Good Guy with a Gun #273: Bokeelia Island, FL
This one is hard to describe. Not because it's complicated, but because it's hard to understand why someone would do this. | Original incident: July 31, 2024
These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is significantly updated from the calendar version.
This scene starts off looking bucolic, even normal — except for the displaying of the handgun.
This image, taken from the video at this Facebook post, shows a pier on Bokeelia Island and a man walking from the end of the pier back to his Toyota Tundra pickup truck. He had just “displayed” (the Sheriff’s office’s word) his gun at someone, though we don’t know why.
As you can see in the image, the pickup was parked in the lot at the head of the pier, nose pointed straight down it.
He got in. He sat there a moment. And then he accelerated.
It’s a foot-traffic fishing pier — no cars, and no way around anything on it. Just after three on a Wednesday afternoon it was busy with families, and kids were fishing off the far end.
The truck went through the gate and smashed into a shed and a golf cart sitting partway down. People were yelling at each other to hit the deck. The cart held.
Above is a still from WINK’s footage; the truck has been removed, and you can see the gate that he smashed down, the shed on the right, and the golf cart behind it in the middle.
Below is a still from a phone video that a man named Sam provide to WINK from a nearby restaurant, which was on the right side of the still image above. You can see the shed, which the truck hit but moved beyond, and the golf cart that wouldn’t budge as the man gunned the engine and spun his wheels to get past it. The blur on the right is smoke from his tires.
That’s pretty hard to see, so here’s an outlined version: left to right, the outlined parts are the shed, the truck, the golf cart, and smoke. (There are pictures with a lot more smoke, too.)
The tire smoke and the crushed golf cart are the pause the whole thing turns on.
A man who was fishing out there told WINK afterward that the cart saved his own life and the lives of the children he was trying to shield.
And the delay at the golf cart gave a bystander time to fire multiple rounds into the roaring truck — a fast string of shots, one witness said, then a last one, then quiet.
Finally, a man ran up to the driver’s door, smashed the window, and made the gesture that told everybody that the crisis was over.
But, honestly, watch the video. Or videos — there’s more than one. This clip from WINK covers most of it.
The driver was Robert Allen Dixon — Robbie — age 56, of Cape Coral. He was a lifelong Lee County man who’d had a birthday two weeks earlier. His daughter confirmed to WINK that it was her father; the family left flowers and balloons at the head of the pier that Friday.
Nothing in the record explains why he displayed the firearm initially or why he drove down that pier. What on or below Earth makes a man do that?
WINK said he’d tried to run down the pier master, though the sheriff’s office never went that far that I can see — its own account says only that he approached “a person on scene” and displayed a firearm. Here’s a quote from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office that multiple sources used:
Throughout the investigation detectives learned the decedent approached a person on scene and displayed a firearm. The decedent then returned to their vehicle and proceeded to drive the vehicle down the pier, which was occupied by bystanders. While driving down the pier, a Good Samaritan fired multiple rounds at the vehicle. The vehicle became stuck on a gate halfway down the pier.
The people at the end were stranded for a while behind the wreck. Two men who’d come out to fish gave up on the day, got on their boat, and started handing out water instead.
Unsurprisingly, nobody involved in Dixon’s death was charged.
The pier reopened the following Wednesday. The bait tank was still out of order, so you had to bring your own.
Sources
Primary
There’s wide-screen video of the incident on Facebook. This the video that opened this story.
You can find Dixon’s obituary here: Robert Allen “Robbie” Dixon (Legacy.com)
News
WINK News stayed on this one for three days and did the most complete job of anybody.
Death investigation underway after shooting at Bokeelia pier (Original incident; the shed, the golf cart, the mangled iron fence)
Video: Moments after shooting at Bokeelia Pier (No video at that page anymore)
LCSO: Bokeelia Pier shooting death investigation not suspicious (No charges, and the driver identified)
More WINK video on YouTube:
The News-Press covered the event at least once. The original is paywalled, but you can read the syndicated Yahoo! copy. No one facing charges in Wednesday deadly shooting on Bokeelia Pier, Lee sheriff says (Fort Myers News-Press, via Yahoo)
NBC2 also got the video from Andre Teyssier in the restaurant. I can’t find a web page, but here’s YouTube.
Fox 4 came back a week later, when the pier reopened, and got the dock master on the record about a place he’s been fishing for thirty-six years. The original appears to be gone, but they Wayback Machine has it: Bokeelia Fishing Pier reopens after death investigation and storm (Fox 4)
And here’s their video reporting: I can’t embed it, so click through to YouTube.
Pine Island News gave it one paragraph. Shooting at Bokeelia Pier (Pine Island News)
2A / Specialist Media
Oddly, I can’t find much about this incident. If anyone spots more, please let me know and I’ll add it in.
American Rifleman ran it in The Armed Citizen two months on — and, honestly, their very brief report gets some things wrong. But they’re the NRA, so I’ll link it: Caveat lector. The Armed Citizen® Sept. 30, 2024 (American Rifleman/NRA)
Wow. Thank God for that Good Samaritan -- and cool that the Sheriff calls him that, too. I can't help wondering if the man was on some kind of medication that put him out of his mind or something? It sounds like he had a good family who cared for him. So very sad for them.