These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.
You have to put the pieces together,1 but it seems like Darius Anthony Rain was a bad egg who ended badly.
In 2015, a Rite Aid manager in Pittsburgh was working inside his closed store at about 4:45 AM when somebody started pounding on the front door. The front window was smashed in before he could get up there.
Police said Rain forced the door open, came in, and punched him at least eight times in the face. The manager got out and ran.
Rain stayed. “Once he got inside, he continued his violent rampage tearing up the merchandise, attacking the cash registers,” a Pittsburgh police spokeswoman said.
The merchandise came to about $2,000. Officers found him later that morning on the manager’s description and held him in the Allegheny County Jail on robbery, burglary, simple assault and criminal mischief.
Ten months later, still 19, he was at Vulcan Village, which is off-campus housing for PennWest California2 students. Just before 11 on a Monday night, police said, he and 20-year-old Branden Washington ambushed a visitor at gunpoint, walked him from one building to another and took his car keys.
The man got away after having a gun pointed at his head, and he told police he’d thought the guns were fake, because one of them broke when it fell to the ground.
He was half right. Washington had the 9mm; Rain had an air-soft pellet gun.
Police found Rain hiding in a bathroom at Vulcan Village. Washington was picked up at his own apartment there just before nine the next morning, with the 9mm, the victim’s car keys, and other goods on him that had been stolen on campus. (Washington was a student there at the time; Rain was visiting him.)
Rain was arraigned on armed robbery, unlawful restraint, theft, conspiracy and marijuana possession and held on $100,000 bond. He’d already been wanted on an Allegheny County bench warrant when he did it.
I don’t see information about how the charges played out for these two incidents, nor what happened in the time and space between 2016 Pennsylvania and 2024 Arizona.
By September 1, 2024, he was in Phoenix having an argument with family. Apparently the “verbal altercation became physical,” as they say, and Rain was shot in the head. He was taken to a hospital and died there.
The shooter immediately surrendered to police, identified himself as the shooter, and gave a self-defense statement. I can’t find any evidence that he was charged.
There are limits to what even family can put up with.
Sources
News
Man shot, killed during family fight in north Phoenix (Arizona’s Family, day-of)
Domestic dispute turns into deadly shooting in north Phoenix (ABC15 Arizona, day-of)
Suspect claims self-defense in deadly north Phoenix shooting (FOX 10 Phoenix, the police release quoted)
Phoenix Family Fight Leaves One Man Dead (Arizona Daily Independent)
One Dead, Another Detained Following Shooting Amid Domestic Dispute in North Phoenix (Hoodline)
The Pennsylvania record comes from three outlets.
Teen Accused Of Beating Up Manager, Trashing Brighton Heights Rite Aid (CBS Pittsburgh, the Rite Aid case)
2 jailed in robbery at Cal U. housing (Observer-Reporter, the Vulcan Village robbery)
Recent Arrests 3-18-16 (Herald-Standard, the arrest blotter)
It’s just possible that the person described in the first two incidents isn’t the one who is involved in today’s defensive gun use (DGU), but I’m pretty confident it’s the same guy.
The name is right — all three of them, Darius Anthony Rain. All three names were used in all of the outlets for the September 2024 incident; all three names were used in the Rite Aid write-up from CBS; and the arrest blotter in the Herald-Standard for the Vulcan Village robbery also uses all three names.
The age is right: The Rite Aid news report show a man who was 19 on May 5, 2015, and who was still 19 at the time of the Vulcan Village robbery on March 18, 2015. That means he’d need to have a birthday between ~March 18 and ~May 5 of 1996, which would make him being 28 on September 1, 2024.
There’s a mug shot of Darius Rain published in the Vulcan Village robbery article. It’s not too dissimilar to the one published at gunmemorial.org for the Darius Rain who features in today’s DGU.
This confused me at first. Pennsylvania Western University is a university system in Pennsylvania (surprise!) that’s better known as PennWest. California is a city in Pennsylvania (okay, that was a surprise), and PennWest California is a PennWest campus in that city.
How awful to be placed in a situation where you have to shoot a family member.