American Handgunner
July 2000 Issue
By: Massad Ayoob
Situation: A crazed armed-robber holds up a market, threatening to kill the young clerks.
Lesson: The rescue shot can be the Good Samaritan's only chance to save innocent lives.
It is a Saturday night, April 10, 1999, in. Forest, Miss. Roy Aultman, Jr., 39, rarely closes the SuperValu himself on weekends. Usually his mom supervises as the staff closes this family-owned, 19,700 sq. ft. supermarket. However, Mom is tired tonight and he suggests she go home early and let him take care of things.
Roy is very solicitous of his mother's health. In 1992, she was alone in her house when home invaders broke in. They shot her five times and left her for dead. She still bears the scars, physical and emotional. Not long thereafter, Roy's dad was killed in a single-vehicle crash. The family believes he had been deliberately run off the road.
The years since had been difficult. With those perpetrators still at large, Roy had learned to live in something close to the psychological state Jeff Cooper had defined as Condition Orange. He was almost never without a gun. He had taught his wife to shoot, and his 13-year-old son had taken to recreational shooting enthusiastically.
Roy, a ruddy-faced blond man of 6'3" and 220 pounds, found that he could easily conceal a full size 1911 under his shirt. He has taken the pistol off and left it in his desk in the managers' cubicle that is not readily accessible to the public. The years of living on "alert status" have made him aware of its absence, and something tells him to put it on.
He does not know at this moment that the impulse to put his gun on is, very soon now, going to preserve innocent human life.
It is 8:10 p.m. Roy takes his favorite .45, a stainless AMT Hardballer with 5" barrel and Pachmayr Signature grips, and slips it in his waistband "Mexican style" behind his right hip, tucking his dress shirt into the belt. On his big frame, the cocked and locked .45 disappears under the shirt.
Then comes the shouted cry that makes his heart leap: "Give me the money!"
It comes from his right, only a few steps away on the other side of the free-standing wall that divides the managers' cubicles from the public area of the food store. Aultman turns, instinctively ducking down, consciously taking an instant to compose himself. It's obvious that this isn't someone playing a joke.
"Give me all the money!"
One young girl is frozen, like a rabbit in the presence of a snake. The enraged gunman smashes his heavy pistol across her face, then takes her by the throat, and lifts her bodily with one powerful arm. He throws her.
She flies through the air, completely clearing the five-foot dividing wall and landing in Aultman's office. She crashes to the floor near Aultman. Sobbing hysterically, she scrambles to her feet and runs out of sight.
As Aultman cautiously assesses the scene, he can see only one perpetrator. It's obviously a man, stockily built. Roy can't see his face, or even his color. The perpetrator is wearing a sweatshirt with hood pulled up, a mask and gloves.
Instead, Aultman's attention tunnels toward the weapon in the man's right hand. It's a silver-colored 1911 identical to his own. The man is standing to Roy's right and pointing the pistol at the two remaining female clerks on Roy's left. The left side of the pistol is presented to him, and the storeowner can see clearly that the hammer is cocked, the safety is off and the finger is on the trigger.
Consciously trying to break out of the tunnel vision, Aultman scans left and right. He can see no other perpetrators, only the husky madman with his finger on the trigger.
Even with the facial features hidden by the mask, Roy can see the man is hyper, strung out, almost vibrating with violent tension. He has thrown the 100-something pound girl over a five-foot wall with one hand, pausing only to pistol-whip her. The pistol is swinging back and forth in a jerky, choppy motion between the other two young clerks. One of them is frozen, and the other is scooping money out of her cash drawer.
Saving the money isn't part of the equation. Aultman likes these young people who work for him, knows he's responsible for their safety and he is certain that in an instant this violent man with his finger on the trigger of a cocked pistol is going to shoot one or both of them.
Carefully, coolly, he takes the gun in both hands, his arms locked out in an isosceles stance, and braces the heel of his support hand on the top of the five-foot separation wall, bending at the waist to do so. He knows something about human anatomy. He knows where he'll have to put the bullet to keep "death throes" from jerking the trigger of that other .45.
Aiming over the top of the gun, he aligns the muzzle and the front sight with the ear of the perpetrator. At a moment when the suspect's gun is between the two victims and not actually pointed at either, Roy Aultman presses the trigger of his AMT straight back, with a smooth certainty born of years of practice.
The normally loud roar of the .45 seems soft and muted to Aultman as the pistol bucks in his hand. The man drops instantly, straight down, like a pile of laundry. The cocked pistol is down too, and harmless now. Blood pours from the head of the motionless, crumpled man. The 220 gr. semi-jacketed Speer bullet has caught the gunman just below the ear, coursing left to right through the lower part of the head where the primal reflexes emanate, and exited the other side. The wound has caused instantaneous collapse with no "post-agonal" response. The attacker has collapsed without a twitch.
He has also been killed instantly. The terror has ended with a single, rescuing gunshot, delivered by an armed citizen from a distance of approximately 11 feet, From the moment that the masked man had burst in the door wielding the big pistol, to the moment he fell dead, no more than 15 seconds have elapsed.
The shooting has gone down in a place of business containing many customers. One of the staff calls the police. Unknown to Aultman, a car pulls up outside containing two men. They glance at the scene inside and then their vehicle pulls away. Correlating the testimony of other witnesses, police will later conclude that these were the two accomplices who had let the gunman out of their car and were waiting for him in a laundromat parking lot across the street.
Aultman picked up the perpetrator's gun and locked it in his office. The police arrived quickly. Aultman's 1911 was still in his hand, pointing at the floor. Recognizing him, the officers holstered their own weapons, and Roy then secured his.
The rest of the scene was Kafkaesque. Customers stood in line expecting to be waited on. Those clerks who weren't too shaken dutifully ran their goods through checkout.
Not a minute and a half after the shooting, one customer walked up to the corpse and stared down at it for a moment, as the lake of blood continued to spread beneath it. The man matter-of-factly said, "Deader'n hell, ain't he?" Then he casually walked from the store.
An officer pulled up the dead man's stocking mask. Beneath it was the face of an African-American man in his late 20s. A rime of white powder was still visible around his nostrils, not yet washed away by the blood.
Outside in the parking lot, some African-American people from the neighborhood clustered. There was muttering: "White man shot a black man in cold blood!" But the mostly-black customers coming outside, who had witnessed the shooting, swiftly quelled the anger. "We saw it. Nobody could tell what color that man was!" "That SOB was pointing his gun at two black girls at the registers! The manager shot him to save their lives!"
The specter of a controversial "cross-racial shooting" faded away quickly, extinguished by the black community itself. African-Americans who lived in town were okay with Roy Aultman and his family. They knew that at least half of the Super-Valu's staff is black, as is up to 70 percent of its customers. The Aultmans have always dealt with them with respect and friendship. Besides, the black witnesses had been correct: no one could have known the gloved, masked man's race until after the shooting, and Aultman's bullet had rescued two young black women who were being terrorized by a violent individual who had already brutally assaulted one young woman. There was no fertile soil for anyone with a personal agenda to plant a race-baiting press conference. That element of the incident simply disappeared.
The police and the district attorney's office saw a clear-cut case of justifiable homicide in defense of innocent persons, and ruled it as such without bothering to submit it to the county Grand Jury that met two months later.
Aultman's pistol, taken as evidence, was returned in due time. The dead man's gun, an AMT Hardballer identical to Aultman's, turned out to have been stolen in a burglary in a nearby community some weeks before.
The robber, age 27 at time of death, had grown up in the area. He'd had a promising start as a high school athlete. But, police and reporters later discovered he had become involved in drugs. The habit led him on a terrible odyssey of big cities and violent crimes, a journey that had ended at last with a single shot from an intended victim's pistol.
Workmen's Comp provided the SuperValu people with a psychologist to help them deal with the trauma. "She understood," Aultman told me softly. "The doctor had been the victim of an armed robbery herself. She was helpful."
No SuperValu employees quit after the incident. The three who were under the gun all personally thanked Aultman for saving their lives.
July 2000 Issue
By: Massad Ayoob
Situation: A crazed armed-robber holds up a market, threatening to kill the young clerks.
Lesson: The rescue shot can be the Good Samaritan's only chance to save innocent lives.
It is a Saturday night, April 10, 1999, in. Forest, Miss. Roy Aultman, Jr., 39, rarely closes the SuperValu himself on weekends. Usually his mom supervises as the staff closes this family-owned, 19,700 sq. ft. supermarket. However, Mom is tired tonight and he suggests she go home early and let him take care of things.
Roy is very solicitous of his mother's health. In 1992, she was alone in her house when home invaders broke in. They shot her five times and left her for dead. She still bears the scars, physical and emotional. Not long thereafter, Roy's dad was killed in a single-vehicle crash. The family believes he had been deliberately run off the road.
The years since had been difficult. With those perpetrators still at large, Roy had learned to live in something close to the psychological state Jeff Cooper had defined as Condition Orange. He was almost never without a gun. He had taught his wife to shoot, and his 13-year-old son had taken to recreational shooting enthusiastically.
Roy, a ruddy-faced blond man of 6'3" and 220 pounds, found that he could easily conceal a full size 1911 under his shirt. He has taken the pistol off and left it in his desk in the managers' cubicle that is not readily accessible to the public. The years of living on "alert status" have made him aware of its absence, and something tells him to put it on.
He does not know at this moment that the impulse to put his gun on is, very soon now, going to preserve innocent human life.
It is 8:10 p.m. Roy takes his favorite .45, a stainless AMT Hardballer with 5" barrel and Pachmayr Signature grips, and slips it in his waistband "Mexican style" behind his right hip, tucking his dress shirt into the belt. On his big frame, the cocked and locked .45 disappears under the shirt.
Then comes the shouted cry that makes his heart leap: "Give me the money!"
It comes from his right, only a few steps away on the other side of the free-standing wall that divides the managers' cubicles from the public area of the food store. Aultman turns, instinctively ducking down, consciously taking an instant to compose himself. It's obvious that this isn't someone playing a joke.
"Give me all the money!"
One young girl is frozen, like a rabbit in the presence of a snake. The enraged gunman smashes his heavy pistol across her face, then takes her by the throat, and lifts her bodily with one powerful arm. He throws her.
She flies through the air, completely clearing the five-foot dividing wall and landing in Aultman's office. She crashes to the floor near Aultman. Sobbing hysterically, she scrambles to her feet and runs out of sight.
As Aultman cautiously assesses the scene, he can see only one perpetrator. It's obviously a man, stockily built. Roy can't see his face, or even his color. The perpetrator is wearing a sweatshirt with hood pulled up, a mask and gloves.
Instead, Aultman's attention tunnels toward the weapon in the man's right hand. It's a silver-colored 1911 identical to his own. The man is standing to Roy's right and pointing the pistol at the two remaining female clerks on Roy's left. The left side of the pistol is presented to him, and the storeowner can see clearly that the hammer is cocked, the safety is off and the finger is on the trigger.
Consciously trying to break out of the tunnel vision, Aultman scans left and right. He can see no other perpetrators, only the husky madman with his finger on the trigger.
Even with the facial features hidden by the mask, Roy can see the man is hyper, strung out, almost vibrating with violent tension. He has thrown the 100-something pound girl over a five-foot wall with one hand, pausing only to pistol-whip her. The pistol is swinging back and forth in a jerky, choppy motion between the other two young clerks. One of them is frozen, and the other is scooping money out of her cash drawer.
Saving the money isn't part of the equation. Aultman likes these young people who work for him, knows he's responsible for their safety and he is certain that in an instant this violent man with his finger on the trigger of a cocked pistol is going to shoot one or both of them.
Carefully, coolly, he takes the gun in both hands, his arms locked out in an isosceles stance, and braces the heel of his support hand on the top of the five-foot separation wall, bending at the waist to do so. He knows something about human anatomy. He knows where he'll have to put the bullet to keep "death throes" from jerking the trigger of that other .45.
Aiming over the top of the gun, he aligns the muzzle and the front sight with the ear of the perpetrator. At a moment when the suspect's gun is between the two victims and not actually pointed at either, Roy Aultman presses the trigger of his AMT straight back, with a smooth certainty born of years of practice.
The normally loud roar of the .45 seems soft and muted to Aultman as the pistol bucks in his hand. The man drops instantly, straight down, like a pile of laundry. The cocked pistol is down too, and harmless now. Blood pours from the head of the motionless, crumpled man. The 220 gr. semi-jacketed Speer bullet has caught the gunman just below the ear, coursing left to right through the lower part of the head where the primal reflexes emanate, and exited the other side. The wound has caused instantaneous collapse with no "post-agonal" response. The attacker has collapsed without a twitch.
He has also been killed instantly. The terror has ended with a single, rescuing gunshot, delivered by an armed citizen from a distance of approximately 11 feet, From the moment that the masked man had burst in the door wielding the big pistol, to the moment he fell dead, no more than 15 seconds have elapsed.
The shooting has gone down in a place of business containing many customers. One of the staff calls the police. Unknown to Aultman, a car pulls up outside containing two men. They glance at the scene inside and then their vehicle pulls away. Correlating the testimony of other witnesses, police will later conclude that these were the two accomplices who had let the gunman out of their car and were waiting for him in a laundromat parking lot across the street.
Aultman picked up the perpetrator's gun and locked it in his office. The police arrived quickly. Aultman's 1911 was still in his hand, pointing at the floor. Recognizing him, the officers holstered their own weapons, and Roy then secured his.
The rest of the scene was Kafkaesque. Customers stood in line expecting to be waited on. Those clerks who weren't too shaken dutifully ran their goods through checkout.
Not a minute and a half after the shooting, one customer walked up to the corpse and stared down at it for a moment, as the lake of blood continued to spread beneath it. The man matter-of-factly said, "Deader'n hell, ain't he?" Then he casually walked from the store.
An officer pulled up the dead man's stocking mask. Beneath it was the face of an African-American man in his late 20s. A rime of white powder was still visible around his nostrils, not yet washed away by the blood.
Outside in the parking lot, some African-American people from the neighborhood clustered. There was muttering: "White man shot a black man in cold blood!" But the mostly-black customers coming outside, who had witnessed the shooting, swiftly quelled the anger. "We saw it. Nobody could tell what color that man was!" "That SOB was pointing his gun at two black girls at the registers! The manager shot him to save their lives!"
The specter of a controversial "cross-racial shooting" faded away quickly, extinguished by the black community itself. African-Americans who lived in town were okay with Roy Aultman and his family. They knew that at least half of the Super-Valu's staff is black, as is up to 70 percent of its customers. The Aultmans have always dealt with them with respect and friendship. Besides, the black witnesses had been correct: no one could have known the gloved, masked man's race until after the shooting, and Aultman's bullet had rescued two young black women who were being terrorized by a violent individual who had already brutally assaulted one young woman. There was no fertile soil for anyone with a personal agenda to plant a race-baiting press conference. That element of the incident simply disappeared.
The police and the district attorney's office saw a clear-cut case of justifiable homicide in defense of innocent persons, and ruled it as such without bothering to submit it to the county Grand Jury that met two months later.
Aultman's pistol, taken as evidence, was returned in due time. The dead man's gun, an AMT Hardballer identical to Aultman's, turned out to have been stolen in a burglary in a nearby community some weeks before.
The robber, age 27 at time of death, had grown up in the area. He'd had a promising start as a high school athlete. But, police and reporters later discovered he had become involved in drugs. The habit led him on a terrible odyssey of big cities and violent crimes, a journey that had ended at last with a single shot from an intended victim's pistol.
Workmen's Comp provided the SuperValu people with a psychologist to help them deal with the trauma. "She understood," Aultman told me softly. "The doctor had been the victim of an armed robbery herself. She was helpful."
No SuperValu employees quit after the incident. The three who were under the gun all personally thanked Aultman for saving their lives.
