Posted on 10/03/2009 6:01:41 AM PDT by marktwain
VAIL VALLEY, Colorado — Matthew Volk said he was working at Edwards Liquors Thursday when the night took a strange turn.
“Next thing I know, I see this guy come in and he's got a gun in my face,” he said.
The man with the gun shouted at Volk to give him money from the register. That's when Volk noticed the gun looked fake.
“I realized right away it was not a real gun because of the barrel shape,” the 42-year-old Army veteran said. “I was not as scared as if it had been a real gun.”
Volk said he managed to reach down and pop the emergency alarm — right as the robber sprayed him in the eye with mace.
“It really burned,” Volk said. “I couldn't see out of that eye.”
Volk then learned the hard way that the robber's gun was a pellet gun.
“He emptied his whole gun on me,” Volk said. “It hurt. It felt like being hit with a salt gun.”
Reeling from the pellet attack, Volk reached under the counter and grabbed a ball-peen hammer staff keep there for self-defense. He swung the hammer once at the robber, then chased him out of the store.
“I was yelling and screaming at him,” Volk said. “My adrenaline was flowing like crazy. I was mad more than anything else but I was happy he didn't get anything from the store.”
The suspect fled in what appeared to be an older model brown car, according to a release from The Eagle County Sheriff's Office. The attempted robbery happened around 8:15 p.m., Volk said.
Police ask anyone with information about the suspect to call the sheriff's office at 970-328-8500 or contact Eagle County Crime Stoppers at 970-328-7007, 1-800-972-TIPS or www.tipsubmit.com, the release said.
Volk said the robber looked like he was about 50 or 60 years old. Descriptions suggest the man is white, between 5'7” and 5'9” tall and 170 to 180 pounds, the release said. The suspect wore a gray AC/DC hoodie, the release said.
“Hopefully they find him,” Volk said. “That's my main concern because I don't want to see this happen to someone else in the community.”
Edwards Liquors owner Ken Sady said the incident marked the first armed robbery at the store since he bought it 10 years ago.
“You hear about it in big cities,” he said. “We're not in a big city but I suppose it's everywhere.”
Sady said he's thinking about getting pepper spray for his clerks at the store at 429 Edwards Access Road, Unit A204.
“It's scary to think you have to buy pepper spray, being a small liquor store in a small town,” he said. “It was a full moon. The full moon brings out these bozos.”
The day after the robbery, Volk, who was at work, opened his plaid shirt to reveal dark bruises on his chest, back and triceps where three pellets struck.
“They're sore,” the Edwards resident said. “It's probably going to get worse, too, because it hasn't hit the muscle yet.”
Volk said he doesn't plan to let a few pellet wounds stop him from lifting weights.
“I have a high level for pain so it doesn't really matter,” he said.
High Life Writer Sarah Mausolf can be reached at 970-748-2928 or smausolf@vaildaily.com.
Never bring a pellet gun to a hammer fight.
Seems like these perps are almost always skinny guys. Very seldom are they described as over 200#, which makes me feel glad that I will never be mistaken for one.
A ball peen hammer makes a very effective weapon if you use the ball end. A smack to the head would cause a lot of damage because all the force of the blow is concentrated into a small area.
Meth heads.....
While not a pleasant fact, hammers were (are?) indeed used to kill livestock in slaughter houses. A solid blow between the eyes with a small sledge is what I heard.
That’s what I was thinking.
Yep. And the article said he looked between 50 and 60 years old. Probably actually between 30 and 40.
Why doesn’t he buy his employees GUNS, not pepper-spray???
This is alot of discomfort and inconvenience to be politically correct.
Much of this could have been avoided if the clerk shot the robber.
That's because the fat ones get caught early in life and learn they had better get thin and run faster, or drop out of the business:)
Not really relevant to this particular story, but I’ve often wondered if one of the side benefits of the Obama ammo run has been that perps cannot get ammo.
But a gun is far better than a hammer, so why compromise, go or the gold. The clerk was threatened by what appeared to be a real gun, so he would have been lawfully justified to use deadly force to protect his life. If it had been me in that situation I wouldn't have shot the perp if I had known for sure that his gun was a fake, but if there was any doubt about the gun being real I probably would have.
OTOH, even a Crossman pellet gun can put out an eye, and I have read about European pellet guns that fire .22 and .25 caliber pellets that can kill small game. Better that a low-life stick-up perp should take a .45 slug in center of mass than me taking a volley of airgun pellets that could easily take out an eye or even possibly kill if one of them hit the right spot.
I would keep a can of Easy-Off oven cleaner behind the counter if I couldn’t have a gun. If it permanently blinds the perp, so freakin’ WHAT?
The reason I remembered this 7'x24' mural is that it is displayed in the US Post Office at 1343 W. Irving Park Road, Chicago, IL. When I lived in Chicago that was my local post office. If anyone lives nearby, they might want to visit and take a look at it.
“A hammer is better than nothing.”
It is all you need if it is the hammer on a 1911.
Doing it better for 98 years, thank you John Moses Browning!
Never bring a hammer to a gun fight.
At least it would be avoided the next time, because there would not be a next time.
Pepper spary will get a person killed. If the threat is serious enough to use pepper spray then the threat is serious enough to use a firearm.
At the local slaughterhouse here where I take my cattle they use a device that essentially does the same thing. It looks like a 4' long tube with a trigger handle sticking out of it. Inside the tube there is a solid rod. The rod is spring loaded and is pushed out the end by of the tube about 2" by the spring whenever the trigger is pulled (if it's cocked). They hold the business end of the tube against the cow or pig's head, basically right between the eyes, pull the trigger and it knocks a hole in the skull, killing the animal instantly.
I saw that device in No Country For Old Men.
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