Armed Clerk Turns the Tables on Gunman Trying to Cover His Tracks

Police in Valdosta, Georgia have pieced together the sequence of events that led to a 53-year-old man being shot and killed by a convenience store worker, and have concluded that the employee was acting in lawful self-defense when he pulled the trigger. 

According to authorities, the man was drinking outside the store when he got into an "altercation" with a 38-year-old man. Surveillance video from outside the store shows the older man pull a pistol and fire multiple rounds at his intended victim, who took off running. Police say that's when the 53-year-old stormed into the convenience store with the gun still in his hand. 

Police said the employee inside the store heard gunshots and ran behind the counter to find cover while trying to activate the door locks. The 53-year-old then came inside the store yelling at the clerk in a threatening manner, demanding the surveillance video while holding the firearm, police said. Police said the clerk feared for his life and pulled his own firearm, shooting the man “to stop the threat.”

The clerk then secured the store and called 911, police said.

The 38-year-old who was shot suffered non-life-threatening injuries, thankfully, and has already been released from the hospital. Police also determined that the convenience store employee reasonably believed his life was in danger when he shot the 53-year-old, which seems like the right call to me. The clerk heard gunshots seconds before a guy with a gun came barging into his store and demanded the clerk hand over the security footage. I can't imagine anyone who had just shot someone in self-defense would make a demand like that, and the clerk had every reason to believe that he would have been the next target of this guy's drunken rampage. 

There's one other component to this story worth mentioning, and it's a sad commentary on where we are as a society. 

Surveillance video also showed several people who were not present when the shooting occurred running up to the door and filming the 53-year-old lying on the floor while making comments about the incident, police said. Police said the individuals ran away when they heard sirens and detectives are working to identify them to determine whether they have information about what happened.

Valdosta Police Chief Leslie Manahan tore into these individuals when talking to local media, calling it "deeply concerning that people in our society now think it is more important to film a person lying on the ground, to get ‘likes’ or ‘views’, instead of using their phones to call 911 to ensure emergency assistance is on the way."

I couldn't agree more. Calling 911 is literally the least you can do when you come across someone who's been shot. Instead, these folks apparently saw an opportunity to get some attention on social media and they were more than happy to exploit a dying man to get it.

The store clerk was confronted with a life-threatening situation and did what was necessary to protect himself. The bystanders were confronted with a man in desperate need of medical attention and decided to whip out their phones to record his final moments.

One man used a gun to save his life. Several others couldn't even be bothered to use their phones to try to save someone else's. I doubt the chief's words will have any kind of impact on these cretins, but I'd love to be wrong about that. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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