Oriental Express is a family-run Chinese takeout restaurant in Capitol Heights, Maryland. One neighbor called the owners “quiet, hard-working people,” and the Yelp reviews are four-star — looks great for tasty, reasonably priced Egg Foo Young in particular.

One Thursday, just before the dinner rush, 27-year-old Victor Rios Rubio attempted to rob the restaurant and assaulted some of the employees. (Luckily, there were no customers in the restaurant at the time.)

One of the workers was armed, and they fired at Rubio, who was pronounced dead by police when they arrived.

7News reported that the witnesses spoke only Mandarin Chinese, so the county brought in an investigator who speaks the language to conduct the interviews.

Customers told News4 the place had been there about twenty years, run by a family. A security camera sat near the register.

Arslan Raja lives nearby, and he talked to two stations about it. “It’s bad because that shouldn’t happen,” he said. “That’s where families come and go to the shop, the nail salon and hair salon. You should feel safe coming to a place like this.”

The next day, news reports indicated that the restaurant was still shuttered, and there were flowers and teddy bears left outside the door.

Sources

News

NBC4 went out to the strip mall and talked to the people who shop there. Maryland carryout employee shot and killed man during robbery, police say (NBC4 Washington, Jackie Bensen and Andrea Swalec)

7News got the interpreter detail. Would-be robber fatally shot by restaurant employee in Capitol Heights, sources say (WJLA / 7News)

Other coverage:

• Employee Fatally Shoots Robbery Suspect Inside Prince George’s County Restaurant (The BayNet)

• Prince George’s County police: Man shot, killed after assaulting employees at restaurant he was robbing (DC News Now)

• Employee shot, killed suspect robbing Maryland restaurant and assaulting employees: police (FOX 5 DC)

• Man Fatally Shot While Robbing Restaurant, Assaulting Employees: Police (Patch)

• One Killed In Midday Capitol Heights Shooting At Area Business, Police Say (Daily Voice)

• Employee fatally shoots man inside Pr. George’s restaurant, police say (The Washington Post; paywalled)

2A / specialist media

Luke McCoy wrote it up at USA Carry. Employee Fatally Shoots Robbery Suspect Assaulting Staff at Maryland Restaurant

Brandon Curtis wrote it up at Concealed Nation. Restaurant Employee Shoots Robber Dead During Robbery And Assault

One might wish that these guys were willing to be at non-criminal work at 7:30 AM on a weekend day. Or that they would take up golf, or maybe fishing, which — I’m told, trust me, I don’t know for myself — lead to similar early-morning habits.

But no, one of them was in the driver’s seat of a getaway car while the other was inside a stranger’s house. The homeowner found in the house and told him to get out.

The man wouldn’t go, so the homeowner fired one shot into him.

That did the trick. The man got himself out of the house and into the getaway car, and the two enterprising-but-maybe-not-so-bright people got away.

But not for long, thankfully. Lee’s Summit police caught up with the car, stopped it, and took the miscreants in. (The home invader’s wounds weren’t life-threatening.)

By the end of that Saturday, Jackson County prosecutors had a warrant for 32-year-old Trent Taylor: first-degree burglary and two counts of harassment, bond at $45,000 or ten percent. The department identified him publicly the next day as one of the two suspects, presumably the home invader — I don’t see a first-degree burglary charge landing on the driver.

I don’t know what the harassment counts are related to. Wouldn’t any crime be considered “harassment” of some sort or another? I’m guessing at this point that it’s a lawyerly thing: Detectives said they didn’t believe Taylor and the homeowner knew each other, so it’s not like there was a history of harassment here. If you understand it, please drop a comment.

Sources

News

Lee’s Summit homeowner shoots, injures intruder Saturday morning (KSHB 41 Kansas City, day-of)

Investigation opened after homeowner shoots man attempting to burglarize property (KCTV5, next day)

There was an intruder in the house around eleven in the morning, and the homeowner’s spouse shot him.1

The homeowner called Albuquerque police, and when officers arrived the homeowner came out of the house and answered their questions.

The intruder had fled. All the officers found was a blood trail leading away from the house.

So they went looking. They worked the neighborhood for a gunshot victim and didn’t find anybody bleeding.

There was a heavy police presence near a park while they searched for the suspect and for evidence, and the local hospitals were told to keep an eye out for anyone who walked in with a gunshot wound.

That’s the whole story: a short item in one local outlet, and no follow-up I can find.

Sources

News

Homeowner Shoots Intruder, Suspect Flees Home and Has Not Been Located (ABQ RAW)

Pro tip to any would-be criminals reading: If your victims are already giving you their money or goods, it’s probably unwise to insist that they do something that makes them feel like you just might kill them.

A man had come into a BP at three in the morning demanding money, and a co-worker had already opened the register. So far so…sure, let’s call it “good,” though it’s not.

But then the man told the clerk to get down on the ground. The clerk said no, the two of them fought, and somewhere in the struggle the clerk got to the gun the owner kept behind the counter and fired.

The call went out as a possible shooting at the BP. “Channels, clerk saying he just shot someone,” a Cincinnati officer said over the radio. “Right now, it’s extremely life-threatening. Sounds like they’re going to transport possibly.”

Video from the Gold Star across the street showed police pulling up within two minutes. They found the man shot behind the counter. Firefighters worked on him there and got him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after he arrived.

The Hamilton County coroner’s office identified him as Dana Bruenton, 57. He didn’t work at the store.

Bruenton’s record went back to the 1980s, and at least two crimes had put him in prison: an aggravated robbery in 1992 and an assault in 2007. Two more arrests came in the weeks before he died — one about a month prior, for an assault with a wrench, and one about three weeks prior, for trying to walk out of a Kroger with groceries.

Officers detained two BP employees afterward, and a supervisor said investigators weren’t sure whether a robbery had led up to the shooting. The store’s owner said his employee was questioned and released. Police didn’t confirm the clerk’s account.

“Normally, I’m here, but I wasn’t here [this time],” JJ Wilbon told Local 12. She spends her early-morning hours in that parking lot with friends, and she knows the clerk: “[A] sense of humor. Pretty much minds his business.”

Asked whether he was the sort of man she’d have expected to be in the middle of something like this, she said, “Not at all. Not at all.”

“Sometimes you gotta pick and choose your battles,” Wilbon said. “He chose to battle.”

Asked whether she thought it was the right decision: “I do. I do. I hate for someone to lose their life like that, but it is what it is.”

Sources

News

David Winter’s piece at Local 12 is the only one built from anything but the police: he got the clerks’ account of what happened inside, the police radio traffic, Bruenton’s court file, and the one neighborhood interview anybody did.
Cincinnati gas station clerk shoots, kills alleged would-be robber (Local 12 / WKRC)

Other coverage:

• 1 dead in shooting at Cincinnati gas station (FOX19 NOW)

• Coroner identifies man dead after shooting at gas station in Paddock Hills (WCPO 9)

• Man killed at gas station identified; 2 BP workers detained, police say (Cincinnati Enquirer, with Yahoo! non-paywalled syndication)

2A / specialist media

Luke McCoy wrote it up at USA Carry.
Clerk Fatally Shoots Alleged Robber at Cincinnati Gas Station (USA Carry)

Brandon Curtis wrote it up at Concealed Nation, adding that no ruling on justification had been announced by early September.
Armed Clerk Unalives Robbery Suspect, A Career Criminal With A Rap Sheet Dating Back To The 80’s (Concealed Nation)

Just before four on a Sunday morning, two men came up on a 34-year-old on a residential street on the far West Side of San Antonio and tried to rob him.

He had a handgun. He took it out and fired, and he hit both of them.

When the police arrived, officers found a 23-year-old man there with a gunshot wound to the head. He was taken to the hospital and listed in critical condition. During the investigation, police were told that a second man had been taken to a hospital too, with a gunshot to the hip; they questioned him and some witnesses, and were told that wound came from the same scene.

They recovered a weapon and shell casings on the street, along with a weapon, though the reporting doesn’t say whom it belonged to.

So for some part of that morning, the published police account of what happened out there didn’t have a good guy in it. “The San Antonio Police Department is trying to determine if the two men who were shot were shooting at each other, or if someone else did the shooting,” mySA reported.

At that hour, with two men shot and one gun on the ground, it seems like a pretty good question.

By nine that morning, the account had a good guy in it. “After an investigation was conducted, it was determined that the two shooting suspects were armed and had attempted to rob the victim,” the department said. As the two came at him, the 34-year-old took out a handgun and defended himself, “firing at the suspects.” The case was being investigated as an aggravated robbery.

Sources

News

San Antonio man shoots 2 men attempting to rob him, SAPD says (mySA / San Antonio Express-News)

KSAT ran the day-of write-up and a segment on the morning newscast.

• 34-year-old man shoots 2 suspects who attempted to rob him, SAPD says (The write-up)

2A / specialist media

Victim Defends Himself Against Two Armed Robbers in San Antonio, Sends Both to the Hospital (USA Carry, Luke McCoy)

Armed Texan Shoots 2 Armed Robbers, Sending Both To Hospital (Concealed Nation, Brandon Curtis)

Somebody forced his way into a Medford apartment just after six on a Saturday evening, and he had a knife. The resident had a gun.

Someone called Medford police about an unknown individual attempting to force entry into an apartment. Within minutes a second one came from the same place, this one about gunshots. The officers found a man dead of gunshot wounds.

Nobody was taken into custody. Senior Deputy DA Michael Cohen went on the local news a few days later to explain, in general terms, related Oregon law: “If someone’s trying to break into your home, or has broken into your home... deadly physical force is allowed to be used in self defense.” The news anchor at KOBI NBC 5 rightly mentioned the need for one’s response to be proportionate and reasonable.

Sources

News

KOBI NBC 5:

• Intruder fatally shot by resident during apparent break in says MPD (The day after)

• Oregon’s Self-Defense Laws in the Spotlight After Break-in Shooting (Focus on deadly force. This link is text; the video with Senior Deputy DA Cohen is below.)

Medford Police Investigating Shooting on Berrydale Avenue (KDRV NewsWatch 12)

NW Medford Armed Intruder Allegedly Killed In Self-Defence (Daily Tidings)

Rogue Valley Magazine put its coverage inside daily roundups of Rogue Valley news.

• Intruder Shot By Medford Resident During Apparent Break In (The release, Monday)

• Jackson County DA Speaks on Intruder Shot By Medford Resident During Apparent Break In (The KOBI follow-up, Wednesday)

2A / specialist media

Resident Fatally Shoots Knife-Wielding Intruder During Attempted Break-In in Medford, OR (USA Carry)

What happened next must have been a nightmare that came out of nowhere: A man appeared, assaulted her, and tried to take her truck. As if that weren’t enough, he told her child, “I’m going to rape your mommy.”

She started screaming.

Several people heard her and came running. One of them was carrying a 9mm.

He walked up on the man and started giving speaking — announcing himself, giving the man a chance to stop. The man charged, shoved him, and put him on the ground.

So the armed citizen fired one shot and hit him in the chest.

A Tazewell County detective and a conservation officer were taking a report about a different 911 call a quarter-mile away, and they heard the gunshot. Around then, another 911 call came in, so they drove quickly to Lee’s Kar-Go, where they found the man on the ground with a bullet wound in his chest.

An off-duty deputy and an officer gave him first aid and got him into handcuffs, which he fought the whole way.

The man was Cody Dailey, 30, from Bluefield, just across the West Virginia line. He was flown to Roanoke, about 115 miles east, and was in stable condition. He was known to police, as they say, with two felony warrants out of the circuit court. Detectives said they were working on abduction, carjacking, assault and battery, and more.

“Thank goodness for the good Samaritans that came to the victims aid during her time of need,” Sheriff Brian Hieatt said. “We are grateful for their desire to intercede on her behalf, had they not acted this could have been a very different outcome.”

Sources

News

• Suspect shot following attempted carjacking, assault in Tazewell County (Bluefield Daily Telegraph, archive.org backup)

• Suspect airlifted after being shot during attempted carjacking in Tazewell County (WVNS)

• WCYB dates the incident to Thursday. It happened Friday. Tazewell County, VA Shooting Incident: Suspect Injured During Alleged Carjacking Attempt

Kassidy Brown’s story ran on both of Gray’s stations in the market.

• Good Samaritan shoots man attempting to carjack woman and child (WDBJ7)

• Good Samaritan shoots man attempting to carjack woman and child (WVVA, a little longer, with the whole of the sheriff’s statement)

2A / specialist media

Luke McCoy wrote it up at USA Carry. Good Samaritan Stops Carjacking, Kidnapping Attempt on Woman and Child

Brandon Curtis wrote it up at Concealed Nation. Hero Armed Citizen Saves Woman And Child During Carjacking Attempt, Possible Sexual Assault

It’s also at AmmoLand. CCW Holder Shoots Carjacker Who Told Child ‘I am Gonna Rape Your Mommy’ ~ VIDEO

Detectives told Rose and Kamyar Zarrabi afterward that the man with the hammer had probably been in their store before. Not a random smash-and-grab.

KZ Jewelry Designs is a modest business. “I don’t carry Rolex,” Rose Zarrabi said. “We’re just a small mom and pop place.”

“We” is Rose and her husband, Kamyar. They were both in the store a little before 5 PM on a Tuesday afternoon when a man entered the store — hat, facemask, black get-up, red gloves. Without a word, he raised a ball-peen hammer and started smashing the display cases.

She yelled at him, of course, but it didn’t matter. “When I yelled stop, he looked at me, and bash,” she said, miming a hammer blow. “Like he didn’t care.”

“He would have cleared us out, he definitely would have, if we wouldn’t have done anything,” Rose said. “He was not afraid. It was weird.”

He hadn’t even brought a bag. He went case to case, hugging the jewelry against his chest.

Then Kamyar came out of the back office with the handgun he kept there for protection and put a round into the ceiling.

It worked, though. “The guy stopped, dropped everything and took off running,” Rose said. “There was jewelry scattered everywhere and glass.” He went out northbound on foot and left the hammer behind. Kamyar went after him and lost him.

Nobody was hurt. A police sergeant told NBC 7 that he believed her husband “was under duress at that time, and so he did what he felt was necessary to keep his wife safe.”

Two days later, the Zarrabis didn’t want to go back on camera. But the jeweler next door was willing to talk about it — Fred Nasseri, forty-five years on that block.

“Somebody is gonna get hurt along the road,” he said. “At that point, I think people are going to say, ‘Whoa, we have to stop it.’ But before we get there, we have to stop it.”

I can’t be the only person thinking that the consequences for perpetrating acts like this need to be both more common and more immediate.

Sources

News

NBC 7 San Diego got an interview with the Zarrabis. The photos come from the Zarribis’ surveillance video, which they broadcast.

• Rancho Bernardo jewelry store owner stops smash-and-grab robbery (The write-up: the video embedded on that page can also be seen below.)

ABC 10 ran two segments: the newswire item, and then Moses Small’s follow-up, which is the one that went to the shopping center to get other reactions. (Moses Small has the most amazing TV/radio voice, by the way.)

• Man armed with hammer robs Rancho Bernardo jewelry store, runs away after owner fires gun (City News Service)

• Rancho Bernardo store owner fires shot to stop smash-and-grab robbery (Two days later, with Fred Nasseri)

Other coverage included:

• Jewelry store owner fires gun during heist in Rancho Bernardo (The San Diego Union-Tribune)

• Police investigating smash-and-grab at Rancho Bernardo jewelry store (FOX 5 San Diego / KUSI)

• Rancho Bernardo Jewelry Store Robbed by Man with Hammer (Times of San Diego, the same City News Service article as ABC 10)

2A / specialist media

Brandon Curtis wrote it up at Concealed Nation. Jewelry Store Owner Fires Warning Shot Into Ceiling To Scare Off Smash & Grab Robber

Luke McCoy’s piece at USA Carry embeds the NBC 7 video. Jewelry Store Owner Fires Warning Shot During Smash-and-Grab Robbery in Rancho Bernardo

Both men emphasize the issues with warning shots, providing more links if you’re interested.

Aggregator Hoodline also covered this incident. Rancho Bernardo Jewelry Store Hit by Hammer-Wielding Robber, San Diego Police Seek Suspect

I’m sure the 46-year-old man’s questions weren’t pleasant, but I’m also sure that he didn’t deserve to be hit with a car.

The man saw two cars with teens in them — a Kia and a Hyundai — at Norton Village apartments that Wednesday afternoon. I suppose he thought they looked a little suspicious, because he walked up to ask them “about their presence,” as the Rochester PD put it.

The teens drove off. That was good.

Then they circled back and drove directly at him. Significantly less good.

He pulled a .45 (registered, which in the People’s Republic of New York is less a process than a punishment) and fired several rounds. The cars took off. He was uninjured.

Minutes later, a couple of miles away, a call came in for a seventeen-year-old shot on South Union Street with at least one wound to the upper body. Police figured out that he had been in one of the two cars back at Norton Village. His injuries were serious but not life-threatening.

Sorry, but I have to make a few extra comments.

1. WHAM 13 ran a minute-long segment about this incident, and one of their B-roll shots is priceless:

   

   Yes, please feel free to defund the Rochester Police Department while “the children” are stealing cars at a rate three times higher than the year before (see below), so middle-aged men are forced to defend themselves using pistols New York State doesn’t want them to have. That sounds like a great idea.

2. Broken record time: Think of stories like this when people tell you about “gun violence” and “the children.” The judicious use of gun violence, which these (legally speaking) children brought upon themselves helped stop the vehicular violence they were inflicting on someone else. (Where is that Vehicular Violence Memorial, anyway?)

As it turns out, both cars were stolen.

Officers found the Kia, the Hyundai, and a 15-year-old boy near where the wounded teen turned up. The 15-year-old was charged with grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, then taken to the county’s juvenile detention center.

That’s only one arrest out of two carloads — probably two, assuming the teen in the hospital was also arrested. Let’s hope there were more that we just don’t know about.

The man wasn’t charged at the time of the last story I found, and the lack of follow-up suggests he never was.

Sources

WHAM covered it twice, the second piece the fullest account anywhere of what actually happened in the parking lot.

• Teenager hospitalized after shooting in Rochester (Night-of report, and the only source with the dispatch and 911 times)

• Rochester police: 17-year-old boy was shot as teens drove toward man at Norton Village (Next-day follow-up)

Other coverage:

• Teenager seriously injured after shooting in Rochester involving stolen cars (WROC)

• WHEC mistakenly says 3:30 AM instead of PM. RPD: Boy, 17, shot while riding in stolen car in parking lot (WHEC)

The car-theft numbers come from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, from the year before this happened. Rochester has highest car theft increase in the U.S. Most suspects are 13 to 18 years old (Democrat and Chronicle, July 31, 2023; the link is the syndicated version on Yahoo!)

A 32-year-old man was arguing with somebody at a Circle K at six in the morning. Don’t ask me why — I don’t know any more than you do.

Then the other man produced a handgun and shot him in the pelvis.

The 32-year-old fired back and hit the other man in the foot.

If “gun control” means “hitting your target,” then I have to say that the 32-year-old — who took a round to the pelvis and still hit the man who fired it — has more gun control than New York and New Jersey combined. Maybe almost as much gun control as Chicago, and with fewer people dying as a result.

The other man drove off in a silver car. The 32-year-old was still at the store when officers got there, and the fire department ran him to the hospital. His injuries turned out not to be life-threatening.

Detectives quickly picked up Lamont Heyward, 47, on warrants for attempted second-degree murder and felon in possession of a firearm. (That doesn’t make sense, though: Either Heyward must not have been a felon, or he must not have had a handgun. After all, there’s a common-sense gun law against felons being in possession of a firearm, so how could he have had one? Some reporters just don’t seem to understand the way the law works.)

He went into the city jail on a $425,000 bond. Police called the return fire self-defense.

Sources

News

The coverage wasn’t very detailed here — the sign of a pretty light media release.

• One arrested in Bossier City early morning gas station shooting (KTAL 6)

• Man charged with attempted murder in early morning shooting at Bossier City Circle K (KTBS 3)

• Bossier City Police arrest man in Tuesday morning shooting at convenience store (Shreveport Times)

• Dispute at Circle K in Bossier City leaves one shot in pelvis, another shot in foot (KSLA 12)

It was a Monday night, and the kids were already out front playing when somebody let the family’s three dogs out of the garage.

Two of them knocked the three-year-old to the ground, playing. But the third one bit and dragged the child down the driveway.

Several grown-ups ran for the child, and two of them fired shots “near the dog.” That made the dog run back into the garage.

MEDIC took the child to the hospital with serious injuries. The owner surrendered the dog to Animal Care and Control for a ten-day rabies quarantine, to be euthanized when that was over.

Not every good guy with a gun story has a bad guy.

Sources

Primary

Dog Attack Investigation in the University City Division (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department)

News

Witnesses start shooting when attacking dog drags away 3-year-old child, CMPD says (The Charlotte Observer)

Child suffers serious injuries after dog attack in northeast Charlotte (WCNC)

Police: Dog bites, drags 3-year-old down northeast Charlotte driveway (WBTV)

Dog bites, seriously injures 3-year-old playing in yard, CMPD says (WSOC-TV)

3-Year-Old Injured In Dog Attack In Northeast Charlotte (WCCB)

The storage garage in the 1000 block of Pratt Street had already been broken into once that weekend. Sometime before one it the morning on Monday, somebody broke into it again.

This time the owner was inside.

He told police the man got within four feet of him before he fired in self-defense, hitting him twice — once in the arm, once somewhere in the body. The intruder fled, probably on foot.

Twenty minutes later, a resident over on South Cherry Street — about a mile away — called to say that a visitor had turned up at the house, shot. Said visitor was flown to a hospital with injuries believed not to be life-threatening.

Sources

There’s just not a lot to see here. GGWAG, not myth, just underdocumented — you know the drill by now.

News

The VW independent covered it twice, and its blotter caught both break-ins.

• Van Wert Police blotter 8/11-8/18/24 (The first break-in at the same block, the day before)

• Van Wert Police blotter 8/18-8/25/24 (The department’s own log entry for the shooting)

• Shooting under investigation by VWPD (The morning of, off the department’s release)

• Few new details in Monday shooting (The next day. And I have to say that the headline is quite the understatement.)

Additional coverage:

• Owner fires shots at storage garage intruder in Van Wert, police say (WANE 15)

• Shots fired in Van Wert (Times Bulletin via archive.org)

• Man shot after breaking into a storage facility in Van Wert (WLIO)

• Man Shot Twice…In Van Wert Attempted Burglary (Mercer County Outlook)

At a quarter to two on a Saturday afternoon, a burglar got shot.

The homeowner had a gun. Paramedics treated the burglar at the scene and took him to a hospital in critical condition, and the Sheriff’s Department sent homicide detectives out to the house.

That’s the whole story. Nobody was named, nobody who was there was quoted, and no one ever reported whether the man lived. And even the video we have came from the nightly news, which gave essentially no detail and shrouded an afternoon event in evening darkness.

I know, I’m a broken record, but here it is: The Good Guy with a Gun isn’t a myth, he’s just underdocumented.

At any rate, the one original line in all of it belongs to NBC4 reporter Julia Deng, who called this a home invasion “gone HORRIBLY wrong.” As usual, it makes me wonder what she think it looks like when a home invasion goes right.

Sources

News

City News Service filed the report, and the same copy ran in several places.

• Burglary suspect shot, critically injured by Cerritos homeowner (Press-Telegram)

• Cerritos homeowner shoots suspected burglar, Sheriff’s Department says (Long Beach Post)

• Homeowner shoots burglary suspect in Cerritos (2UrbanGirls)

CBS Los Angeles wrote its own and posted 19 seconds of video. Homeowner shoots attempted burglar in Cerritos (CBS Los Angeles)

NBC Los Angeles ran a story and the 11 PM video it embeds.

• Homeowner in Cerritos shoots and injures suspected burglar (Story)

• Broadcast, with Julia Deng’s annoying “HORRIBLY wrong” comment

Finally, Cerritos Homeowner Shoots Suspected Burglar (Los Cerritos Community News)

2A / specialist media

Smoketales just posted their wrapper on the video above.

A couple was home at a little after eleven on a Saturday night — and there was a man inside the house with them. He was moving about from room to room, and then he walked back outside on his own.

The homeowner got a pistol.

He met the man in the driveway and told him to leave. The man wouldn’t. He threatened him instead, and turned back toward the house.

So the homeowner fired, several shots, and two of them hit the man in the face.

Troopers had already been called out for a burglary in progress, and it was over by the time they got there. They secured the homeowner’s firearm (standard procedure), worked on the man until the ambulance arrived, and had him flown to a hospital in Morgantown. He was listed in stable condition, and he lived.

By Monday, the DA had cleared the homeowner. “If there was ever a clean shooting, it’s this one,” Mike Aubele told the Herald-Standard. He’d said much the same on camera the night before: “Thank God the homeowner was armed. This could have been a lot worse.” The written release from his office kept the same position in a stiffer collar:

In this situation, we determined that the homeowner’s actions were appropriate. We have officially cleared the homeowner of any wrongdoing; no charges will be filed against him.

Pennsylvania’s Castle Doctrine allows deadly force as a first response inside your own home, and Aubele leaned on it. He’d spoken with the homeowner, too, who by his account was shaken up and had cooperated from the start. “Everybody deserves to feel safe in their home,” Aubele said, “and take appropriate action to protect their house, protect their castle.”

The man was David Luczak, 62, of Cleveland — roughly 150 miles from home, at a house in the far southern end of the county, below Ohiopyle and not far off the Maryland line. He hadn’t taken anything. The road, for whatever it’s worth, is called Mae West Road.

Aubele said his office had weighed the remoteness of the house and Luczak’s criminal history, “which includes involvement in a homicide in Cleveland in 2013.” A KDKA reporter asked him how that one had come out. He said he wasn’t sure whether Luczak was ever convicted.

Cleveland 19 News knew. Eleven years earlier, Luczak had pleaded guilty to charges out of a fatal shooting in a Cleveland parking lot — and what he ended up pleading to was improperly handling firearms in a motor vehicle. He served fifteen months.

Great: A man dead in a parking lot on one end, and a gun-in-the-car charge on the other. Makes sense to me. Sure.

Nobody knew why Luczak was in the house, and Aubele said they were looking at the possibility of a mental health situation. They’d been in touch with Luczak’s family, and they’d gotten “some conflicting information from him.”

He was charged with burglary and criminal trespass, plus a count of loitering, and was to be arraigned whenever the hospital let him go.

Sources

Primary

Burglary (Pennsylvania State Police, via the Fayette County DA’s office)

Burglary on Mae West Road, Confluence Borough (Fayette County District Attorney’s Office)

News

CBS Pittsburgh did a great job. If you want to hear the DA, watch the video below. The video gets his last name wrong: It’s “Aubele,” not “Abel.”

• State police investigating robbery after suspect was shot by homeowner in Fayette County

Additional coverage:

• Man connected to Cleveland shooting death shot in alleged burglary attempt (Cleveland 19 News)

• Cleveland man shot during Fayette County burglary (The Herald-Standard, original incident)

• Fayette homeowner will not be charged after shooting intruder (The Herald-Standard, the DA’s decision)

• Burglary suspect ‘struck in the face’ when homeowner fires gun during confrontation, police say (WPXI, original incident)

• Homeowner who shot burglary suspect in Fayette County will not face charges, DA says (WPXI, the DA’s decision)

• Homeowner shoots intruder in Henry Clay Township (WTAE)

2A / specialist media

Smoketales.

Dave Urbanski wrote it up at Blaze Media, and Luke McCoy at USA Carry.

‘Thank God the homeowner was armed’: Burglary suspect shot twice in face after reportedly refusing to leave property (Blaze Media)

Homeowner Shoots Intruder Twice in the Face During Late-Night Robbery Attempt (USA Carry)

D.A. Clears Homeowner Who Shot Alleged Intruder Twice in Face (Breitbart)

Pennsylvania Homeowner Cleared in Justified Shooting of a Home Invader in the Face (AmmoLand)

Homeowner Defends Property: Intruder Shot in Face (Grits and Gear)

Fayette County Homeowner Shoots Intruder During Burglary, Suspect in Stable Condition (Hoodline)

This is a long one.

A little before eight on a Saturday morning, Donald Barron pulled into the parking lot at Prairie Heights Community Church where he saw a fellow parishioner on the ground, hurt, and a stranger in a white bathrobe nearby.

Barron, 53, got out of his car with his handgun already in hand. “What the f**k are you doing?” he yelled, ordering the man to the ground. For almost two minutes, by the account Cass County prosecutors later pieced together from three separate videos, Barron kept ordering him down while the man refused to comply.

Then the man lost the robe and started walking toward Barron — hands up, empty — saying, “I fear no one.” Twice.

Barron backed up. He kept backing up — a genuinely dangerous thing to do with an unpredictable man closing the distance, not the move of somebody looking for a reason to shoot.

I encourage you to watch the video. It’s always an option, but here it’s the whole story, in my opinion. The news reports all say the man was “walking” toward Barron, but it was a fast pace.

“Stop. Stay back,” he said. Then: “Stay back. I’m going to shoot. I’m going to shoot.” The man closed the gap to a couple of feet anyway. Barron fired once, into his chest.

He unloaded the gun, set it on the hood of his car, and called 911 himself.

The man was 25-year-old Austin Strom, and he died of that single shot. Neither Barron nor the man he was beating, Kent Hodges, a 66-year-old man with dementia, knew him — they had never met, even though Strom’s mother said Strom also belonged to their congregation.

Strom had been sleeping in the church parking lot. He’d moved back to his hometown of Browerville, Minnesota, a couple of weeks earlier but kept driving the two-plus hours back to Fargo-Moorhead for Prairie Heights, where he’d been attending for about six months and served as a volunteer greeter. The night before, he texted his mother that he was “home.” Asked if he was okay, he wrote back: “Mom, I am the most serene I have ever been. I am laying at the church reading scripture.” It was the last message she got from him.

Something had gone badly wrong by morning. Hodges had showed up on that Saturday morning, fooled by his dementia into believing it was Sunday. Strom was already there, outside, in the white robe, talking about God and forgiveness.

Hodges recorded Strom for about six minutes. Finally, triggered by we-don’t-know-what, Strom he picked up a large rock and told Hodges, “I’m telling you. It’s my house, and we gotta go. I’m the king.”

The screen capture is a little blurry, but that entire item outlined in yellow is the rock. Strom moved to smash the church’s glass door.

Hodges tried to stop him; the two struggled, and Hodges fell to the ground. Strom kicked him in the head and face, opening a cut on his chin, until he lost a tooth, had several more knocked loose, and needed stitches.

Strom’s toxicology came back positive for THC; investigators found 25 vape cartridges of it in his car. His mother says he’d struggled with addiction, trauma, and mental health since he was young, and had recently beaten a years-long gambling addiction.

Two months later, Assistant Cass County State’s Attorney Ryan Younggren declined to charge Barron. North Dakota law didn’t require him to retreat, but he’d done it anyway — a pretty long distance, and pretty dangerously, to my mind — before he ever fired. Here’s Younggren’s memo:

The legal question for the State’s Attorney’s Office...is not whether Strom’s death could have been avoided but can self-defense and defense of others be disproven beyond a reasonable doubt... the State is unable to disprove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Barron was not acting in lawful defense of self and others.

Barron, a driver’s-ed teacher at West Fargo High School, kept his job and never spoke to a reporter.

Not everyone was satisfied.

Longtime West Fargo resident Greg Akason called it vigilante behavior. “If you want to be a hero, just fire your weapon into the sky, man. Shoot it in the air, you didn’t have to kill him,” he said. “Why didn’t he just call 911 before he got out of his vehicle?”

(My response: “Stop saying stupid things” and “Watch the video,” respectively.)

Robin Strom, Austin’s mother, said her son wasn’t the threat the prosecutor described: “There was simply no threat at that point in time, and the fight was over by the time [Barron] arrived. He chose to interject himself.”

(My response: Watch the video.)

She called the decision dangerous: “It’s OK to just be able to walk up and shoot somebody unarmed.”

(My response: “Unarmed” doesn’t mean “not dangerous,” and you apparently don’t understand the law or incentives.)

InForum columnist Mike McFeely wrote a whole piece backing her up, calling the shooting “gross” and “cold-blooded” and closing with, “Austin Strom’s mother is right to question the decision. We all should.”

(My response: We have very different opinions about what’s on that video, and I have to think you’d think differently if you were the one on whom Strom was advancing.)

Fargo resident Ashley Hesse, on the other side of it, kept things simple: “At the end of the day, it’s self-defense.”

(My response: At last. Duh. Thank you.)

A man died, and I don’t want to be a jerk about it. But we’re talking about a man who was having a drug-induced psychotic break, smashing doors, hurting an old man, advancing quickly on a man who had a gun trained on him. He had already shown himself to be a threat. In a perfect world, that threat could have been stopped without harm to him — ideally, before he ever became a threat.

But that’s not reality, and given a choice between fantasy and reality, I prefer to live in reality. The most frustrating part of writing and researching this story was seeing the second-guessing and outright hostility to a man who did what a man sometimes has to do.

Two weeks out, Hodges was still declining interviews, citing an aphasia diagnosis. Strom’s family, in a statement, said only, “The truth will come out.” By that time, it already had.

Sources

Valley News Live and InForum did the most sustained coverage, each running the story from the first morning through the no-charges decision.

Valley News Live ran six pieces:

• Police investigate shooting in parking lot of West Fargo church (day-of)

• New details released in deadly shooting outside West Fargo church

• WFPS confirms church parking lot shooter is a teacher within the district

• West Fargo teacher won’t face charges in fatal shooting

• Community divided after no charges filed in shooting at West Fargo church

• West Fargo Police release footage of deadly August shooting outside church

InForum ran four, including columnist Mike McFeely’s piece questioning the decision and two interviews with Strom’s mother:

• Mother of man killed outside West Fargo church says he slept there, called it home

• Mother of man fatally shot outside West Fargo church says son’s death is hard to ‘comprehend’

• Video shows what led to deadly shooting outside West Fargo church

• McFeely: We should all question decision to not charge man who shot Austin Strom

KFGO covered both ends of the story:

• Man shot in West Fargo church parking lot identified; Family shares fundraiser

• Police release names in deadly West Fargo shooting, no charges filed

Prairie Public ran two:

• West Fargo Police identify individuals in church shooting incident

• No charges filed in shooting at West Fargo Church

No charges will be sought in ‘self-defense’ killing at West Fargo church (Bring Me The News)

Aunt of Prairie Heights Church Shooting Victim Speaks Out (KVRR)

More than 2 weeks after fatal West Fargo church shooting, few new details emerge (Grand Forks Herald)

News Dakota’s account is the odd one out — it says Strom died at the scene, where other outlets say he died at a Fargo hospital. No Charges Filed in Fatal Shooting Outside West Fargo Church (News Dakota)

West Fargo Teacher will not face charges self-defense shooting and death (AM 1100 The Flag/WDAY Radio; carries the fullest excerpt of the prosecutor’s memo, including verbatim dialogue from the video)

Wondering why you don’t see more Good Guy with a Gun stories, despite research showing Defensive Gun Uses (DGUs) occur hundreds or thousands of times daily (depending on which research you read)? There’s just not much data about them.

Take this story. Here’s all we get from multiple news reports:

• Date (8/12/2024), time (around 7 PM)

• Location (Navy Boulevard, in close proximity to Dollar Tree and Little Caesar’s)

• Man found with gunshot wound when deputies arrived

• EMS tried to save him, but he was pronounced dead

• Police investigated it as a self-defense shooting

And this was a fatality. How often do news channels fail to report a smaller incident? How often do police not get involved?

Sources

Man dies in Monday night shooting in Pensacola (WEAR ABC 3)

ECSO begins self-defense investigation after man fatally shot near Navy Blvd Little Caesars (Pensacola News Journal’s Benjamin Johnson, whose piece carries the only on-record quote from the sheriff’s office; the original at pnj.com is likely paywalled, read here via Yahoo News syndication)

Man dies after possible self-defense shooting: Escambia County Sheriff’s Office (WKRG News 5)

Connecticut

Enfield

Police were called to a home in Hazardville around 6 AM on Sunday, August 2, when a homeowner in that neighborhood reported that someone had tried to break into his home through a “rear hatchway.” Timothy Grigg, 54, halted his attempted home invasion when the homeowner displayed a firearm.

Showing the legally owned gun was enough to get Grigg to flee without any shots being fired, but not quietly. As he was leaving the yard, he made howling and squealing noises, threw metal chairs at the homeowner, and even hurled a flowerpot at the front door. The homeowner was unharmed by any hurled objects.

Officers found him on a nearby property and took him into custody. Police discovered that he had also tried to kick in a front door and smash a window at another nearby home, and left boot-shaped dents in a parked truck as well—he was not exactly subtle or quiet about his trek through the neighborhood. Grigg, held on $160,000 bond, faces charges including second-degree burglary, attempted assault, and criminal mischief.

Sources:

• Police: Intruder Tried To Enter 2 Enfield Homes (Patch)

• Enfield Police arrest man after Sunday morning burglary, chair-throwing incident (Western Mass News / WGGB-WSHM)

Florida

Miami Gardens

Around 1:41 PM on August 6, 2026, a food delivery driver pulled up to a home in Miami Gardens to make a delivery. Two men were waiting for him and attempted to rob him at gunpoint. The driver, 28, had a concealed carry permit and a gun of his own, so he used it to defend himself, hitting one of the robbers in the face. The second man fled west toward a white vehicle with front-end damage and disappeared.

The driver called 911, and while first responders worked on the shot suspect, the driver canvassed neighbors for surveillance footage to help prove he shot in self-defense. The shot man died after being airlifted to a hospital. Surveillance video backed up the driver’s account; he wasn’t charged.

The getaway driver, 18-year-old Jabari Joshua Thomas, was tracked down in Miramar via a license plate reader. He faces second-degree felony murder for the death of his shot accomplice and armed robbery charges, and is being held without bond pending extradition.

(Note that some sources are stating that Thomas is 28. I think that’s an error, and that he’s 18 while the victim-shooter is 28.)

Sources:

• Alleged robber shot and killed by driver in Miami Gardens, police and witnesses say (CBS News Miami)

• Teen arrested in Miami Gardens food delivery robbery that left 1 man dead, police say (CBS News Miami)

• Food-delivery driver kills robber in Miami Gardens, police say (Miami Herald)

• Miami Gardens Police identify 28-year-old man in alleged robbery turned shooting of delivery driver in Miami Gardens (WSVN 7News)

• Alleged robber wearing ski mask shot and killed by delivery driver in Miami Gardens, police and witnesses say (CBS News Miami)

Idaho

Twin Falls

On the same day as the In-N-Out mass shooting that also happened in Twin Falls, there was a shooting that evening at a home on Trotter Drive. After an altercation at the home earlier in the day, Anthony Alvarez, age 36, apparently felt the argument wasn’t over. He came back that evening and started shooting at the home.

The occupant then stepped outside and returned fire. Alvarez fled. No one was hit.

The homeowner wasn’t charged. Alvarez, on the other hand, has a warrant issued for aggravated assault and firing a weapon into an occupied dwelling. Police believe he may be heading to Washington state and urge the public not to approach him, describing him as armed and dangerous.

Police stated that this shooting was completely unrelated to the incident that same day at the In-N-Out, noting that shootings like these are not a daily occurrence in the community, let alone two in one day. “This really tapped our resources,” said Lt. Gassert.

Sources:

• “Tapped our resources”: Twin Falls police seek suspect after unrelated shooting on same day as In-N-Out (Idaho News 6 / KIVI)

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Cape Coral police spent Wednesday morning with a SWAT team around a house two miles from a fatal shooting, working a bullhorn on whoever was inside. Back at the original scene, a dive team checked a nearby canal for good measure. Local coverage ran with it: a manhunt, a shooter on the loose — one report even said somebody ended up in cuffs at the SWAT house, though another said police hadn’t confirmed anyone was in custody at all.

None of that made it into the story police actually told.

By Thursday, the story was a lot clearer: a mother, her son, her brother, and the boyfriend who wouldn’t stop swinging a rod at the boy’s uncle — even after he saw the gun pointed at him.

I couldn’t figure out what that SWAT team was doing two miles away. They did say, pointedly, that some news outlets had reported things that nobody at the department ever confirmed. The supposed connection between the two may well be what they meant.

Here’s what the story actually ended up being.

The boy’s mother and her boyfriend, Norbert Mess, 55, got into an argument that night. She called her brother to come over and calm things down. But when he got to the house, Mess was waiting outside for him — with a solid wooden rod in one hand and brass knuckles on the other.

Her son, a minor who lived there, was seeing his uncle take a beating, so he grabbed a gun and pointed it at Mess as a warning. The story says that Mess looked right at it and kept swinging anyway.

The boy fired, and Mess went down in a field near the house; officers found him a few minutes later. He died at the scene. Mess was still wearing brass knuckles when it was over.

There was no record of prior domestic violence involving Mess and no prior calls to that house.

As for the SWAT scene, the loudspeaker, and whoever that report said ended up in handcuffs two miles away: nobody’s ever said who that was, or what it had to do with any of this — or, for that matter, whether anyone was really detained there at all. My guess is none of it was related. A family that never left the house doesn’t produce a manhunt.

Sources

Primary

Cape Coral PD gave the fullest account at Thursday’s press conference; the morning before, they’d already posted an extremely short note on Facebook calling it “an isolated incident.”

• Shooting Incident Ruled Self-Defense (CCPD’s press-conference statement, via Cape Coral Cops)

• “Shooting investigation” — Facebook update (Cape Coral PD)

Local news

Fox 4 ran two pieces a day apart — Wednesday’s manhunt-that-wasn’t dispatch, then Thursday’s self-defense determination.

• Man dead at one scene, search for suspect 2 miles away (Fox 4, Wednesday)

• Boy who killed Cape Coral mother’s boyfriend will not be charged (Fox 4, Thursday)

Cape Coral Breeze’s writeup tracked CCPD’s own statement closely. CCPD: Minor shoots, kills man in attempt to save uncle (Cape Coral Breeze)

WINK News ran three pieces across the two days, adding the canal search and SWAT detail Fox 4 didn’t have.

• SWAT presence reported in northwest Cape Coral, 1 person detained (WINK, Wednesday)

• Shooting kills one person in northwest Cape Coral neighborhood (WINK, Wednesday)

• Child shoots and kills mother’s boyfriend in act of self-defense (WINK, Thursday)

2A / specialist media

Cape Coral Teen Fatally Shoots Mother’s Boyfriend in Act of Self-Defense (Ammoland) — repeats CCPD’s quotes accurately, but adds a warning-shot-in-the-air detail and a specific hit count that CCPD’s own statement never confirms.

Kids were outside their apartment complex waiting for the school bus. A 16-year-old was sitting in his family’s car, waiting for them to drive him to school.

And two men walked up out of nowhere and started firing into the car, hitting him several times.

I can only imagine the chaos as the property manager rushed the kids at the bus stop inside the leasing office.

Fortunately, two other men came out of a nearby apartment and returned fire. The shooters ran for it.

The teenager was rushed to UAB Hospital in critical but stable condition.

Police detained the two men who’d fired back, then let them go. “We know that they did fire rounds and we did detain them for investigation and at this point in the case,” Hoover PD Lt. Daniel Lowe said. “The district attorney is not inclined to charge them.”

One of the criminals didn’t get away unscathed. Within the hour, a call came in from a fire department in McCalla, some 15 miles off: a gunshot victim.

It was Bryan DeCarlos Mills Jr., 25, of Birmingham — driven there, not to a hospital, by his partner, Marlon Kentral Williams, 21, in a car stolen months earlier out of Hoover. Williams was charged with attempted murder, four counts of firing into occupied and unoccupied homes and cars, and first-degree receiving stolen property, on $500,000 bond. Mills faced the same attempted-murder and firearms counts — booked six days later, once the hospital released him, on $440,000.

Whatever this was actually about, it wasn’t about the kid they shot. Hoover police say they found no evidence he had anything to do with whoever the two men were actually after — he’d just been mistaken for somebody else.

“This was a truly innocent 16-year-old victim,” Lt. Lowe said, “and it’s just a tragedy that he was the victim of gun violence in our city.”

Lt. Lowe failed to mention the gun violence that saved the child from being murdered.

Sources

Primary

The Hoover Police Department put out two press releases, one naming the suspects the day of the arrests and a second once the additional gun and stolen-property charges came through.

• Arrests Made in Shooting that Injured 16-Year-Old Victim (Arrests)

• Additional Charges Filed Against Hoover Shooting Suspects (Additional charges)

Local news

There was a fair amount of on-air time for this case — not surprising, considering its shocking nature.

WBRC ran four pieces tracking the case from the morning of the shooting through Mills’s own booking a week later. The morning-of report now redirects to one of the later reports.

• Hoover police arrest two suspects involved in shooting that injured 16-year-old (Additional charges)

• New charges filed against 2 people arrested in shooting involving 16-year-old Hoover HS student (Charges filed)

• 2nd man charged in shooting of Hoover HS student released from hospital; booked in jail (Mills booked)

ABC 3340 also ran four, tracking the case from the day after the shooting through Mills’s own booking.

• Police presence at the Benton Apartments in Hoover (Day-after; partial mayor statement)

• Police release more details, name suspects in shooting of Hoover teen (Suspects named)

• Suspects in shooting of Hoover teen face additional charges (Additional charges)

• Second suspect jailed in Hoover teen shooting (Mills booked)

CBS 42 (WIAT) had the fullest day-of account, but spent a lot of on-air time showing Randy Kendrick talking about hauling junk away from a playground that had been hit by a drunk driver.

• Teen seriously injured in Hoover shooting (Day-of)

AL.com’s coverage is paywalled; it’s hit-or-miss as to whether you’re magically granted a free 7-day pass to see it.

• New charges filed against 2 Birmingham men in shooting of 16-year-old boy in Hoover (live site)

• New charges filed against 2 Birmingham men in shooting of 16-year-old boy in Hoover (Archive.org)

The man and his family left in multiple cars, and they drove for about five miles before pulling over to talk.

But their adversaries from the bar had followed them that whole distance. One of them got out of his car and started beating the man with a baseball bat.

Lucky for him, his sister was armed. She fired at the attackers, who fled. The man was hospitalized in stable condition.

Sources

KSAT has a strange detail of which I’m not convinced.

They were thrown out of the bar just before 2 a.m. Sunday in the 4800 block of South Flores Street. The man and his family members left the bar in separate vehicles and later pulled over just before 3 a.m. in the 9800 block of Collin Grove, police said. [Emphasis added.]

If that’s true, then they drove for five miles over the course of about an hour, and the others followed or found them despite the distance in both space and time. I believe the five miles, but not necessarily the hour. It just doesn’t sound right. Though maybe they went to another bar, and were found that way? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Suspect who assaulted man with baseball bat flees scene after victim’s sister fires weapon, SAPD says (KSAT, video below, 0:34)

San Antonio woman fires gun at attackers beating her brother with bat, SAPD says (MySanAntonio)

KTSA had the story, and until just before press time, I could see it. Then it started giving me 403 errors, so I’m also linking the Wayback Machine’s copy.

• San Antonio Police: Woman fires gun at man attacking her brother with a baseball bat (Live KTSA site)

• San Antonio Police: Woman fires gun at man attacking her brother with a baseball bat (Wayback Machine at archive.org)

Sister fires at suspect after man beaten with bat (News 4 San Antonio)