Good Guy with a Gun #85: Garner, NC
Original incident: January 23, 2024. Is it real or is it a BB gun? The person you're threatening doesn't have time to know for sure, so you shouldn't be surprised when he responds like it's real.
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We’ve come to expect kerfuffles at Walmart stores — there’s an entire website dedicated to that insanity — so it’s not surprising that 29-year-old Colton Valdez1 got into an argument with another man in the parking lot of the Walmart in Garner, North Carolina.
Valdez’s family told reporters that the shooter was “cursing and yelling at Valdez's mom as she tried to back out of a parking spot; that's when Valdez confronted him.”
And by “confronted” we mean “drew a realistic-looking BB gun.”2
I don’t know how the other man was really behaving before that, and it may have been bad. But that escalation brought the incident to a completely different, life-or-death level.
As it happens, the other man was in legal possession of a realistic-looking real firearm and shot Valdez in the chest.
Valdez was taken to the hospital, where he died.
The coverage in this situation is necessarily one-sided: The dead man is identified, and his family gets to say everything they want to say; the shooter is unidentified and can’t speak without raining trouble on himself, and the police don’t say more than they absolutely have to. In some people’s eyes, the shooter will always be wrong.
But one thing is clear: Escalating with a realistic-looking BB gun delivers the exact same threat perception as a real firearm — and the consequences can be just as deadly.
Sources
Here’s the Garner police department’s initial Facebook post.
I appreciated how many stories went into the legal aspects of this shooting.
WNCN 17 did a good job with the coverage here, devoting considerable writing and airtime to it.
Man shot dead at Walmart in Garner, 1 in custody, police say
No charges filed in deadly shooting at Walmart in Garner (video only)
WTDV 11 covered the original incident and updated with the DA’s determination not to file charges, also giving airtime.
WRAL News covered the original incident (video only) and followed up twice. The first follow-up included coverage from Valdez’s family, a discussion of the law, and a reaction from Walmart employees; I appreciate the well-rounded approach. The second follow-up discussed the DA’s decision not to file charges.
The News & Observer gave initial coverage and then a piece headlined, No charges in fatal shooting in Garner Walmart parking lot. Here’s why not.
There were a number of stories that were identical to this one: Man killed while defending his mother in Walmart parking lot, family says. Note the one-sidedness that I mention above: The family has a voice, but the shooter does not.
Fox 10 had a similar one headlined, North Carolina man shot, killed at Walmart while defending mother, family claims. “North Carolina man,” you say? Yes, because Fox 10 is an outlet in Phoenix. The geographic coverage was pretty wide.
Even Univision and Telemundo got in on the act.
Finally, in the 2A specialized press, we have Brandon Curtis at Concealed Nation.
Side note: Valdez’s family was mentioned in a piece in NC Newsline headlined, 40 unhoused people must leave a Wake County homeless encampment or face arrest. Apparently, Valdez’s mother, father (who claims to be battling lung and prostate cancer), and two brothers are all living in the homeless encampment along with their two dogs.
Note that he’s often called “the victim” in the coverage, though that’s the wrong word to use. If he pulled a BB gun first, he was the aggressor and the shooter was the victim.
In some of the coverage, Valdez’s relatives insist that he was unarmed — his mother said he was “completely unarmed,” and a cousin said he was killed over “words” — but police recovered the BB gun at the scene.