An Houston robber won the “Room Temperature Challenge” yesterday when he attempted to rob an employee walking to the entrance of a check cashing store. The robber apparently thought that the bag the employee had under his arm as he walked to the store was a money bag.

It wasn’t.

Officers were called to the Ruiz Cash n Carry store in the 1700 block of Sgt. Macario Garcia at Ave Q around 8:30am this morning.

Police say the store employee was about to enter into the store with a bag under his arm when a man approached him from behind and pointed a gun at him, demanding the bag, possibly thinking there was cash inside.

The employee, who also had a concealed handgun license was able to turn to his own gun, pull it out and fire four shots at the man. Two or three of those shots hit the man in the chest area.

“From what I gather is that when the employee went to open the door, the gun was already put at the back of his head, and so, I don’t know what words were exchanged, but at this point the investigation is still ongoing, they’re still talking to him (the store employee) and he turned around and saw the suspect had a gun.”

The employee—who was only carrying a toiletries bag with is medications inside—is incredibly lucky. He didn’t know the armed robber was there until he was in a very bad position with a gun to the back of his head, and yet somehow not only was able to access and draw his own concealed handgun and fire off four shots, but he also hit the bad guy center-mass with 2-3 of them without the bad guy getting off a single shot of his own.

The bad guy died where he fell.

We’d never recommend attempting to draw your weapon when someone already has the drop on you, unless you are almost certain that the robber is going to attempt to kill you anyway and you don’t have the option to or ability to run. That said, this is the second defensive gun use we’ve read about this year (the attempted pharmacy robbery in West Virginia was the other one) where a concealed carrier draw his weapon and defeated an armed robber who already had the drop on him.

Once again, a concealed carrier has ended the career of an armed robber and the mainstream media (not including the local stations) refuses to even consider the theory that armed citizens thwart crimes.

It’s a good thing that we know better, isn’t it?