Good Guy with a Gun #46: Sunbury, OH
Original incident: December 14, 2023. Road rage is a messy business, but in this case a jury determined that Marshle Graham shot Gary Langston in self-defense.
This is the kind of content featured in the 2026 Good Guy with a Gun one-page-per-day desk calendar.
I’m not a fan of road rage stories, to be honest. They’re too messy: Who started what? How do we know?
One way we can be pretty sure is when there are witnesses, video evidence, and an acquittal. Based on those factors, here’s what happened at around 2 PM on a Thursday afternoon in Sunbury, Ohio.
The story
Marshle Graham was out driving with his six-year-old son in the back seat. They pulled into a Wendy’s to get a kid’s meal.
Gary Langston confronted him there.1 He believed that Graham had cut him off, so he met up with him in the parking lot and became aggressive. Langston looked like he was going to take a swing at him, so Graham punched him first. The two men fought, throwing punches and wrestling on the ground.
During the fight, Langston reached into Graham’s car — where his son was. The young Graham was six, which means he was in the back seat; Graham reached into the front passenger seat and pulled out his .380 Ruger handgun.
At that moment, or soon after, Graham shot Langston. (There was blood in his car.)
Graham immediately leapt into his car and drove to his home, about two miles away, to deposit his child in a safer place. Then he called police and told them where he was and why he left the scene.
His wasn’t the first 911 call: People called from the Wendy’s drive-through, and schools were locked down. Police were already trying to find him.
Graham was taken into custody. Ultimately he was charged with voluntary manslaughter in March, 2024. He was released on a $35,000 bond and placed under house arrest with GPS monitoring. His trial began on June 4 and lasted for five days.
The result? At long last, a “not guilty” verdict and an immense feeling of relief.
Discussion
I should note that much of the detail in this story comes from Graham’s lawyer. I’d be more careful about that if he hadn’t already convinced a jury that his depiction of the event was true.
This story should remind us that even if you’re completely in the right, you’re always in danger when you draw your weapon. I don’t give out legal advice, of course, but if I shot someone then I would call 911 first and a lawyer immediately afterward. If you don’t know whom you would call, do everyone in your life a favor and figure that out right away. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Sources
This story had a mixed bag of minimalist stories and in-depth coverage. Also, because Graham was charged but acquitted, you have to read them with the understanding that the “homicide victim” was actually the aggressor.
The Delaware Gazette had an initial story and a verdict follow-up, both of which were pretty good — though I think they overemphasized (as did several others) the definition of “manslaughter” without explaining what they were doing. The detective who filed the probable cause affidavit quoted Ohio law, using the phrase “while under the influence of sudden passion or in a sudden fit of rage...”
WSYX had less detail, but did grant airtime to the story and provided an initial story and a verdict follow-up (also reflected on Columbus CW).
One less-than-ideal aspect of the coverage is that several outlets covered the incident and the charges, but didn’t cover the fact that this was determined by a jury to be a justified shooting.
The Columbus Dispatch gave some in-depth coverage for the original incident as well as a follow-up, but no acquittal coverage that I can find.
10 WBNS covered the shooting, but I don’t see any follow-up on the verdict.
WCMH NBC4 covered the shooting (even giving it airtime), talked about schools being locked down, and Graham’s charging, but not the acquittal.
WHIO 7 relied on WBNS reporting for a single report.
This paints the wrong picture: Searches for Graham’s name, AI chatbots, and the like may see the charges and not the acquittal, leading people to think that he really committed manslaughter. I asked ChatGPT, “Did Marshle Graham kill somebody?” and, after a clarifying question, she said:
Yes — Marshle Graham, from Sunbury, Ohio, is connected to a real incident in which another person was killed in December 2023. According to news reports:
[details omitted]
🧑⚖️ Charge vs. conviction: At least as of the reporting in December 2023, Graham had been charged with voluntary manslaughter in this case — meaning prosecutors allege he killed someone, but that’s a criminal charge, not yet a final conviction (a conviction would only follow a guilty plea or verdict at trial).
I understand not covering convictions, because they’re somewhat expected, but that makes coverage of acquittals even more important.
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.
The actual confrontation is tough to decipher. The Delaware Gazette, for example, says all of the following:
Langston followed Graham to the Wendy’s parking lot
“[A] witness told police that she saw Langston walking around the parking lot before Graham arrived and went over to Graham when he pulled in...”
“Graham told law enforcement that Langston got out of his truck and stopped Graham’s car...”
...and the Columbus Dispatch says, “Marshle Patrick Graham was turning left... and approaching a vehicle driven by Gary Langston, 58, of Sunbury.”
So Langston followed Graham to the parking lot but (a) he arrived there first so that (b) Graham was approaching him in his car? And Langston was walking around the parking lot but got out of his truck when Graham arrived?
Whatever. We know Langston confronted Graham, and that’ll have to be enough.