Good Guy with a Gun #34: Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, CA
Original incident: December 5, 2023. No, neighbor, you are not God. You are mentally ill, you broke the window on a Porsche, and you need to get out of my house or you’ll get shot. Well, there goes...
This is the kind of content featured in the 2026 Good Guy with a Gun one-page-per-day desk calendar.
Alex was apparently “going through some kind of emotional stuff.”
That’s what Steve Costello said on Tuesday morning, December 5, 2023, after he drove from Las Vegas to the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles — a four-plus-hour trip — to buy a Mercedes from him. “I sensed mental illness...He told me his dad passed away and that’s why he was selling the house and his car.”
It was probably a nice car.
For one thing, Hollywood Hills is one of LA’s most prestigious neighborhoods, home to people like Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Zac Efron, and Adele.
For another, Costello thought it was worth a four-hour drive to buy it.
Finally, there are nice cars in Alex’s neighborhood. For instance, the window Alex shattered during his rampage belonged to a Porsche.
Looks like a pretty nice area to me.
It seems that Alex was getting a bit out of control in posh cul-de-sac. This may not have been unusual: A neighbor said, “He really needs help, and there’s been repeated instances where he’s cried for help, so to speak.” In this case, just before 11 AM, his neighbors heard him shouting, “I am God! I am God!”
One of those neighbors, who lived across the street from Alex, tried to calm him down.
Alex didn’t calm down.
He followed the neighbor to his home. (That may have been when the car window was broken, but it’s not clear.) Then he unwisely forced his way into the neighbor’s home. Then, in a move that was even less wise, he refused to leave when told to.
That’s when the neighbor retrieved a 9mm firearm and shot him.
Someone called 911, and by the time Costello arrived to buy the Mercedes — only 20 minutes after last communicating with a not-yet-out-of-control Alex — the area was blocked off with police tape.
Alex was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The neighbor was detained and released.
We don’t know whether Alex got the help he clearly needed.
Sources
By nature, this is a one-article event: Everyone pretty much knew everything before the police left the scene.
KTLA’s reporting was best, in my opinion, with a 2:43 segment that went into a great deal of detail and got the neighborhood reaction, as well as commentary from Steve Costello. That information all also went into the accompanying article. You can see them both together.
ABC 7 also did a good job, with their video segment being a little better than their textual write-up.
Short write-ups came from My News LA, NBC Los Angeles, Fox 11 LA, CBS News, Canyon News, and Patch.
Interestingly, although I saw no coverage from the usual 2A community, this incident ended up in a couple of news compilations: Hey Social and the Los Angeles Police Protective League.
That thing that never happens, happens every day.
Like the idea of a Good Guy with a Gun story every single day? Get the 2026 calendar! All 365 pages feature a news story from 2024.
In addition, this Substack will feature Good Guy with a Gun stories every day of the year, all taken from news stories so you can verify them yourself and share them around. They’ll generally be from about two years prior, which gives time to make sure there aren’t any legal or fraud issues to worry about.
Starting in 2026, we’ll open up paid subscriptions, and all paid subscribers will get seven posts per week. (People who bought a calendar will be eligible for a free full subscription.) Unpaid subscribers will still get two GGWAG stories every week.