By Massad Ayoob at the American Handgunner.
The American Handgunner is worth subscribing to. Massad Ayoob is a great source of information about guns and tactics.
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May 15, 2015. In a suburb of Jackson, Miss., Larry
Goldstein, MD, is in his open garage, loading his pickup truck. A successful
gynecologist, his sleepless years in residency and dedication to his
long-standing practice have rewarded him with a large, expensive home.
Unfortunately, criminals are drawn to signs of money.
His personal sport for the last five years has been
competitive shooting. He is on his way to a USPSA match. He has just put his
gear bag in the back seat of the quad cab. In it are two CZ Shadow 9mm pistols,
several magazines of 9mm, and enough ammo for the whole match. He hears a noise
sounding like a squirrel on the eaves, and suddenly he is confronted by two strange
men wearing bandannas over their faces.
The nearest, a broad-chested guy about 5' 10", shoves a
long barreled stainless-steel revolver in his face. Larry makes it for a .357
Magnum. He can see the noses of the live cartridges in the front of the
cylinder. The man snarls, “You know what this is?” Larry replies as calmly as
he can, “It’s a gun.” Predictably, the next words from the man are, “We want
your money!”
Larry’s gun safe is visible in the garage. The guy with the
revolver spins him around, grabs him by the shirt, and forces him toward the
safe with the gun’s muzzle at the back of his head. He orders him to open it.
Larry’s shaky hands don’t get the combination right at first, and he tries to
explain. “You’re lyin’! We’re gonna shoot you!” He finally manages to get the
combination right. The intruders start grabbing stuff. There are at least two
AR15s in the safe, including a .223, but the one they grab is a Smith &
Wesson M&P chambered for .22 LR. They grab a handful of AR magazines and a
few handguns and stuff them into a backpack.
They march him into the house, his hands behind his head and
the revolver still at the nape of his neck. Larry does not have a gun on his person.
He has earned black belts earlier in his life in Hapkido and Tae Kwon Do. He
knows enough to realize a disarming attempt on one of the men will leave him
vulnerable to the other. He bides his time. They walk through the bedroom, past
Larry’s sleeping wife. He cannot find his billfold — it will later turn up in a
pair of pants he was wearing the day before — and the robbers satisfy
themselves by pulling all the money from his wife’s purse. Without waking Mrs.
Goldstein, they march Larry out of the house. Their plan is to make him drive
them to an ATM and empty his account.
At the pickup, the second man tries to load the AR15 and
realizes he can’t fit a .223 magazine into a .22 LR. They make him get a
magazine fitting the rifle. Both robbers get into the back seat, the revolver
still aimed at the base of his skull, and order him to take them to the bank’s
drive-up ATM.
Going Mobile
Dr. Goldstein experiences a “water, water everywhere and not
a drop to drink” moment. Like many armed citizens (and off-duty cops) he has
presumed staging guns reasonably close in the home or vehicle will be adequate.
In the console is a Walther PPK .380. In the driver’s door pocket of his pickup
are a Ruger LCP .380 and a GLOCK 19. All are loaded.
He assesses his odds if he reaches for one as he drives.
Both robbers are in the back seat, the smaller man (about 5' 7", 150 lbs.)
has put a full magazine into the .22 caliber AR, and Larry has to presume him
to be armed even though he hasn’t spotted a weapon of the suspect’s own yet.
The other, directly behind Larry in the rear passenger seat,
has the decidedly loaded revolver he’s kept pointed at Larry’s head. The
bandits have the case between them containing two CZ 9mms and mags and ammo. At
the wheel, he can’t see them both at the same time in the rear-view mirror. If
he conspicuously turns around to look at them, it will tip them off and put
them on alert.
Either of them will be able to clearly see if he reaches for
the Walther, so the console gun is out. He might be able to slip one of the
pistols out of the door pocket with his non-dominant left hand but shooting
backward over his shoulder will be awkward and difficult, and he’ll be unlikely
to be able to neutralize both before one of them can kill him. The logical strategy
still seems to be, “Bide your time.”
At The ATM
The robbers ask him how much money he has in his ATM card
account. Larry answers truthfully, “About $12,000.” They yell at him, “You’re lying!
You live in that big house! You’ve got to have more money!”
They pull up to the ATM. The security camera will be able to
identify only Larry. The masked men in the back seat are largely shielded by
the truck’s tinted windows; perhaps they had this in mind when they chose to
seat themselves where they did. Larry believes he can only withdraw a thousand
dollars per day and tells them so. The refrain comes again, “You’re lyin’!
We’re gonna shoot ya! We want it all!” Larry answers as calmly as he can, “We
can’t get it all.” They tell him to try for $1,500.
It takes Larry a while to punch in the numbers. The machine
won’t give him $1,500. He tries for $500, gets it, then gets another $500. He
tries a third time but hits the wrong buttons, and the machine only gives him
$20. Apparently fixated on the stated amount, the robber with the revolver
tells him, “Get $480!” He does. They’re satisfied. They tell him to drive.
As the truck is rolling, the larger criminal tells him,
“Okay, we’re gonna take your truck. Go to the woods behind your house … We’re
going back to your house and get your wife.” He adds, “We’re gonna put you in
the trunk.” Larry has already complied with their order to give him the opening
code to their gate, and he knows he has had to leave the house unlocked.
As a medical doctor Larry Goldstein has spent his career
diagnosing. The diagnosis of this particular problem is excruciatingly clear.
Drive to the woods. Go to the house and get your wife. We’re gonna put you in
the trunk of a pickup truck that has no trunk.
He realizes they’re going to murder him, go back to the
house, and probably murder his unsuspecting wife.
The stakes of the game have just gone up and Larry Goldstein
knows there is only one card left to play.
Steering with his right hand, he unobtrusively reaches down
with his left, lifts the GLOCK 19 from the door pocket, and surreptitiously
slips it under his left thigh.
Last Resort
They reach a spot in the woods behind Larry’s house. They
order him to stop. He does so. They order him to get out of the car.
As he opens the driver’s door, Larry lifts his left thigh
enough to discreetly pick up the GLOCK with his right hand. As he alights on
the ground, the man with the revolver opens the door behind Larry’s and
prepares to step out, as his accomplice comes out of the right rear door.
Larry Goldstein channels his five years of USPSA, sweeps the
9mm up rapidly into a two-handed stance, and opens fire.
He’s shooting as fast as he can. He can see the gunman
starting to fall backward, can see a window on the right side of the car shatter
as one of his bullets passes through his antagonist and strikes the glass. The
robber falls backward on the rear seat, his gun still in a hand that has fallen
limply down.
Larry turns toward the second threat. The other man is
running away. Larry fires three shots at him, from about 30 yards. The masked
man disappears from view.
Larry turns his attention to the downed gunman. He sees the
revolver is still in his hand, snatches it away, and puts it out of the man’s
reach. He grabs the blood-soaked gunman and pulls his body out of the car. The
experienced MD knows a dead man when he sees one. The gunman has been hit twice
in the abdomen, twice in the chest and once in the head.
The remaining thug is running in the direction of the
Goldstein home. All Larry can think of is his wife’s safety. He jumps behind
the wheel of his pickup and goes after him.
In moments, Larry has eyes on him again. The perpetrator is
getting into a tan SUV, apparently the getaway car, he has parked near the
church close to Larry’s home. He starts it and begins to drive away. Larry aims
his G19 and fires three rounds at the vehicle. It disappears from his view.
It’s not heading toward his house; he lets it go.
They’ve taken his iPhone. Larry Goldstein drives his truck
to the nearest house, knocks on the door, and asks the lady who answers the
door to call police. She hands him a phone. He first calls his wife, telling
her to lock the doors. Then he calls 9-1-1 and gives a brief description of
what has happened.
The first act of the deadly play is over. The second now
begins.
Immediate Aftermath
The scene not being exactly downtown, it took police 20
minutes to arrive. When he saw them coming, Dr. Goldstein unloaded the GLOCK,
set it in the truck and stepped away from it. Patrol officers and detectives
alike were professional and understanding.
A crowd had formed. Having called his wife to reassure her,
Larry phoned a friend he was supposed to pick up to go to the match with him.
The friend called a mutual friend, an attorney, to meet them at police
headquarters. One of the officers drove him there — in the front seat of the
patrol car, un-cuffed. With legal counsel by his side, Larry told detectives
what had happened. At one point the chief of police arrived. “How are you
doing?” he asked Larry. “Not very good,” the doctor replied. “Don’t worry,
you’re going to be all right,” the chief said.
The chief had told him no lie.
Long Term Aftermath
Larry was never arrested, never sued, and never had to pay a
penny in legal fees. His lawyer friend refused to bill him. He got his guns
back in about a week. The escaped suspect was captured within a few days. He
had used his personal vehicle as a getaway car and had taken it to an auto body
shop to repair the bullet holes and shattered window caused by Larry’s gunfire.
“I thought he’d be charged with felony murder,” Larry told American Handgunner later,
“but the charges were kidnapping, armed robbery, and home invasion.” Legal
proceedings dragged on, as they often do. “In December 2018,” says Larry, “he
was convicted on all counts. His sentence added up to about 80 years. He’ll be
eligible for parole in 40.”
Dr. Goldstein got a new truck out of the deal. His had
become evidence, necessarily stored with the windows up in an impound lot in
Mississippi heat. The rear cabin was soaked with blood. Blood is tissue. Tissue
rots. The insurance adjuster opened the door, gagged at the stench, and
blurted, “It’s totaled.”
Needless to say, the incident left an emotional mark. “The
next morning when I woke up, it really dawned on me what could have happened,
and I lost it,” he remembers. “I was a basket case for a while. Every time I
thought about the incident, it really upset me. Later, I went to the family
burial plot, and was overwhelmed at how close I had come to joining them.”
One of the first things he did when he got home was to put a
.45 caliber GLOCK 30 where he could reach it immediately. Was the dead man a gang-banger,
with buddies who would seek revenge? He didn’t know, but he had to consider the
possibility and provide for it. The hypervigilance remained for quite a while,
and never entirely went away, even though no reprisals materialized.
“I went to a psychologist, and studied up on post-traumatic
stress disorder,” Larry comments. “I lost appetite. I had trouble sleeping. I
did have a few dreams related to the incident.” Before long, he and his wife
sold the house and moved. Friends and family were extremely supportive. So, he remembers,
were the police and the prosecutor’s office.
A competitive shooter, Larry had never felt a need to take a
defense oriented class. This changed. His 25-minute ordeal sent him on a long odyssey
of training, all the way to instructorship; in fact, he and I met when he took
my MAG-40 class at the superb Boondocks training facility in Mississippi. He
has found sharing with others the lessons of what he went through to be
therapeutic.
Lessons
The doctor’s short-term hypervigilance settled into simply …
vigilance. Larry feels the biggest lesson he learned was the importance of
being alert and aware and avoiding complacency. He now carries a gun on his person
almost all of his waking hours and is seldom far from one. “I don’t step out to
pick up my newspaper or take out the trash without a gun on,” he says
adamantly.
If he had tried to fight earlier than he did, when the odds
against him were all but hopeless, he would probably have been murdered and
very likely his wife would have been, too. Larry was wise to give them reasons
to keep him alive (getting money from the ATM on a weekend), to lull them into
complacency with his compliance, and yet be ready to do what had to be done
when the moment came.
He feels his competition experience definitely helped him
win the fight with the men who were almost certainly going to murder him. When
the time came to shoot, he performed on auto pilot: two-handed, eye level, hits
sufficiently fast, accurate and voluminous to keep a deadly opponent from pulling
the trigger of the revolver in his hand. Larry had been shooting USPSA for five
years when the incident took place. He has continued competition to this day.
He’s glad he reached for the GLOCK instead of the seven- or
eight-shot .380s also within reach. The G19 contained a GLOCK 17 magazine, for
a total of eighteen 9mm rounds including the one in the chamber. It still had
ammo on board after his three volleys of gunfire. The cartridges were match
rounds, mild 147-gr. round nose FMJ handloads. His defense guns have modern
defensive ammo in them today.
When Larry tells his story, one of the first questions he
gets is “Didn’t you get in trouble for shooting at the fleeing felon?” The
answer is, he didn’t, and this bears some explanation. The man he shot at had
committed, not just a felony, but a “heinous felony against the person”:
kidnapping. They had given him every reason to believe they intended to murder
him. They’d explicitly stated they were next going to get his wife, who was
sleeping in an unlocked house while the felon had the combination to the
security gate. Larry was without communications, and no other reasonable means
of capture seemed feasible. He could not identify the suspect — the only
description he could give was a masked African-American man of average size —
and if he was not stopped he was likely to remain at large indefinitely.
Finally, the cornerstone of the United States Supreme
Court’s decision in Garner v. Tennessee was even police should only use deadly force
on fleeing felons if their continued freedom constituted a clear and present
danger to innocent human life. Larry had ample reason to consider this man
armed and extremely dangerous. Remember, the thugs had told him they were going
back to his house where they all knew Mrs. Goldstein was. While Garner was a
civil case and involved police, it remains the defining statement on the mood of
our highest court on the use of deadly force on fleeing felons. It is why I
think, in this particular set of circumstances, Larry’s actions would have been
defensible in court … and it’s probably why the investigating officers and the
prosecutors had no problem with Larry’s final shots. Those last three shots,
remember, were important factors in the ultimate capture of the surviving thug.
A last important lesson is it’s BS to think “I live in a
nice neighborhood, so I don’t need to keep a gun at hand.” Au contraire: Larry
lived in a fine home in a very nice neighborhood and this was one reason he was
targeted! We can’t overlook how many times they told him a guy with a house as
big as his should have lots of money on hand. The nice neighborhoods are where
the best stuff is to steal.
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