These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.

Pro tip to any would-be criminals reading: If your victims are already giving you their money or goods, it’s probably unwise to insist that they do something that makes them feel like you just might kill them.

A man had come into a BP at three in the morning demanding money, and a co-worker had already opened the register. So far so…sure, let’s call it “good,” though it’s not.

But then the man told the clerk to get down on the ground. The clerk said no, the two of them fought, and somewhere in the struggle the clerk got to the gun the owner kept behind the counter and fired.

The call went out as a possible shooting at the BP. “Channels, clerk saying he just shot someone,” a Cincinnati officer said over the radio. “Right now, it’s extremely life-threatening. Sounds like they’re going to transport possibly.”

Video from the Gold Star across the street showed police pulling up within two minutes. They found the man shot behind the counter. Firefighters worked on him there and got him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after he arrived.

The Hamilton County coroner’s office identified him as Dana Bruenton, 57. He didn’t work at the store.

Bruenton’s record went back to the 1980s, and at least two crimes had put him in prison: an aggravated robbery in 1992 and an assault in 2007. Two more arrests came in the weeks before he died — one about a month prior, for an assault with a wrench, and one about three weeks prior, for trying to walk out of a Kroger with groceries.

Officers detained two BP employees afterward, and a supervisor said investigators weren’t sure whether a robbery had led up to the shooting. The store’s owner said his employee was questioned and released. Police didn’t confirm the clerk’s account.

“Normally, I’m here, but I wasn’t here [this time],” JJ Wilbon told Local 12. She spends her early-morning hours in that parking lot with friends, and she knows the clerk: “[A] sense of humor. Pretty much minds his business.”

Asked whether he was the sort of man she’d have expected to be in the middle of something like this, she said, “Not at all. Not at all.”

“Sometimes you gotta pick and choose your battles,” Wilbon said. “He chose to battle.”

Asked whether she thought it was the right decision: “I do. I do. I hate for someone to lose their life like that, but it is what it is.”

Sources

News

David Winter’s piece at Local 12 is the only one built from anything but the police: he got the clerks’ account of what happened inside, the police radio traffic, Bruenton’s court file, and the one neighborhood interview anybody did.
Cincinnati gas station clerk shoots, kills alleged would-be robber (Local 12 / WKRC)

Other coverage:

1 dead in shooting at Cincinnati gas station (FOX19 NOW)
Coroner identifies man dead after shooting at gas station in Paddock Hills (WCPO 9)
Man killed at gas station identified; 2 BP workers detained, police say (Cincinnati Enquirer, with Yahoo! non-paywalled syndication)

2A / specialist media

Luke McCoy wrote it up at USA Carry.
Clerk Fatally Shoots Alleged Robber at Cincinnati Gas Station (USA Carry)

Brandon Curtis wrote it up at Concealed Nation, adding that no ruling on justification had been announced by early September.
Armed Clerk Unalives Robbery Suspect, A Career Criminal With A Rap Sheet Dating Back To The 80’s (Concealed Nation)

Good Guy with a Gun #299: Cincinnati, OH