These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.
Cape Coral police spent Wednesday morning with a SWAT team around a house two miles from a fatal shooting, working a bullhorn on whoever was inside. Back at the original scene, a dive team checked a nearby canal for good measure. Local coverage ran with it: a manhunt, a shooter on the loose — one report even said somebody ended up in cuffs at the SWAT house, though another said police hadn’t confirmed anyone was in custody at all.
None of that made it into the story police actually told.
By Thursday, the story was a lot clearer: a mother, her son, her brother, and the boyfriend who wouldn’t stop swinging a rod at the boy’s uncle — even after he saw the gun pointed at him.
I couldn’t figure out what that SWAT team was doing two miles away. They did say, pointedly, that some news outlets had reported things that nobody at the department ever confirmed. The supposed connection between the two may well be what they meant.
Here’s what the story actually ended up being.
The boy’s mother and her boyfriend, Norbert Mess, 55, got into an argument that night. She called her brother to come over and calm things down. But when he got to the house, Mess was waiting outside for him — with a solid wooden rod in one hand and brass knuckles on the other.
Her son, a minor who lived there, was seeing his uncle take a beating, so he grabbed a gun and pointed it at Mess as a warning. The story says that Mess looked right at it and kept swinging anyway.
The boy fired, and Mess went down in a field near the house; officers found him a few minutes later. He died at the scene. Mess was still wearing brass knuckles when it was over.
There was no record of prior domestic violence involving Mess and no prior calls to that house.
As for the SWAT scene, the loudspeaker, and whoever that report said ended up in handcuffs two miles away: nobody’s ever said who that was, or what it had to do with any of this — or, for that matter, whether anyone was really detained there at all. My guess is none of it was related. A family that never left the house doesn’t produce a manhunt.
Sources
Primary
Cape Coral PD gave the fullest account at Thursday’s press conference; the morning before, they’d already posted an extremely short note on Facebook calling it “an isolated incident.”
Shooting Incident Ruled Self-Defense (CCPD’s press-conference statement, via Cape Coral Cops)
“Shooting investigation” — Facebook update (Cape Coral PD)
Local news
Fox 4 ran two pieces a day apart — Wednesday’s manhunt-that-wasn’t dispatch, then Thursday’s self-defense determination.
Man dead at one scene, search for suspect 2 miles away (Fox 4, Wednesday)
Boy who killed Cape Coral mother’s boyfriend will not be charged (Fox 4, Thursday)
Cape Coral Breeze’s writeup tracked CCPD’s own statement closely. CCPD: Minor shoots, kills man in attempt to save uncle (Cape Coral Breeze)
WINK News ran three pieces across the two days, adding the canal search and SWAT detail Fox 4 didn’t have.
SWAT presence reported in northwest Cape Coral, 1 person detained (WINK, Wednesday)
Shooting kills one person in northwest Cape Coral neighborhood (WINK, Wednesday)
Child shoots and kills mother’s boyfriend in act of self-defense (WINK, Thursday)
2A / specialist media
Cape Coral Teen Fatally Shoots Mother’s Boyfriend in Act of Self-Defense (Ammoland) — repeats CCPD’s quotes accurately, but adds a warning-shot-in-the-air detail and a specific hit count that CCPD’s own statement never confirms.
I bet the guy that got shot did have some kind of violent history, whether in that relationship or elsewhere. You don't have brass knuckles on you if you've never been violent a day in your life . . . That kid may have saved not only his uncle, but his mother from a lot of future grief.