Good Guy with a Gun #182: Orange City, FL
National Mental Health Awareness Month opens with a countdown from three — and then a shotgun blast. | Original incident: May 1, 2024
These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is significantly updated from the calendar version.
May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, first designated as such in 1949. If you know someone in crisis, call, text, or chat with 988. (Yes, just use the number, like you would call 911.) It’s free, confidential, and available 24/7.
A 32-year-old man who lived at the Luna Sands RV Resort was heading out to the gym at 4:30 in the morning when he heard a neighbor yell — “Get back inside your house or you’re dead.”
The neighbor was about 30 feet away. He yelled again: “Get back inside your house or you’re dead.”
Concerning. So the man called back, “Are you talking to me?”
And then the countdown. The neighbor said he was going to count down from three, and if the man didn’t go back in his house, he was going to shoot him.
Sure enough, quickly, 3-2-1 — shotgun blast. Buckshot. A hit.
The man had a handgun and returned fire, missing the neighbor but forcing him to retreat back into his home.
Someone called 911, and the police found the wounded man on the ground. He was awake and lucid. The injuries he sustained were non-life-threatening — but were just inches away from his head and neck.
The police then surrounded the neighbor’s camper, drew him out, and arrested him.
That neighbor was 42-year-old John David Wilson. Mentally, it doesn’t look like he was a healthy man.
His father, Darrell, told WESH 2 that he had been trying to get Wilson help for years, even trying to get him involuntarily brought in for observation via Florida’s Baker Act. He had also searched the trailer for guns and found none. But his son had never threatened anyone, he said, and he “didn't think he would hurt anybody.”
It sounds like a tragedy for the Wilson family. But it might have been an even bigger tragedy for the neighbor’s family if he hadn’t had a gun to send Wilson scampering back into his camper.
Sources
Primary
The arrest report is available at the Volusia Sheriff’s Office website.
They also posted a few tweets as the story developed.
News
WESH 2 did an initial story and then reached out to the father. (If I were the father, I’m not sure I’d have the stomach to talk to the news.) Click the link for text; watch the reports below.
Fox 35 and ClickOrlando both had reports as well.
Radio got in on it: 931coast (which might only be Internet radio), 103.3 WVYB (“The Vibe”) and WNDB (FM 98.5, AM 1150, newsdaytonabeach.com) all basically summarized the police report.
This one is very sad. You hear so many times that family have tried to get help for a mentally ill person and the help just isn't there. We've decided it's "discriminatory" or something. I know that hospitals/homes for the mentally ill can be awful places (I've visited one), but they don't have to be. If you love people, you want them to be well and if they can't get well you want to keep them -- and others -- safe. I suppose this man will go to prison for a while, and he'll come out worse than ever . . . None of that to mitigate the awfulness of what he did and how terrifying it must have been for his victim and family. Thankfully he was armed to defend himself from worse.