These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.
Whatever had gone on out on the road, the woman in the white Dodge Durango had left it. Around 5 PM on a Tuesday, she turned into a Sterling Heights shopping plaza and stopped at a stop sign near Carrabba’s Italian Grill.
The red Jeep Compass she’d been going back and forth with followed her in and stopped directly behind her.
Two women got out of the Jeep, went to her driver’s side, where she was still sitting, and started beating her up. A shoe was thrown. Another woman, a bystander, started toward the Durango to help.
The driver has a concealed pistol license and had a Smith & Wesson revolver. She was, as the prosecutor’s office put it, “in fear for her life,” and she pulled it and fired once.
One bullet hit both of her attackers. The bystander, sensibly enough, left.
The two women turned out to be a mother and her adult daughter. The daughter was hit in the neck and the mother in the arm, and the daughter was in critical condition at first. Both were recovering two weeks later.
The driver stayed where she was and cooperated. Police arrested her anyway, interviewed her, and let her go. The daughter had told an officer that she and her mother were “in a road rage with a lady and the lady shot them both,” which is true as far as it goes, and at first the woman with the revolver was “the suspect.”
A police lieutenant used the occasion to give the driving public some advice.
“Let the person go,” he said. “Either change lanes, pull off, get away – if they’re following you, call 911.”
Of course, she’d pulled off. The other two followed her.
It took two weeks to straighten out. Police asked for a warrant, and the prosecutor’s office turned them down, telling them that the two women “listed (as) victims in the initial police report were actually the aggressors and assaulted the Defendant inside of her vehicle.” It helped that this wasn’t her word against theirs. Somebody had called 911 while it was happening:
those two girls tried to attack the shooter…those two girls were beating up on her.
“There were also cameras that picked this up,” said Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido. He added that the driver had abrasions, and that the shoe she said she’d been attacked with was found on the passenger side of her car.
“It’s absolutely clear the shooter was not the aggressor,” Lucido said. He had more to say about the other two.
This is an unfortunate situation. The parties should have never allowed it to escalate to this, but it is going to happen. When it does, somebody who is going to be the aggressor is always going to be at fault. Because they didn’t have to get out of the car, they didn’t have to rush the doors to get them open, and drag her out of the car.
So the driver wasn’t charged, on grounds of self-defense. But neither were the mother and daughter, which surprised me. The prosecutor’s office asked for an investigation into charging them, and “following further investigation, witness interviews, and discussion with the shooter, it was determined no charges would be filed against the two women.”
“The aggressor is always going to be at fault” and “no charges” don’t quite mesh for me, but the victim chose not to press it.
Sources
News
Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office Denies Charges in Sterling Heights Self Defense Shooting (Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office; the press release)
Eric Czarnik of C & G Newspapers did a great job, giving a lot of detail while still being concise. Macomb County prosecutor declines charges for shooting of 2 women (C & G Newspapers)
FOX 2 Detroit ran three articles, and interviewed the prosecutor and the police chief for the last.
Woman shoots mother, daughter in Sterling Heights road rage incident (Original incident)
Road rage shooting: No charges for woman who wounded mother, daughter in Sterling Heights (No charges)
Prosecutor: Woman who shot 2 in road rage attack ‘was there to defend herself’ (The interviews)
WDIV Local 4 ran two articles.
Mother, adult daughter shot during Sterling Heights road rage incident (Original incident)
No charges filed against woman in Sterling Heights road rage shooting, citing self-defense (No charges)
WWJ Newsradio 950 ran two articles.
Mother, adult daughter shot after Sterling Heights road rage incident escalates outside Carrabba’s Italian Grill (Original incident)
CBS Detroit ran two articles.
Two women shot in Sterling Heights road rage incident (Original incident)
Woman who shot mother, daughter in Sterling Heights incident will not be charged, prosecutors say (No charges)
No charges in Sterling Heights shooting after attack, prosecutor says (The Detroit News; archived copy)
Patch ran two articles.
Let's hope getting shot is punishment enough to keep them saner in the future.