Good Guy with a Gun #240: Birmingham, AL & Pittston, ME
Just like a backup gun, a backup DGU story can help you out in a jam. | Original incident: June 28, 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 publishing late today, in part because at the last minute I found information that makes me want to back off of the incident that appeared in the calendar. To make sure that we have a nice, clean set of defensive gun uses, I’ll publish what I know about that DGU (which it still is), and then I’ll add information about another one.
Defensive gun use #1
Rufus Brock and Ladarrion Raemon Copes were both bad people. Copes still is.
Rufus Brock had pleaded guilty to robbery in 2012 and was sentenced to a year in prison. In 2014, he was sentenced to two years for cocaine possession. And in September 2017, he was jailed on suspicion of killing DeMorris Sealy outside a corner grocery store — though I can’t easily find information on the final disposition of that case.
Ladarrion Raemon Copes had been arrested in 2018 and charged with capital murder in the 2016 death of 26-year-old Quentin McDaniel. I also don’t have information on the disposition of that case. There were open criminal cases when this incident occurred, and he had failed to appear multiple times.
Together, Brock and Copes were at an apartment complex about three blocks from Avondale Park, which is apparently a very nice neighborhood. They were both armed — once again showing how well criminals follow gun laws — and tried to rob another man.
The victim backed his SUV into a parking space at the apartment complex and got out. At that moment, Brock and Copes pulled in front of his space in a Ford Explorer and stopped. They were wearing full face masks. Copes got out and confronted the victim. It’s unclear who shot first, but after a few seconds of gunfire, Brock got out and also engaged.
All three men were wounded by gunfire.
The victim went to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Brock was killed.
Copes suffered a traumatic brain injury and was still wearing a helmet to protect his head when he was charged with felony murder in September. His defense attorney said he was unable to go to the bathroom on his own.
“I understand he did suffer an injury,’’ the judge said, “but he wouldn’t have been shot if he didn’t engage in a robbery.” Also: “I think he would be a danger to any skilled nursing facility,’’ she said.
Felony murder means that you can go to jail if a person died when you were committing a felony, even if you didn’t kill the person. In other words, Copes was charged with murder for his accomplice Brock’s death, even though a bullet from the victim’s gun probably killed him, because Copes knew that someone could have died as a result of the felony he was committing.
This case was included in the calendar because the Jefferson County DA’s office had pronounced Brock’s death justifiable. The victim was never charged with anything, as far as I see in the news reports, and was explicitly not charged in Brock’s death or Copes’s injuries.
In finalizing the research for the story, however, I discovered that Brock and Copes were robbing a man who had marijuana in vacuum-sealed packages in his car. It’s still a DGU, and I don’t know the marijuana laws in Louisiana, but that’s too crime-adjacent for me to count as a “clean” entry here, so I’m including another defensive gun use story below.
Defensive gun use #2
This story comes from Pittston, Maine, with an original incident date of August 19, 2024.
A homeowner there was inside his house a little before 9 PM when a man kicked in his door. He shot the intruder and called 911.
Maine State Police arrived and secured the scene. The man was taken to the hospital, was treated, and was expected to live.
You can see why this wasn’t my first choice of story — there’s not much to tell — but what it lacks in detail, it makes up in clarity.
Sources
Sources for DGU #1 are embedded in the story only. DGU #2 sources are below.
Primary
The Maine State Police published their report on their website.
News sources
WGME 13 and centralmaine.com (apparently also called the Kennebec Journal, and which is paywalled) both covered this incident. A variety of news radio sources syndicated the story, all of which look like this one.