Sorry.1)

Sources

KSNT and WIBW 13 covered this story.

2A / specialist media

Brandon Curtis covered the story for Concealed Nation, and John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) included it in one of their monthly roundups.

Criminals can strike anywhere at any time.

Anywhere in this case is the Valley Village section of Los Angeles. It’s a quiet, suburban residential pocket in the San Fernando Valley.

Any time is midafternoon, around 3 PM.

A 56-year-old man was at his home there; his wife had left a little while before. Two men entered his house through a sliding glass door. The homeowner got a gun.

Somehow one of the invaders encountered the homeowner — who approached whom is unclear — and hit him with pepper spray. Some sources mention a “scuffle,” but the police report only mentions the spray.

Then the homeowner opened fire. One invader was hit twice in the neck; the other fled.

The homeowner wasn’t critically injured, but he went to the hospital to get treated for the effects of the pepper spray.

The wounded invader was Chucks Chukwudi, a 35-year-old with a lengthy rap sheet that included burglary, robbery, and firearm possession. He went to the hospital in critical-but-stable condition; he lived to be arrested and charged.

(Incidentally, no, you’re not the only person suddenly trying to prevent “How much wood would Chucks Chukwudi chuck...” from running through your brain.)

His partner in crime was Marquinn Peterson, who escaped in a waiting car. It didn’t help him — he was also identified and arrested later. This wasn’t his first brush with the law, either: You can see a two 2017 Facebook posts from the Huntington Beach PD (1, 2) where he was wanted for a residential robbery in Huntington Beach in 2016.

It turns out that Chukwudi and Peterson picked the house because they thought nobody was home. That mistake earned them a trip to the Big House: On January 12, 2026, Chukwudi got twelve years in state prison after pleading no contest to one count of first-degree residential burglary with person present. Peterson got fourteen years and eight months for two counts of first-degree residential burglary.

Finally, here’s a comment from a neighbor, captured by Fox 11: “I hope it all goes as it should for him. Somebody protecting their property doesn’t always go that way, you know, especially more so here, I think, than other places.” I think he’s talking about California, and the way that homeowners are afraid to defend themselves in their own homes because the state is soft on crime but hard on defenders.

Sources

Several sources say the incident involved Chukwudi, another burglar, and an accomplice who drove the car away. This was all early reporting, before they were naming Peterson, and there’s no indication in the later reporting that there was a third criminal involved. It’s certainly possible, though, that there was a getaway driver whose legal process wasn’t covered in the news.

The police report gives Chukwudi’s first name as “Chucks,” but other sources say “Chuks,” which is at least as likely: It’s a given name used by Igbo speakers in Nigeria.

Primary

The LAPD posted their report to their website.

News

Fox 11 LA has the best coverage here, getting community reaction, connecting the dots with other crimes, getting the facts about Chukwudi’s rap sheet, and adding detail that isn’t in the police report. Here’s the early report, and here’s the follow-up. The videos on their pages are worth watching.

News 4 LA gives the details on sentencing.

Patch and American Military News (?) also covered the incident. The latter is an archive link; the report was apparently taken down.

Here’s some of Fox 11’s coverage.

2A / specialist media

Sean Holt at USACarry, Grits and Gear, and Blaze (paywalled) all covered the incident.

And then there’s Smoketales.

Note that we don’t pretend that this represents every newsroom that covered any given story, and we know that everyone is innocent until proved guilty.

Alabama

Huntsville

Around 3 AM on July 1, an armed man broke into a home and threatened the occupants. One of the residents shot him.

Police arrived to find the intruder wounded, and they took him to a hospital in critical condition.

The DA reviewed the case and concluded the shooting appears to have been self-defense. They say no charges are expected against the resident who fired. The intruder remains under investigation for possible first-degree burglary charges.

• Investigators Say Early Morning Shooting in Huntsville Appears to Be Self-Defense, No Charges Expected (WHNT)

• He Broke Into a Huntsville Home With a Gun at 3 A.M. He Left in Critical Condition. (USACarry)

• Huntsville Shooting Likely Self-Defense, Police Say (AL.com)

Florida

North Lauderdale

It started over a parking spot. Around 12:30 PM on June 30, Broward County Police got a call about a shooting in (where else?) a Walmart parking lot. A woman was involved in a verbal dispute with 62-year-old Bart Diguglielmo, who had apparently tried to block a parking space with his car while he went in to shop. The woman managed to get her car around his and into the spot anyway, but when he returned and found her there, the argument resumed and he began to physically approach her in an aggressive manner.

It escalated quickly. As the woman backed away, she drew her gun and warned Diguglielmo repeatedly that she’d shoot if he kept coming. He walked away — then turned around and came back toward her. She shot him.

The woman stayed at the scene and cooperated with detectives, calling it self-defense. Witnesses and video backed her account. Diguglielmo was taken to a hospital, where he died. The woman was questioned and released. The case was referred to the Broward County State Attorney’s Office.

• Black Woman Shoots, Kills Man Seen Repeatedly Advancing On Her In Video (Newsone)

• The Media Is Villainizing A Black Woman Who Stood Her Ground In A Walmart Parking Lot (Newsone)

Tampa

Just after midnight on July 5, a man was sitting in his parked car when another man allegedly walked up, opened the driver-side door, and produced a gun. The driver was armed himself, and fired.

The wounded man was driven a short distance away, where officers found him around 12:30 AM. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.

The driver stayed at the scene and cooperated with investigators. No charges have been filed. Detectives are reviewing surveillance footage, processing physical evidence, and working through conflicting witness accounts, but explicitly noted that the shooter remained on the scene and is “actively cooperating with investigators.”

• Waters Avenue Midnight Ambush Leaves Man Dead, Shooter Claims Self-Defense (Hoodline)

• Midnight Car Ambush Ends In Fatal Shooting On Waters Avenue In Tampa (Tampa Free Press)

Georgia

Atlanta

Read more

I found a few tidbits for people who, like me, don’t know anything about Anderson, Indiana.

• It’s about halfway between Indianapolis and Muncie.

• Basketball leagues sprung up and changed in the wake of WWII, and Anderson had its own team.1 In 1949, the Anderson Duffey Packers became the NBA’s Anderson Packers. They lasted a year, then joined the ill-fated National Professional Basketball League for its one-year existence, and died out.

• The city’s economic fate was worse than their basketball team’s. The job market in Anderson shriveled from about 22,000 GM jobs in the 1970s to under 2,600 by 2006. GM was the primary employer in the area, so the demise of GM meant the impoverishment of the city.2

• Anderson’s poverty rate is about 20%, compared to Indiana’s 12%, which itself is close to the US average. Its violent crime rate is about 2% higher than the US rate, but its property crime rate is 15% higher than the US.3

The setting for this incident doesn’t look bad, though. It’s only a few hundred feet from the Madison County courthouse.

It was in this area that 51-year-old businessman Mark Squillante was playing “a Pokémon-style scavenger hunt game” on his phone just before 10 PM.

A stranger ambushed him, punching him in the face and stealing his phone.

Squillante was no longer playing games. He drew his gun and shot the man.

That man was 43-year-old Michael Piercy. He was homeless at the time. His ten-plus convictions since 2001 in nearby Henry County included battery resulting in bodily injury, burglary, carrying a handgun without a license, domestic battery, failure to register as a sex offender, possession of meth, sexual misconduct with a minor and theft. He had most recently been released from the Department of Corrections in April.

That night, Piercy had also allegedly threatened to harm several other people around downtown. He wasn’t armed at the time of his confrontation with Squillante.

Piercy died from his wounds.

Madison County Prosecutor Rodney Cummings filed no charges. “Everything that’s been presented to me it looks like a very strong self-defense case,” he said. “You can use deadly force to defend yourself or your property if you have reason to believe you could be injured or killed.”

He even referred to the gun itself, though he tried to have it both ways: “I mean this is one where someone defended himself and it could have been worse had he not had a gun, but gun violence is really over the top in the community and this town.”

But Cummings contradicts himself here. He had just deemed a specific act of “gun violence” to be reasonable, and not “over the top” at all. It was judicious “gun violence” in defense of self and property.

Law enforcement needs to control violence in general; otherwise, citizens will need to continue to judiciously apply gun violence to protect themselves.

Sources

There was good coverage from multiple sources here, though in different ways.

I very much appreciated the Star Press’s coverage of this incident, since they’re the only ones I see who detailed Piercy’s criminal history.

The Herald Bulletin named the defender, but it’s paywalled; fortunately, you can read at Yahoo!’s syndicated version.

WTWO 2 and Fox 59 / CBS 4 — it’s the same content at two URLs — provided good coverage about the prosecutor’s decision not to prosecute, with solid quotes.

Early investigations came from WISHTV 8, WTHR 13, and Fox 59 / CBS 4,

2A / Specialist sources

Goodguywithagun.online reader Claude Werner, a.k.a. The Tactical Professor, covered this as “Good” in a “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” roundup.

A man came out of the convenience-store section of a BP gas station and was about to get into his Dodge Charger when he heard a man say, “Give me your keys and car.”

He turned to see a man carrying a rifle — something that looked like an AK-47.

Backing up, he eased his hand into his right pocket.

The carjacker took his right hand off the trigger and cradled the rifle in his left hand, then reached for the man’s left pocket.

That was an opportunity: The victim pulled his own handgun from his right pocket and drew on the carjacker. He got one round off near, if not into, the carjacker’s face.

The carjacker wasn’t dead, though — he recovered and shot the fleeing victim in the gluteus maximus. Then he and two accomplices fled in their Chevy Impala.

Police later found thirteen casings at the site.

Though it’s not in the video, Fox 13 says that the victim got into his car and fled the scene. Soon after, he crashed and waved down an officer. He was hospitalized with non-critical injuries.

Sources

Fox 13 has the narrative, but Reddit has the better video. You’ll want to watch this one — it shows you how fast things can turn.

Sean Holt at USACarry covered the incident as well.

Around 4 AM in Tampa’s Palmetto Beach community, a man in his early 40s broke through a window into a house on the 1300 block of South Bermuda Boulevard.

The homeowner confronted and shot the intruder. First responders pronounced him dead at the scene.

That’s really all there is: One police report, repeated over many news outlets, with almost no detail other than the above. And this is for an incident that resulted in the death of the home invader.

The Good Guy with a Gun: Not a myth, just under-documented.

Sources

Primary

The Tampa press release is on the tampa.gov website.

News

These stories all echo the press release, with no additional information: WFLA 8, Tampa Bay News 10, Tampa Latest, Tampa Bay 28, West Orlando News, Tampa Free Press, and Fox 13.

2A / specialist media

Sean Holt at USACarry and aggregator Hoodline covered this story.

Two people were in a white SUV at around 11 PM on a Sunday night. We don’t know anything about them.

37-year-old Edward Mazon, armed with a handgun, tried to rob them.

The driver shot him — and then he and his passenger drove away.

Neighbors called 911, and police arrived quickly. They attempted to save Mazon, but he died at the scene.

After the initial investigation, the police believed that the shooting was justified: “Everything’s possible, but at this point, it appears that [the people in the SUV] are victims,” said Sgt. Vahe Abramyan, a spokesperson for the Glendale PD.

Nevertheless, I can’t find any news outlet talking about the two reaching out to the police. As of the Glendale News-Press deadline for a July 15 publication — about a week later — the two had not been located.

Did they run because they’re criminals themselves? Some people might find it easy to think that way. But judging by the many comments I’ve read on Facebook posts and in forums over the past few years, many people think that California would be happy to put legal gun owners through the wringer. It’s just as possible, then, that they’re legal gun owners who are terrified of the state.

Maybe it’s somewhere in the middle. They might be people who refuse to disarm themselves despite California’s best efforts, carrying weapons without jumping through California’s ridiculous restrictions, and they know that their perfectly reasonable act of self-defense with a perfectly reasonable weapon could still land them behind bars.

Whatever the case, “Police said the shooter and a passenger in the SUV drove off. They’re now looking for them, but they say not as suspects facing any murder charges,” according to NBC 4 Los Angeles.

Community members also showed their support: “I would say they have to [fight back], because crime is getting really crazy everywhere,” said Terri Roberts, an area resident.

Sources

Primary

The Glendale PD gives their side of the story on their website. They also posted about the situation to Facebook, where (at least online) they got less than nothing for their trouble.

News

During the initial investigation, this looked like a non-DGU road-rage incident.

KTLA 5 even headlined their story Suspect on the loose after fatal shooting near Glendale hotel, and they called Mazon (not then known by name) a “victim.” I’m sure there are others like that out there.

Shortly afterward, however, police understood that Mazon was an armed robber who was shot in self-defense, not a victim. Most of the stories look roughly the same at that point: CNS/ABC 7, FOX LA 11, KNX News / 1070 AM, the Glendale News-Press, and CBS News.

NBC 4 Los Angeles did a solid job reporting on the story, including getting some neighborhood reaction and quoting the Glendale PD’s Sgt Abramyan.

2A / specialist media

John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) covered this story in one of their monthly roundups.

Blaze Media posted about this story (paywalled).

These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is significantly updated from the calendar version.

According to a witness interviewed by WAVY 10, 27-year-old Rahsaan Nixon1 had entered the Essex Food Store on July 3 and tried to shoplift some merchandise. It’s not clear how successful he may have been.

The next day, he again entered the store to shoplift.

Employees confronted him, and things escalated until a store clerk shot him. He left the store and was taken to the hospital, where he died.

Police put out a request on Facebook for the identification of four people who were captured on surveillance video. They were clear that these four people weren’t the shooter.

But they never identified the shooter, arrested him, or charged him.

Unlike most situations, where we only have a strong indicator (silence in the news) that the police don’t intend to charge someone, in this case there are multiple Facebook posts — the most recent one from February of this year — expressing frustration with the police specifically because the shooter hadn’t been named or arrested.

The family disputes the whole thing, claiming that the shooting was unlawful and that the shooter should be charged.

I didn’t know Nixon, so I can’t speak directly to his character. The police chief confirmed that he was shoplifting. We know that there was surveillance footage from the store, because the police used stills from it to ask the public about witnesses. We know that this store has caged windows to prevent theft. And we know that the crime rate in Portsmouth is awful (this is from city-data.com):

It seems reasonably likely, then, that the police could see the surveillance footage of the shoplifting and the altercation that followed. It seems very likely that the store employees had a reasonable fear of violent criminal activity. And without charges, it seems that the police and DA felt that either it was clearly self-defense or that they wouldn’t be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the shooting wasn’t in self-defense.

Family objections aside, this looks like a solid DGU.

Sources

Primary

Here’s the Portsmouth PD’s Facebook post referred to above.

Here are two Facebook posts (1,2) that tell you the family’s side of the story.

News

WAVY 10 has the interview with the witness — the only such reference I could find.

The Virginian-Pilot (paywalled) is syndicated through Yahoo! (not paywalled).

WTKR 3 has two stories, reflecting the fact that more than one person was shot in this area at around the same time. 13 News Now has one, but also TV coverage of the violent holiday.

WAVY 10’s news coverage here is the same as that at the text link above.

2A / Specialist media

Octavius Mayhem reported on this story at The Truth About Guns.

John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) included it in one of their monthly roundups.

“...anything can happen to anybody at any time regardless if you’re in a good neighborhood, bad neighborhood…”

So said Steve D’Amico, Mayor of Bullhead City, Arizona.

He was watching TV early in the morning, around 4:45 AM (oof — I only watch the back of my eyelids at that time of day) when he heard some rattling around at his back door.

Then he heard yelling.

He thought it was his son playing a prank on him, but when he realized it wasn’t, he grabbed his firearm.

But not pants. He was in his underwear. “You don’t have time to put clothes on when something like that happens,” he said.

He went out the front door and eased his way around the side of his house to the back.

A trespasser had bypassed his locked gate and hopped the fence. “I don’t know if he had a weapon or anything,” he said, “so I held him at gunpoint and told him to get down on the ground and stay on the ground and not move.”

He was a little nervous that there might be an accomplice, but none was found.

“And I held him there till PD came,” he said. They took about five minutes. (Even with rapid response times, they can’t be everywhere at once.)

I would have paid hard coin to see the expressions on the police officers’ faces when they arrived at the mayor’s house and saw him in his underwear while holding a guy at bay.

The intruder was 34-year-old Ezequiel Felix Castellon, who was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. (No indecent exposure citation for the mayor.)

The mayor pushed back against people who questioned his actions.

“Some people second guess me and say I should’ve stayed in my house and called the police. But I think I did the right thing. Not only that, had I not caught him, he probably would’ve moved onto another house and there’s no telling what could’ve happened,” he said.

Lessons learned included:

• Doors locked — that prevented Castellon from getting in.

• Batteries in surveillance cameras — his were all dead.

• Handgun available — that kept the trespasser from being more of a hazard.

…though somehow the news articles didn’t specifically recommend that last one.

Even though the mayor said, likely exceeding his best political speech ever:

This is nothing that they would be able to prevent, even if we hired a thousand officers. It’s just one of those things that’s going to happen. You can’t prevent it, but you can prepare for it.

Sources

AZFamily did a great job letting the mayor tell his own story. Most of the quotes here are from them.

Mohave Daily News also did a great job covering this story.

As always, note that we don’t pretend that this represents every newsroom that covered any given story, and everyone is innocent until proved guilty.

Alabama

Tallassee

There’s very little detail to go on with this one.

Police say Frederick Heard, 51, died by shooting.

They had responded to calls about “a subject being shot” on June 27.

The investigation is ongoing, but Tallassee Police Captain Jonathan Rawls stated that “The investigation is leaning towards self-defense.” But of course he also said, “That will not be decided until the evidence is presented to a grand jury for a decision,” since that’s standard procedure.

• Saturday shooting death investigation ‘leaning toward self-defense’

Indiana

Columbus

Just after 9 AM on June 22, police responded to a call about a shooting.

The resident claimed David R. Young, 44, who was known to the residents, had driven himself there that morning and attacked the resident at the front door.

During the altercation, the resident shot Young. Then he called the police himself.

Officers found Young outside with gunshot wounds. They rendered aid, but he didn’t survive. The resident stayed and cooperated.

No arrests have been made.

A forensic autopsy has been scheduled and officers are still conducting interviews and investigating. The case goes to the Bartholomew County Prosecutor’s Office to determine whether the shooting was justified.

• Columbus Man Says He Shot Intruder Who Attacked Him at His Front Door

North Carolina

Andrews

The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office is investigating after a man called 911 to report that he shot another man in self-defense.

They were called to the home around 11:15am on Friday, June 26, and found Jeffrey Wade McTaggart, 49, dead in the backyard of the home.

The caller admitted to shooting him and told police that there had been an altercation and he fired in self-defense. Authorities are investigating the incident.

• Man dead after shooting in Andrews; Cherokee County probes self-defense claim

Read more

The information here is as sparse as the vegetation.

Location: 160th Street and Dixileta Drive
Rio Verde, Maricopa County, Arizona.
Date: July 1, 2024
Time: 10:00 PM
Aggressor: 45-year-old Kyle Kepler
Victims: 31-year-old Thomas Griffin and his wife

Did they know each other? Don’t know.

Kepler “confronted” the Griffins. How? Don’t know.

UPDATE: Claude Werner, the Tactical Professor, points out that Kepler’s two sons were with him. This isn’t in any of the news reports I saw, but there’s a GoFundMe for Kepler’s family, and it supplies this detail.

Kepler pointed a firearm at them.

Griffin pulled his own gun and shot Kepler.

Kepler died.

Life-changing for the Griffins, life-ending for Kepler. This was a terrifying few moments, with all the adrenaline and drama of a horror movie.

But these sparse facts are almost all we’ve got. (We do also know that the Griffins waited for police and cooperated with them. Not much emotional pull in that, though.)

The Good Guy with a Gun: Not a myth, just under-documented.

Sources

AZ Central published the story, but it’s behind a paywall, so you can instead see the identical content syndicated on Yahoo!.

AZFamily did as well. There are a few syndicated versions of the story out there that I won’t list.

Finally, Fox 10 did as well.

All of these stories are essentially the same.

2A / Specialist media

John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) included this story in one of its roundups.

Daniel Matute’s estranged wife had an order of protection against him. Nevertheless, at around 7 PM on a Monday evening, he approached her and a group of friends outside a QuickTrip. He had a gun.

So did a friend in the group. That person — male or female, I don’t know — drew his gun and told Matute to back off and lower his gun.

Matute pointed his gun at the friend instead. The friend fired three rounds, hitting Matute twice.

Matute was expected to recover, but he died at the hospital five days later.

A protective order is a piece of paper. It wasn't enough to stop Daniel Matute.

Sources

News on 6 covered the initial incident and followed up when Matute died.

KTUL did likewise: initial incident, follow-up.

Fox 23 did the same, but it was all encapsulated in a single updated article.

The News and Observer covered the incident in one article.

TulsaWorld has a paywalled article.

2A / specialist media

Sean Holt covered this story for USACarry.

Smoketales did a short, featuring none of their usual colorful commentary.

Don’t mess with [god]mom!

Katrina Addie had a legal .380 in the Berkeley Gardens Apartments. She was a correctional officer and knew how to use it, but she didn’t expect to that day.

Her godson, Tion, was visiting from Georgia before heading to college for the fall. He went to take out the garbage at around 7 PM. Some other kids were along with him.

Elijah Williamson, 24, and a 15-year-old boy “confronted him about a situation involving two women who might get into an altercation” (quoting WV Metro News). Tion didn’t know what they were talking about, and when he said so, one of them took a swing at him and the other stepped up to fight.

Tion knows that you can’t back down from a bully — but he wasn’t stupid, either. He said:

I squared up with them both and once they realized I wasn’t going to back down, they backed up and started clutching on their hip. Knowing me, I’ll fight you but I ain’t fighting no bullet. I took off, trying to warn everybody, the kids and stuff. I didn’t know what to think. For real, that was like the first time someone was coming for me.

When Tion started yelling, Katrina looked out the window. She knew Williamson and had complained about him to building management — and she also knew that trouble was coming for her godson and the other kids. She grabbed her .380 and ran toward the door.

Here’s how she tells it:

By the time I made it to the bottom of the stairs, I could see all the kids running. By the time I stepped off the third step, I said, ‘What’s going on?’ He immediately lifted the gun and started shooting. I told all the kids to get down and we hit the deck.

A neighbor was in her car, pinned down by the gunfire, so when Addie heard a magazine drop, she got up and returned fire.

“When I got up to return fire, the young man never budged. He stood there like he had the intent to really hurt someone,” she said.

She wasn’t shooting to kill, she said — just to protect — but it seems to me that may have prolonged the incident.

“As he seen me get to my neighbor’s car to try to get her out, he immediately repeated shooting again.”

She was able to take shelter in the building until Williamson left. The neighbor’s car had been hit, but the neighbor herself was uninjured. Two apartment windows were also struck.

There were eighteen 9mm shots from Williamson in all.

Police later nabbed Williamson and charged him with eighteen counts of attempted malicious wounding.

Sounds good, right? But the story doesn’t end there, and the continuation is lousy.

Aftermath

Within just a few days, Addie’s apartment complex sent her an eviction notice.

She asked the people at her rental office about it: “They told me, ‘You didn’t break no laws.’” According to WV Metro News, Berkeley County Sheriff’s Department Chief Administrative Officer Eric Burnett told the Panhandle News Network that Addie’s actions likely prevented injury, loss of life, or further damage.

The notice does indicate that she was behind on her utilities payment — but it also says that there was a problem with “Family member fighting, brandishing and shooting a weapon; endangering self and the lives of others in the community.”

Recall, too, that she had warned management about Williamson and others in his group making videos and displaying weapons. She said:

I have been complaining for seven months. I went to the Sheriff’s Department. The Sheriff’s Department came to the complex to ask them to leave. All the landlords would say is, ‘We don’t know their names,’ but nothing extra was done to stay behind and try to locate these individuals.

She had seven children. She had thirty days.

The community was rallying around her. Some even told management that they should let her live there rent-free because she protected the residents. Unfortunately, I can’t find evidence of what happened next.

Sources

There are a few sources for the main part of this story — DC News Now, for instance — but the best source by far is Marsha Chwalik’s work at WV Metro News. All of the work I normally do to flesh out a story as well as possible was done by them, including personal interviews and detailed commentary. I actually felt guilty not just pointing you at them in the first place. All of the quotes in this story come directly from their two articles. So if you have a few minutes, go give them a few clicks and see what else they had to say.

• Godmother with gun may have saved the day in Martinsburg shooting

• Godmother who shot at gunman now faces eviction

It was early on a Saturday morning — before 2 AM, so maybe a late Friday night instead — two men, aged 36 and 49, got into an argument at a gas station in Englewood on Chicago’s South Side.

It doesn’t matter what the argument was about, you shouldn’t do what the 36-year-old did: He got a gun out of his vehicle and fired at the 49-year-old.

The 49-year-old was a Concealed Carry License (CCL) holder. He was also a better shot: He returned fire, hitting the 36-year-old in the arm.

The 36-year-old went to the hospital in critical condition, and one suspects that he faced charges afterward. He should have left that gun in the car.

Sources

CBS News and WLS 7 both covered the story on its own and in roundups (CBS, WLS).

2A / specialist media

Dave Urbanski covered this in a roundup for Blaze Media, and John Lott covered it in a CPRC monthly roundup.