Good Guy with a Gun #206: Louisville, KY
Jason Calhoun wanted a car, a gun, and an eyeball. He got a hospital bed and a public defender. | Original incident: May 23, 2024
These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.
The next time you have a really annoying morning, remember how much worse it can get. To wit: A man’s car broke down on I-65. He left it there temporarily, picked up his wife’s car, and came back to deal with it. Yep, really annoying.
The incident
Then he saw a man he didn’t know — later identified as 45-year-old Jason Calhoun — standing behind his vehicle.
Calhoun demanded the car. The victim told him no, and warned him that he was armed. That probably wasn’t the right move: The victim’s gun was tucked between the driver’s seat and the center console, and Calhoun opened the door and tried to grab it.
The victim got there first.
So Calhoun kicked him, leaving “obvious footprints” on the victim’s clothing from Calhoun’s boots. Then he grabbed the victim’s eye, hooking his finger into the left eye socket. “Give me your eyeball,” he growled.
That must have hurt bloody hell, but the victim somehow kept his cool, his eyeball, and his gun.
Calhoun got him in a headlock and started choking him, and the victim fired multiple shots at him.
The victim jumped out of the car.
Calhoun, wounded, finally got what he wanted — the car — so he climbed into the driver’s seat and reversed... into a semi truck. He drove away and eventually went rolling into a ditch. (The police didn’t make an immediate connection between him and the carjacking victim, which I attribute to the distance between them.)
The Good Samaritan
Nicholas Fiedeldey was pulling out of his driveway onto Outer Loop on a rainy Thursday morning, heading to work. He saw a car coming toward him in the wrong direction. He slowed down. The car rolled into a ditch.
He pulled over.
“I asked him if he was doing okay,” Fiedeldey recalled. “Like, ‘Hey man, you doing all right?’ I got no response. Another pedestrian came up, and I went up to talk to her because she was seeing if we were okay. That’s when we both heard him say he was shot. So I immediately took my shirt off, ran over to him and started applying pressure.”
Fiedeldey couldn’t have known that the man he was helping had just attempted to remove another man’s eyeball. The Hyundai Calhoun was sitting in was the victim’s stolen car. The gunshot wound Fiedeldey was treating came from the victim’s gun.
He found out the next day. It didn’t change how he felt about stopping — and good for him. He acted on what little information he had.
“I just went in and tried to help him out,” he said. “It wasn’t like a huge shock or anything. Just instincts, I guess.”
The aftermath
Calhoun spent six days in the hospital before appearing in court. He was charged with attempted murder, strangulation, and robbery. A judge set his bond at $250,000 — with home incarceration if posted — and assigned him a public defender.
The victim had visible injuries to his face and a corneal abrasion on his left eye. He was taken to the hospital and released.
It’s worth noting that the victim’s warning — “I have a gun” — didn’t stop Calhoun. If anything, it gave him an advantage and took away the victim’s advantage of surprise. Announcing you’re armed isn’t the same as being ready to use your gun.
I also want to praise Nicholas Fiedeldey, shown below, who stopped his car, took off his shirt, and applied pressure to a stranger’s gunshot wound on a rainy Thursday morning on his way to work. He’s not the Good Guy with a Gun in this story, but the world needs good guys like him, too.
Sources
There are several videos that I’ll put at the bottom of the post.
Local news
WAVE 3 did solid work here across four articles. The initial report was somewhat confused because the police at first didn’t know that the car in the ditch was related to the victim: It was “a fight,” not an attempted carjacking. (This is true of other sources as well.) There were also reports of the arrest and Calhoun’s first court appearance. Finally, they have the interview with Good Samaritan Nicholas Fiedeldey, of which I see no analogue in other reporting.
Similarly with WLKY: initial report, arrest, and update after Calhoun got out of the hospital.
WHAS 11, the News-Enterprise, and WDRB all covered the incident as well, including airtime (with YouTube links below).
Specialist / 2A coverage
This incident was covered by Cam Edwards at Bearing Arms, Colion Noir, and Brandon Curtis at Concealed Nation.
Videos
All of these videos can also be found embedded at the news links above, but you can watch them here as well.
That must have been especially terrifying. What a repulsive way to attack someone.