The first rule of a gunfight is, of course, to bring a gun. The second rule, at least as I heard it, is to bring all of your friends with guns. But what do you do if you fail those two? Well, you could always just take the other guy's gun. That works out to be a pretty big win.
Of course, that only happens in the movies, right?
Right?
A Chicago woman was injured and her accomplice was killed during a botched armed robbery last month at Oakbrook Center mall, authorities said Tuesday.
Chance Jamerson, 29, and 28-year-old Justin Hill of Dolton were attempting to rob someone of $2,000 in the mall parking lot on Sept. 30 when they were both shot, authorities said. Hill was killed in the shooting.
On Tuesday, DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said the man who fatally shot Hill was acting in justified self-defense and will not face charges. He used a gun Hill brought to carry out the robbery to shoot the Dolton man and Jamerson, Berlin added.
...According to prosecutors, Jamerson was the mastermind behind the attempted armed robbery.
Levan told Dieden in court that Jamerson had gone to the mall with one of the victims Sept. 29 to buy Swatch watches.
The man had been hiring people to buy the watches, which cost $448 apiece, so he could resell them. The store had limited sales to one per person.
Jamerson knew the man would be carrying $2,000 in cash when they returned the next day, prosecutors said.
According to prosecutors, Jamerson rode with the man and two others to the mall in a Mercedes-Benz. Hill arrived in a Nissan and, following instructions Jamerson texted to him, boxed the Mercedes in a parking spot.
Hill then opened a door of the Mercedes and pointed the handgun inside, Levan said.
The driver and Hill struggled over the gun, and Jamerson joined in, trying to help Hill, according to Levan.
Jamerson was shot in the abdomen during the struggle, authorities said. The driver then got out of the car and shot Hill, officials said.
And, because they'd already shown they were willing to use lethal force, the man had no reason to just pretend that Hill didn't have a gun.
Now, this isn't exactly a great situation to find yourself in. First, the whole skeevy thing of buying up watches at retail price so you can resell them doesn't make me overly sympathetic to the man in question, though it's not exactly illegal to do so. Some will even disagree about it being skeevy, which is fine. Again, not illegal.
Still, it's kind of dumb to be transporting a lot of money and have the people in the car know you're carrying it, unless they're very trustworthy. This bunch obviously wasn't, so the best-case scenario is that the would-be victim simply misjudged people he knew. We don't know that he knew them particularly well, though, so it's possible this was an even dumber move.
Regardless, when you find yourself in a situation like this, even if you've made poor decisions up to this point, you have a choice: be a victim or fight for your life like you're the third critter on the ramp of the Arc and it just started raining.
Old boy did what he had to do, and got badass points for getting it done while he could. Now he's on the right side of the dirt, still has his money, and his attackers had the worst day of their lives to the point that one cannot have a worse one down the road.
It should be noted that Jamerson will not be charged with Hill's murder because Illinois changed their law a few years back and did away with the statute that allowed an accomplice to be charged in the death of someone during a commission of a forcible felony.
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