Good Guy with a Gun #169: Deltona, FL
Kenyon Ashley had two miles and two left turns to cool down. It would have been better if he had. | Original incident: April 18, 2024
These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is significantly updated from the calendar version.
I’m always wary of road rage cases. There are a lot of them where there is no good guy to be found. But sometimes the situation is clear, and this is one of them.
At a little after 9 PM on a Thursday night, Deltona resident J.R. Crawford1 was driving on DeBary Ave. It’s about a two-mile stretch of street just east of Interstate 4, just north of Lake Monroe.
A Dodge Charger slowed down in front of him, so Crawford passed him.
Maybe it was a bad pass. I’m not saying Crawford is a good driver or that the guy in the Charger had no reason to be aggravated. We don’t know.
Regardless, that’s no excuse for getting aggressive. The Charger started following Crawford closely with his high beams on.
Finally, he backed off — for a few minutes, at least.
He reappeared when Crawford turned left into a residential area, following him for over a quarter of a mile until Crawford turned left again onto a back street. That’s when the Charger sped up and cut him off, forcing him to stop.
The man got out of the Charger, yelling at Crawford and pointing a handgun at him.
Crawford said “I don’t want any problems” multiple times, but the man didn’t calm down. Finally, Crawford fired his own weapon. The man went down.
Crawford tried to render aid, but the man died a few minutes later.
Neighbors heard the shots and took protective measures: gathered the kids up, hid in closets. The police received multiple 911 calls. Neighbor Rob Redgate misheard the gunshots, thinking that someone had come knocking. “We went out here, and I saw two vehicles and just had a weird feeling, came back inside,” he said. “And then we noticed there were a lot of police cars.” That wasn’t all: One of the bullets hit his car.
Crawford stayed on the scene as police arrived.
They investigated and found an independent witness who corroborated Crawford’s story. They also recovered both firearms, ammunition, and shells at the scene. The shooting was determined to be self-defense, and no charges were filed.
The man in the Charger was later identified as 37-year-old Kenyon Ashley, also of Deltona. Whatever Crawford might have done, the response wasn’t worth it.
Sources
Primary
The Volusia County Sheriff gave an excellent summary on their website. They also communicated with citizens via Facebook and Twitter.
Local news
The Daytona Beach News-Journal provided initial coverage and a follow-up when they discovered the shooter’s name.
WESH 2, News 6/ClickOrlando.com, and WFTV 9 all gave decent coverage of the story.
Fox 35’s writeup is pretty lame, but their 2:33 video gives us some of the 911 call and lets the Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood speak a great deal about the incident — and how unnecessary it was.
It was covered with more detail than usual for talk radio on WNDB: News Daytona Beach.com, FM 98.5, and AM 1150.
Specialist
The Truth About Guns also covered this shooting.
His name is out there if you look, but I’m using initials to avoid making this incident pop up in searches.
I understand anger -- I've got a temper myself -- but I don't understand this kind of rage at things that happen all the time.