An armed security guard potentially saved dozens of lives after a disgruntled customer armed with multiple firearms showed up a sprawling corporate campus belonging to Citibank and started shooting.
According to Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister, the shooter was a 35-year-old man who was married and the father of a 7-year-old child. He was apparently enraged over a $2,500 debt owed to the company, and after receiving a court summons over the bill on Wednesday morning he called up the third-party attorney contracted by Citibank to collect the debt.
He allegedly made violent threats to the attorney's office over the phone before leaving his Orlando home.
"Unless you want me to go over there with my AR-15, my bulletproof vest and my insanity, you m------------ cancel this court case," he allegedly said, Fox 13 reported.
Citibank’s head of security, a retired Secret Service agent, recognized the severity of the threat, and contacted both the Orlando Police Department for a welfare check and the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office to request deputy presence on campus.
It's unclear whether a sheriff's deputy was on the corporate campus when the killer arrived, but police say the man crashed his car through a gate and into a courtyard where several employees were sitting. He got out of his car and immediately began firing, striking a 41-year-old woman named LeAnne Selmon before his rifle jammed.
He was able to return to his vehicle to grab a handgun, and fired additional shots at Selmon at short range.
"He was there intent on one purpose, and that purpose was to hunt any human being he could find and kill," the sheriff said. "Because of the heroic actions of this Citibank security officer, vice president of operations, his reign of terror ended before it even began."
Pearson then walked into a cafeteria intent on finding more victims before encountering Fraley, the sheriff said. Fraley, a Citibank security guard, took a tactical position inside the men's restroom and opened fire, striking Pearson five times, according to the sheriff.
Chronister says that Fraley had a firearm because "the ones who were either previous law enforcement or military and have that training. Citibank empowers them to carry a handgun." It's unclear if that policy applies solely to security guards or all Citibank employees at the large campus.
What is clear, though, is that if the killer had not been confronted by Fraley or someone else with a gun, his rampage would have continued, and there would almost certainly have been additional victims.
The sheriff praised Fraley for his actions, telling reporters that the security officer "didn't have to stop," adding that he "could have run and protected his own life, too. He took up a tactical position when he saw the suspect coming and made a decision."
Fraley deserves every bit of praise he's receiving. He had no way of knowing whether Pearson was wearing any kind of protective gear, how many guns he was carrying, or whether he might be the next person shot. All he knew was that a killer was headed his way, and that there were innocent people in that building whose lives were in immediate danger.
He didn't wait for someone else to deal with the threat. He dealt with it himself.
Citibank deserves credit for taking Pearson's threats seriously enough to contact law enforcement, and for allowing at least some of its security personnel to carry firearms on the job. But there are still some important unanswered questions about the company's response.
Were employees warned about the threat before Pearson arrived? Were they given an opportunity to shelter in place or leave the campus? And what about the company's firearms policy for employees who aren't part of its security team?
I suspect there are plenty of Citibank employees who lawfully carry a firearm for personal protection when they're away from work, but aren't permitted to do so on the job. If that's the case, Citibank should reconsider that policy in light of Wednesday's attack.
There's no guarantee that an armed employee would have stopped Pearson before he murdered LeAnne Selmon, just as there's no guarantee that an armed security officer will always be in the right place at the right time. But giving folks the means to defend themselves offers them an option that making a workplace a "gun-free zone" for most employees takes away.
Selmon should still be alive today, and my heart goes out to her family and everyone who witnessed this horrific attack.
Fraley wasn't in a position to save her, but his courage almost certainly prevented other families from suffering the same terrible loss.
He deserves to be called a hero. And the fact that he was armed when Pearson came looking for blood should give every employer with a gun-free workplace policy something to think about.