Good Guy with a Gun #17: Issaquah, WA
Original incident: November 17, 2023. A domestic abuser with a no-contact order makes contact and starts to abuse her. The Great Equalizer ended the abuse.
This is the kind of content featured in the 2026 Good Guy with a Gun one-page-per-day desk calendar.
Issaquah, Washington, is a suburb of Seattle. On November 17, 2023, a woman was in her new apartment there when her ex-boyfriend came over.
She had been there for about a week, and she hadn’t been living with him. In fact, she had a no-contact order in place against him.
Nevertheless, he was in her apartment. He apparently didn’t break in, as earlier reports said. It wasn’t forced entry, but maybe he pushed his way in after she opened the door a little bit. Maybe, against her better judgement, she let him in.
Either way, when he was inside the home, he began to assault her — and that was when she shot him in the stomach. He died at the scene.
She called 911 right away and was “completely cooperative,” according to Issaquah Police Chief Paula Schwan. She was released that afternoon, and apparently no charges were ever filed against her.
One of the reasons I focus on stories from about two years ago is that the time between the incident and my write-up enables me to look out for fraud and follow-up reporting. For example, in February of 2024, Wendy Ralston and her daughter, Destynee Cheshire, shot Ralston’s ex-husband under the pretense that he had invaded her home. We have to be on the lookout for that kind of fraud.
But there’s no evidence of anything like that here, nor that charges were ever filed against the shooter. It looks pretty clear that someone with a history of domestic abuse started to abuse his ex-girlfriend, and she was saved by the Great Equalizer.
Sources
KOMO News did an initial report and a follow-up piece, doing straight news (which is a complement, coming from me).
The Seattle Times did a single article, also straight news.
The Issaquah Reporter did an article, said they’d follow up when more information was available — and then actually followed up, posting the content to the same article! I can’t tell you how often I see, “More information will be reported when available,” and then there’s nothing either in that article or anywhere else on the site with more information. So thank you, Issaquah Reporter.
Fox 13 had an article with an embedded video segment, both with the bare minimum of information on the shooting.
KIRO 7 was even more bare-bones than that.
Concealed Nation, AWR Hawkins at Breitbart, and Colion Noir — all excellent resources for GGWAG stories — reported on the story, though they all apparently wrote their summaries when the official word was that the man had broken in.
Noir finishes his write-up with the right question:
A good question for anti-gun zealots would be exactly what they would prefer the outcome of the alleged attempted break-in to be. Should the woman have been defenseless, just waiting for help to arrive and hoping that she would not become just another statistic.
Or should she have been able to be her own first responder and possibly save her own life?
Sources for the Ralston / Cheshire fraud:
That thing that never happens, happens every day.
Like the idea of a Good Guy with a Gun story every single day? Get the 2026 calendar! All 365 pages feature a news story from 2024.
In addition, this Substack will feature Good Guy with a Gun stories every day of the year, all taken from news stories so you can verify them yourself and share them around. They’ll generally be from about two years prior, which gives time to make sure there aren’t any legal or fraud issues to worry about.
Starting in 2026, we’ll open up paid subscriptions, and all paid subscribers will get seven posts per week. (People who bought a calendar will be eligible for a free full subscription.) Unpaid subscribers will still get two GGWAG stories every week.
We had neighbors once who were like this -- he was an abuser and she finally moved out, across town, got a restraining order. Sadly, he found her new home and -- since criminals do so well at obeying the law -- entered it and shot her to death. I wish she'd had her own protection . . . Good for this woman for taking care of herself.