Good Guy with a Gun #51: Harris County, TX
Original incident: December 20, 2023. An armed robbery attempt on a Dollar General in Houston ends with two shots and a crash.
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On a Wednesday afternoon, a little after 1 PM in Houston, a man entered a Dollar General waving a pistol and demanding that an employee open the safe.
The employee said he didn’t know the combination, but that he could call the manager.
This wasn’t a great section of town. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told USA Today that it was well-known as a high-crime area, and in fact the sheriff’s office had been working with stepping up patrols and intelligence alongside federal, state, and other local partners for about two months.
So it’s no surprise that the store manager came out with a pistol.
He fired twice, striking the robber in the chest and thigh. The robber bolted, jumped back in his car, and drove away — making it only a block before crashing into a METRO bus. We can guess that he was lightheaded from loss of blood. He died after being taken to the hospital.
Screen capture from KHOU’s report.
No one at the store was injured, and there was no expectation that charges would be filed; as usual, though, that depended on a grand jury’s judgment.
Meanwhile, the five passengers on the bus leapt off and ran away before first responders arrived. The bus driver was taken to the hospital as a precaution, but it seems he was basically fine.
Two last things to note about the robber.
As it turns out, the robber was only armed with an airsoft pistol. But it was realistic enough that the threat seemed real to the Dollar General employees, which is what counts in a situation like this.
It appeared (though we don’t have confirmation) that the robber’s car had been used in one or more other crimes over the previous few days. Sheriff Gonzalez said, “We don’t know yet if there are any links to the alleged robbery suspect in this case other than the vehicle possibly being used in that. We don’t know if the plate associated with this vehicle is the actual plate, it may be a stolen plate.”
Sources
These stories are all pretty similar, based on a police report and a Sheriff Gonzalez’s press conference.
KHOU 11, ABC 13, Click2Houston.com, USA Today, and (a news aggregator?) Daily News Planet all produced similar stories.
On the conservative / 2A media side, Blaze Media also produced a story.
That thing that never happens, happens every day.
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I certainly hope they didn't charge him. It's too easy to condemn after the fact: "Oh, the poor guy couldn't have hurt him with that air-soft gun . . ."