SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — A homeowner is lucky to be alive after fighting with an armed robber over control of the robber’s gun. In the end, the intended victim won.
In 80 tense seconds, a struggle is captured on a home surveillance system when an armed man barges into his intended victim’s garage. Caught off guard, the victim is at first shocked and unsure of what to do.
Quickly though, he begins to wrestle with the armed intruder, pinning him on the ground and getting a good hold on the gun. After a few more seconds, the gun is now in the possession of the victim.
Enter: Great decisions
What the homeowner does next is fantastic in my book. Now that he has the bad guy’s gun, he’s likely thinking that he may soon be pulling the trigger. Heck, it’s a real possibility at this point. What if he comes back for the gun and gets it? It’s your life against his, remember.
Instead of staying in the garage where he is still cornered and vulnerable, he runs out into the street. Not only does he un-corner himself, he’s not going to be shooting the gun out towards the street if he had to. He also has the potential to block the bg in until police arrive.
See the guy with the gun in the lower left? That’s our freshly-armed homeowner taking aim inside his garage toward the bad guy.
But what’s this? The bad guy decides to make a break for it and runs out of the garage and off into the sunset. Wasn’t he afraid of being shot?
Well, no. The bad guy already had the knowledge that the gun was, in fact, unloaded. Hell, it didn’t even have a magazine in it.
“The victim was lucky — you don’t usually see an outcome like that,” said Officer Carlos Manfredi, a police spokesman. According to Manfredi, “the gun had no bullets, or no magazine was attached.”
So, what can we take away from this incident? A few things, as we’ve already touched on.
- Situational awareness should never end
- If you make the decision to fight, you fight hard
- When (hopefully) you win the gun, you then get yourself to as safe of a place as you can find
- You keep your wits about you in regards to where your bullets will end up if you happen to pull the trigger
But with that last point, can you actually pull the trigger? That’s a grey area that I’ll save for a whole other series of articles, as it can’t be summed up in just one. The bottom line: know your laws, keep your judgement unclouded, and be prepared to defend yourself at a moment’s notice.
Anyone with possible information related to the assault is asked to call the San Francisco Police Department’s tip line at (415) 575-4444.
