These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.
Around 4 on a Sunday afternoon, people at an Amarillo Dollar Tree watched a woman get thrown out of a car.
Some of them went to help her. The man in the car answered by shooting at them.
One of the witnesses had a gun, too, and shot back. The man drove off.
The man was 25-year-old Kurt David Cobain Gaede. The Amarillo Globe-News described what happened to the woman as an apparent domestic assault, but that’s as close as I can find to a potential motive: It’s About a Girl. (IYKYK, and sorry.)
The picture above says, “Amarillo Police: Man Shot & Killed” — but our Good Samaritan’s bullets didn’t kill him. It doesn’t sound like they even struck him. They just made him run away.
The police tracked Gaede in part because of an outstanding felony warrant out of Randall County for burglary. Officers went to his last known address: a home on the same street as the Dollar Tree.
They watched a man they believed to be Gaede walk up and knock on the front door. He was turned away. The officers then approached; he ignored their commands and ran for the back of the home. They chased him, and Gaede displayed a gun.
“This action resulted in a task force officer discharging his firearm striking Gaede,” the department said. He died later at a hospital.
There was good work here both by a legally armed civilian — a witness who kept a woman from harm with an appropriate application of gun violence — as well as by police officers, like those from the Amarillo PD who continued the pursuit to its (unfortunate) conclusion.
Sources
Primary
Kurt David Cobain Gaede obituary (Rector Funeral Home)
News
Burglary suspect shot, killed during officer-involved shooting (KVII)
Amarillo police release new details, identity of suspect in officer-involved shooting (KFDA)
La policía de Amarillo revela nuevos detalles sobre la identidad del sospechoso en el tiroteo con un oficial (Telemundo Amarillo; the KFDA story in Spanish)
1 dead Monday in north Amarillo after foot chase with police (KAMR)
UPDATE: Suspect dead after officer-involved shooting on S. Georgia Monday (Amarillo Globe-News)
Man With Famous Namesake Killed By Amarillo Police (98.7 The Bomb)