These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is significantly updated from the calendar version.
In 2015, a 27-year-old named Brian Semil walked up to a woman in Fort Lauderdale and demanded her keys. She handed them over. He drove off in her gray Toyota, and when officers tried to stop him, he ran, ramming one of their cars along the way.
He was charged with robbery, auto theft, and aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Nine years later, just before 5 on a Sunday afternoon, a woman was pumping gas at a RaceTrac in Pompano Beach, with her mother and her children in the car. She told the story to a 911 dispatcher in Spanish. The translation is the Sun-Sentinel’s:
I was pumping gas, and I was here with my mom and kids, and there was a person — I don’t know if he was on drugs or not — who tried to get into the car and he wouldn’t let me go.
The person was Semil, 37 now. He had come at her, she said, and “he wouldn’t even let me close the door.”
Three men stepped in and kept him out of the car. One of them, as she put it, “saved me.” She got her family away, but the man who’d helped her was still back at the station, and she was worried about him. She told the dispatcher that the last thing she was was, “I saw him on the ground. I heard a gunshot, and I left from there.”
Other customers were calling, too.
One man yelled for an ambulance and told the dispatcher to “get the cops over here now, God damn it.”
A woman whose partner had drawn on Semil said, “He has his firearm pointed at him. I need someone here right now. There’s another man here too with a firearm pointed at him as well.”
“My man’s gonna shoot him!” she said.
One of the three men fired, hitting Semil. A woman started CPR, but he died at the hospital. All three men stayed and cooperated with deputies, and the case was headed to the State Attorney’s Office for review.
Deputies didn’t say whether Semil had a gun. One caller said she’d seen “a man with a gun trying to rob a lady”; his mother said he was unarmed.
His mother, Selinda Crawley, rejected the deputies’ account outright:
That is not true. That’s something y’all made up to cover the act of this guy murdering my son.
She said he had schizophrenia, that he’d gotten clean, and that he might have just been trying to talk to the woman. “He told me he was looking for a nice lady that he can make a family with and start off new,” she said.
I’m sure she believes that. But no.
Sources
News
Local 10 ran two articles, first the mother’s account, then the 911 calls, plus a Spanish version of the second.
911 calls released following deadly shooting at Pompano Beach gas station (The 911 calls)
Llamadas al 911 fueron publicadas tras un tiroteo mortal en una gasolinera de Pompano Beach (En español)
Carjacker shot dead in Pompano Beach, deputies say, but his mother disputes their account (The mother’s account)
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel ran two articles, read as syndicated on Yahoo!.
Man who tried to force way into woman’s car shot and killed by witness, deputies say (Day after)
‘Guy with a gun at the gas station’: 911 calls depict woman’s rescue, suspect’s death in Pompano Beach (The 911 calls)
BSO: Man fatally shot at gas station in Pompano Beach; 1 taken into custody (WSVN)
Arrestan a sospechoso de tiroteo mortal en gasolinera de Broward (Telemundo 51)
Alleged Carjacker Shot And Killed At Gas Station South Of Boca Raton (BocaNewsNow; includes the sheriff’s office statement)
BSO Investigates Fatal Shooting in Pompano Beach Parking Lot (The Boca Raton Tribune)
The 2015 carjacking:
Carjacking Suspect Caught After Chase: Fort Lauderdale Police (NBC 6)
Police Release Identity Of Suspected Carjacker That Sparked Chase (CBS Miami)
From the family:
Help Us Honor Brian Semil’s Memory (GoFundMe, organized by his sister)
Brian Semil Obituary (Bell’s Funeral Home)