These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is essentially the same as the calendar version.
The clerk was on his break, sitting in his car outside a Chevron in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood around six on a Monday evening, when he noticed a man and a woman doing drugs in the parking lot. He told them to leave. They didn’t.
An argument with the man followed, and then the clerk’s car window shattered. He didn’t know what had broken it, but the man was telling him, “I will shoot you, too.” He thought it might have been a bullet.
The clerk got his gun. The man came at the car.
At this point in time, the clerk believed the subject made furtive motion toward his waistband and he lunged at the employee.
That’s Detective Eric Munoz of the Seattle PD.
The clerk fired once, hitting the man in the abdomen.
The man made it across the street to a Jack in the Box before he collapsed. He went to the hospital in serious but stable condition and had surgery that night.
He didn’t have a gun on him: He had shattered the window with a rock. The woman ran.
The clerk called 911 himself and cooperated with investigators, who took his gun and a shell casing. He wasn’t arrested. Asked whether the evidence backed up the clerk’s account, Munoz said that so far it “matches up.”
Police said they had probable cause to charge the man with felony harassment — threats to kill.
Threatening to shoot somebody is a poor bluff when you don’t have a gun. It’s a worse one when the other guy does.
Sources
News
Police: Georgetown gas station clerk shot man in self-defense (MyNorthwest / KIRO Newsradio)
Man shot by Seattle gas station employee after window shatters: police (FOX 13 Seattle)
Man shot in altercation outside Georgetown neighborhood gas station (KIRO 7)