Teen Fires Handgun At Attackers, Arrested By Police
BY Herschel Smith
11 years, 6 months ago
NBC4, Washington:
Police say a 17-year-old boy has been arrested for shooting at a group of fellow teens who approached him in an attempt to rob him.
According to the Mason Police District in Fairfax County, a group of five 17 and 18-year-old teens approached a 17-year-old boy they knew and demanded his cell phone in the 9300 block of Tovito Drive.
The five teens then confronted another 17-year-old they knew. However, that teen had a handgun he fired at the group. One 18-year-old was struck and transported to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
The 17-year-old who fired the weapon was arrested and charged with malicious wounding and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
The report is short on details. One possible course of action during a scenario like this is what I’ve discussed before, i.e., evasion, egress and escape. Backing away and thus changing the circumstances is better than getting shot or shooting someone. However, this isn’t always possible, and in fact a decision to evade can be foolish and life threatening if you are outnumbered, outgunned or even simply naive and overestimate your abilities. In most cases I would treat an aggressive approach like this as life threatening and I would defend myself accordingly.
Interestingly, the police seem to concede the point by saying that the gang attempted to rob him. As far as anyone knows, including the police, the gang never intended to stop at demanding loot. It must be assumed that they intended to harm or kill him, or that it could have evolved into such a situation. And given that knowledge, this report is beautiful in its simplicity. The gang threatened the life of this young man, he defended his life, and now he is under arrest for it. I suppose that the police would rather he have perished at the hands of the gang.
Welcome to Amerika, comrade!
On June 21, 2013 at 4:08 pm, Jack said:
I lived on this street 30-odd years ago, when I was in high school. It’s the knee-deep in an upper-middle class subdivision populated with senior government and military families (my house was owned by the then-commander of Key West NAS who was promoted and moved to Japan).
It’s far from what you would expect when you hear about a gang of teens robbing. The police at the time were far from friendly to teens, being much more interested in giving them speeding tickets than anything else.
Seems that not much has changed since then.
On June 21, 2013 at 8:02 pm, Ceonupe said:
We need more details.
Was teen already breaking other laws or was he already on probation (this from possessing the gun specificlly. Was he just an innocent teen or was he the corner drug dealer? We need a followup on this story but it seams the commission of a felony part leads me to belive alot more to this story is yet to be found out.
On June 21, 2013 at 8:20 pm, Ceonupe said:
Often times police don’t charge the person being robbed of the drugs/contraband with it initially or at all when they are robbed but if they find they used gun to protect them or further their crime of selling drugs.
Like I said I’m 100% pro RKBA but I think this story is missing lots of details. Maybe the police are further investigating
On June 22, 2013 at 8:37 am, Mark Matis said:
Or maybe the police, Ceonupe, are just God damned fucking pigs. After all, this IS Fairfax County. They get their standards from the DC pigs.