Folks depending on the New York Times for news probably don't realize how often armed citizens use firearms in self-defense across the country. The Times doesn't devote much attention to those incidents. Gun owners behaving badly, on the other hand, apparently make for more compelling copy.
Which brings us to the paper's coverage of an argument that turned into a shooting at a dog park in Ohio. Though the incident happened back in April, for some reason (maybe the proximity to the midterms?) New York Times editors decided now is the perfect time to inform its readers of a political disagreement that escalated into shots being fired.
The short version of the incident is this: a 55-year-old man named David Mattai decides to take his dog Bob to a dog park in Bainbridge, Ohio. When he gets there, he overhears 80-year-old Emmanuel Mathews and 70-year-old Jamie Jedlinsky discussing Donald Trump and the war with Iran.
Mattai, who had been drinking that day, decided to inject himself into the conversation with the observation that "Trump is the worst president in history," to which Mathews responded that Trump is the best president in history.
The spat quickly grew in intensity and volume. At one point, Mr. Jedlinsky recalled, they were saying, “You shut up!” and “No, you shut up!”
“Just two guys, mad at themselves, mad at the world,” Mr. Jedlinsky said. “They both wanted to just yell at someone, and they ran into the perfect storm, where there’s somebody yelling back.”
Jedlinsky eventually convinced Mattai to drop it, and the younger man took Bob to his car and started to drive away. As Mattai tells it, Bob started whining, and Mattai ended up turning the car around after deciding that he shouldn't have to leave the park.
When he gets back, he allegedly tells Mathews that he should go home. Mathews starts to walk to his car, but once he's on the other side of the dog park fence he turns around and asks Mattai if he'd been dropped on his head by his mother.
“You talking about my mother?” Mr. Mattai responded. He reached across the fence and grabbed Mr. Mathews by his grayish white hair. Mr. Jedlinsky pushed them apart and told them both to go home. While the three men were putting their dogs in their cars, Mr. Jedlinsky heard Mr. Mattai say: “Oh you’ve got one? I’ve got one, too.”
Then Mr. Jedlinsky heard gunshots.
Mr. Mathews had a .45-caliber handgun in his car. He fired first; when he pulled the trigger a second time, no bullet came out. Mr. Mattai had a 9-millimeter pistol in his car. He fired back at least four rounds. The bullets sprayed across Mr. Mathews’s car and into his open window as Mr. Mathews drove away. They pierced his door frame and the driver’s seat, missing him by inches.
Mr. Jedlinsky crouched behind his wheel and called 911.
“It escalated,” he told the dispatcher.
When a police officer arrived, he found Mr. Mattai splayed on the pavement. There was a hole in his lower back where Mr. Mathews’s bullet had entered, and another in his abdomen where it had exited.
The passenger-side door of his Hyundai was open. Bob was in the front seat, unharmed, tongue out.
Mattai survived, and Mathews was charged with felonious assault. Several months later, Mattai was also charged with misdemeanor assault and disorderly conduct.
Neither man come off particularly well in the paper's report. Mattai initially told police he never touched Mathews, but admitted to the Times that he had grabbed the older man by the hair. Mattai also declared he "was in the infantry for 10 years," but when the Times started digging into his military record he recanted and admitted he was in the Marines for less than a year.
Mathews, meanwhile, allegedly told an officer “I said, ‘I feel my life is in danger.’ I said that ’cause I know that’s what they say,” and claimed that Mattai was shot because "he had a gun in his hand," even though it appears that Mathews was first to fire his pistol. And the paper made sure to note that while Mathews asked about the health of his dog Frankie four times, he never once asked if Mattai would be okay.
Mathews' trial is slated to begin in February, and if convicted he could end up spending his remaining days behind bars. I don't know if he plans on arguing that he was acting in self-defense, but Mattai was arguably the initial aggressor when he reached across the fence and grabbed the 80-year-old Mathews by the hair. The question is whether Mathews reasonably believed deadly force was necessary to protect himself from death or serious bodily harm when he drew his gun. Did that happen because Mattai had produced his own handgun, or did Mattai draw only after Mathews produced his?
I can't answer those questions based on a New York Times story and the handful of local media accounts, but I don't think convicting Mathews will be a slam dunk for prosecutors.
The reason why I chose to write about this is because this never needed to escalate to guns being drawn and shots being fired in both directions. When two grown men are standing inches apart from each other yelling, "You shut up!" and "No, you shut up!," something's gone wildly wrong.
Mattai never needed to insert himself into the discussion Mathews and Jedlinsky were having. When he told the pair that Trump was the worst president ever, Mathews didn't need to take the bait. He could have channeled his inner Lebowski and said, "well that's just, like, your opinion, man."
When Mattai left the dog park with Bob in the passenger seat, he could have kept on driving. When Mathews went to his car, he could have kept his mouth shut instead of asking if Mattai's mom had dropped him on his head. And of course, Mattai could have kept his hands to himself instead grabbing Mathews by the hair.
There were so many off-ramps that both of these gentlemen could have taken, and they drove past every one of them. If either man had chosen to de-escalate at any time there would be no story for the New York Times to cover. One of the most important lessons that firearms instructors teach is to not put yourself in a situation where you need to draw your gun in the first place, and both Mathews and Mattai repeatedly ignored that advice. The lesson for gun owners is don't be like either of these guys.
If you're carrying a gun, you don't need to have the last word. Sometimes the smartest thing an armed citizen can say is nothing at all.
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