Posted on 05/05/2002 4:23:28 AM PDT by P8riot
Edited on 07/20/2004 11:46:46 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
When a gunman went berserk in a Southwest Virginia law school and killed three people, he was finally stopped by a fellow student who threatened to shoot him.
It was one of thousands of instances across the United States in the past year in which a person used a gun in defense.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesdispatch.com ...
By the way, 7-11 lies in this story. They know that the people they hire are very low income and the judgements from jurys after the clerks are killed will be very low. They also don't want to offend their main late night customer base, scragglely losers, drugies, drunks etc. Better the working stiff cleak gets killed. 7-11 supports gun control through corporate donations. Do not buy anything at a 7-11!
Perhaps not amazing in light of newspapers being increasingly ignored due to their generally liberal, anti-gun bias. People have changed their attitudes about self-defense since 9-11 especially. Too bad it took such a tragic attack to bring a change like this about.
This story is definitely slanted toward anti-gun. I hope one of the 7-11 clerks that gets shot or raped sues them for their policy, based on the fact that the store prevented them from defending themselves, and then did not provide sufficient securtity. 7-11 has been mislead by a lot of liberal propaganda psuedo science. They are leaving themselves wide open for multi-million dollar liability suits.
This is the first part of a series of articles on Defensive gun use. Getting the word out!
We'll have to see how this pans out.
Guns Save Lives !!
Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!
The Right Of The People To Keep And Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed !!
An Armed Citizen, Is A Safe Citizen !!
No Guns, No Rights !!
Molon Labe !!
The recent successes of gun-owners are getting to the media. They must now write their articles in a way which grants legitimacy to that which we are claiming, but which, finally, sets the record straight by pointing out the "larger concerns".
May 06, 2002
Wrestling with inner conflict
Store owner relives shooting of robberBY MICHAEL MARTZ
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
John Lee fumbled for a cigarette and apologized.
"I have to smoke," he said. "I am very upset."
Lee was standing next to the cash register at the S&K Mini Mart, his convenience store on the fringe of the Woodland Heights neighborhood in South Richmond.
Three months earlier, he stood at the same spot and shot one of two men who had just beaten him and robbed him at gunpoint.
The man, 26-year-old Kenny Carter, collapsed under a tree outside the store on Forest Hill Avenue and died. Lee was not charged, but the trauma of that day still weighs on his mind.
"I don't want to remember."
Lee is a 52-year-old native of South Korea who has operated convenience stores in the Richmond area for almost 20 years. He served in his native country's army as a military policeman, but he never had shot a person before.
His father had given him the .380-caliber Colt in 1985, but he never had fired it, even in practice.
"I'm a Christian, but I can't go to church any more," he told The Times-Dispatch days after the Jan. 7 robbery and shooting. "I've killed a person. I am very sorry."
In the months since, he has been buoyed by his pastor, neighbors and other well-wishers. He has returned to worship at the Lord Jesus Korean Church in Chesterfield County. His pastor, the Rev. Hyun Bae, said Lee has wrestled with an inner conflict since the shooting.
"He missed some Sundays. . . . He is trying to recover himself spiritually," Bae said.
Lee also is grappling with fear. He spent almost $500 on a bulletproof vest, though he finds it difficult to wear. "Very hot," he explained.
He bought a new gun, a .357-caliber, because Richmond police still have not returned his Colt. And he has a concealed-weapon permit.
Why? "Scared," he said.
The fear has a cultural dimension. Lee would not allow himself to be photographed for this story, nor would his pastor consent to a picture at the church.
John W. Jeong, president of the Korean-American Grocers Association of Greater Richmond, refused to talk about the issue of defensive gun use and crime.
His group and another organization just offered a $10,000 reward for information about the killer of Nancy Cho at her South Richmond grocery store last month.
Lee has been robbed at gunpoint before, in September, when a robber stuck a pistol in his face and demanded money. "I give money, bye bye, OK," he said.
His wife has been robbed twice at another store they own in South Richmond's Blackwell neighborhood.
Still, nothing prepared Lee for the afternoon of Jan. 7, when two men ran into the store and knocked him down behind the cash register.
They hit him with the butt of a gun over his left eye, under his right eye, in the back of his head. They punched him more than a half-dozen times. Images of his life "screened" across his mind, he said. He has two sons.
"I said, 'I give you everything. . . . Don't beat me no more. Don't hurt me.'"
The two men grabbed lottery tickets. They made him get up and open the cash register. One of them pushed him off the wooden platform behind the register toward the store's back room. A supply closet opens onto the passageway.
The robber made Lee open the closet, go in and sit down. He shut the door but did not lock it. Lee heard one of the men say, "Go, go, go," and heard their steps thump across the platform. He thought they had left.
Before Lee crept out of the closet, he picked up the gun his father had given him. He was reaching for the telephone to call the police when he heard a sound.
He looked around the cash register and saw the two men next to the door. One of them held a large handgun, a .45-caliber.
"I shot one time," he said. "They ran away."
Lee ran outside. He saw Carter sprawled next to a tree near the intersection of Forest Hill and Dundee avenues. He called 911 for police and an ambulance.
Carter was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Police arrested Donald E. Allen a few days later and charged him with robbery.
Peace of mind has been hard to find for Lee. His father died recently. "This year is terrible," he said.
Time is healing him slowly.
"I'm OK. Jesus helps me."
Contact Michael Martz at (804) 649-6964 or mmartz@timesdispatch.com
BUMP!
May 07, 2002
Near-dead with a toy gun in hand
Store owner almost pulled trigger on robberBY GORDON HICKEY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Hard decision: Even though R.E. Watkinson had been robbed and shot before, he did not want to pull the trigger on the armed man in front of him.
If you keep on going out U.S. Route 33, out past where the burger joints turn into cattle, out past where the road peters out, all the way out another 10 miles or so to Beaverdam, you'll cross the railroad tracks and get to Steve and Pat Webb's little store.
The Beaverdam Quick Stop is the kind of store where you can get everything from fishing gear to fish sticks, where you can pull up and leave your truck cockeyed in the lot with the motor running.
It's not the kind of store where you would ever imagine a young man would show up one day wearing a hood to cover his face, holding a gun in his hand and demanding money from the cash register. But that is what happened April 10, 1999.
Unlikely as it was, Steve Webb was ready. He had been practicing for just that event.
Webb pulled his .45-caliber pistol and shouted at the young man at the top of his lungs that he was about to die.
The would-be robber winced, twisted away, pulled his head back, threw his gun in the air and hit the floor. It wasn't until Webb had come around the counter to stand over the gunman that he saw the weapon was a water pistol, a squirt gun.
That young man had come a breath away from dying with a toy in his hand.
In the days and weeks that followed, Webb had to face a certain amount of ridicule. Three or four times a day, people would drop into the store, pretend they were going for a gun and say something like, "I got a squirt gun, this is a holdup!"
"It wasn't funny," Webb said while sitting on his front porch recently.
"When this guy pulls a gun on me and says this is a robbery, what do you think I'm going to do? . . . He did everything he could to make me think it was a real gun."
Newspapers and radio talk show hosts from all over the country called after Webb's story was reported in The Times-Dispatch. Webb was called a vigilante, a nut case. He is neither of those things.
He is a quiet 47-year-old who moved to Hanover County from Northern Virginia 12 years ago. The family keeps horses and shoots targets. He wears a cap with "International Defensive Pistol Association" on the front.
He recalled the day of the attempted robbery as scary. For those few seconds that he was face to face and 3 feet away from the would-be robber, he thought he might die. "You just kind of feel a cold chill go down your body."
He did not know whether the man was alone, and he certainly did not know the gun was a toy. "Once you pull a gun on someone, whether it was life or death a second ago, it is now," he said.
Webb didn't hesitate. "I was going to shoot him. I was squeezing the trigger." But his gun had an 8-pound trigger pull, which is unusually stiff. And the man flinched and went down immediately. That probably saved his life.
Webb shook for three days after that, and he thinks about it still. "It always did bother me. I did come close to taking a life."
Webb and his wife had practiced for different scenarios before the robbery attempt, and they still practice.
He thinks of gun ownership as a responsibility. He does not think everyone should carry a gun, but he has advice for those who do: "Go to the range. Get involved in shooting. Take lessons."
As bad as the event was at his store, it could have been much worse. "Not a shot was fired; that's a good scenario. We were lucky," he said.
The Webbs also were trained and had practiced. "If I couldn't have firearms, I'd shut that store and walk away."
Contact Gordon Hickey at (804) 649-6449 or ghickey@timesdispatch.com
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
