Another criminal finds out the hard way that it is unwise to try and rob people in Texas.
A customer at Ranchito Taqueria shot and killed a man who robbed the restaurant in southwest Houston late Thursday night, according to the Houston Police Department.
It happened just before 11:30 p.m. Thursday at the restaurant on S. Gessner near Bellaire Boulevard.
Bellaire at Gessner is right where working classic Hispanic Houston meets Asian Houston, with a Hispanic Fiesta supermarket, Strake Jesuit (one of Houston’s premiere private Catholic high schools), and a Chinatown all within a few blocks.
Houston police said the armed man in a mask came inside the restaurant, demanding money and wallets from customers. However, as he was leaving, one of those customers shot the suspect.
The incident was caught on surveillance video.
Houston police also released surveillance photos of the customer who shot the robber in the video. Investigators said he is wanted for questioning for his role in the shooting. He has not been identified and is not charged at this time.
Seeing as how Houston’s legal system as started getting infected with social justice, I don’t see how turning himself in for questioning would be in the shooter’s best interest.
The shooter collected the stolen money from the robber and returned it to the other patrons, police said. Then the rest of the people in the restaurant left the scene before the police arrived.
Colion Noir has a reaction video, and why he thinks it’s a righteous shoot:
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes…
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Tags: Colion Noir, Crime, defensive gun use, Guns, Houston, self-defense, Texas, video
IMO It looked like a righteous shoot, right up to when the perp was down; then our hero continued to fire, including a closeup final ninth — ninth! — round apparently execution-style into the baddie’s head. That’s about five or six rounds too many, after the threat was over. Our hero is facing second-degree murder charges if apprehended, unless there’s something not obvious in the video. The bro’s in the joint might not be in a friendly mood. His face is on the video. If he paid for his meal with a credit card, if someone IDs him, if there’s parking lot video, he’s in deep, deep ****.
If similarly-inclined young bangers were paying attention, they might realize many people are very fed up, and not feeling merciful. Also, for those of us who do pay attention, there are PO’d guys all around you who you don’t want to get into it with. Armed society s/be a polite society. right?
Seriously, they blurred the guns in the video??
re: Etaoin Shrdlu
Once you start firing, keep firing until you’re absolutely sure the target has expired. At least he didn’t reload.
Etaoin Shrdlu,aka soyboy maximus, tells us to many shots were fired. I was always told to empty the magazine into an enemy, bullets are cheap compared to getting return fire. By the way Maximus, I was also trained two in center mass one to the head.
I’d love to see them round up 12 soy boys in Houston, skippy. Texas isn’t NY, Chicago, Portland. Play stupid games win stupid prizes.
My guess is either a statute for this man or a medal. For the sewer dweller, immortality as the idiot who thought he could pull off a robbery armed with a toy gun in Texas.
Guys find the complete, unblurred video. It’s on Twitter. Nine shots fired. The last one is to the robber’s head, from very close. Find an “expert” on the web blessing your insane understandings of this. You are accountable to the law for each round you fire. One round too many and your butt is going to prison. Have fun becoming intimately acquainted with your new friends.
Adrenaline dumps are hell. Got it. But you’re not Judge Dredd.
Shot the guy in the back. No audio so I don’t know if the shooter warned the perp, but still nine in the back seems a bit extreme.
8 shots might plausibly be argued to be self-defense. The perpetrator pointed his gun at the man and he was defending himself. However, it’s gonna be the 9th shot, the one in the perp’s head, that’s gonna put this guy in jail for the rest of his life. There was absolutely no justification for that shot. The perp was incapacitated at the time. The 9th head shot was simply an execution. Nothing more nothing less.
And before anyone gets on my case for saying that I have no problem that this perpetrator is dead. I’m just stating the facts. If he had stopped at 8 shots he might be fine legally. He didn’t. He had to put that last bullet in the perp’s head for whatever reason.
@Garrett Stasse
I’ve seen the whole unedited video with the sound. He did not give a warning. He pulled his weapon and started shooting. And then got up and walked toward the perpetrator while still shooting.
And as I’ve said before, the first eight shots might plausibly be argued as self-defense. But the ninth shot to the head is what’s going to put the guy in jail.
This is what happens when you have a society where the criminal is king.
The normal person does the math: If I shoot to wound this guy, he might sue me. More than likely, if I do that, the criminal will go to trial, get slapped on the wrist, and then be out on the streets as a threat to others in very short order. Nothing to be gained by letting him live, in other words.
Being as the risk/reward factor for being “humane” is now skewing away from mercy, do you really expect anything else?
I’m waiting for someone to get picked up for killing a violent criminal in one of these situations to make the affirmative defense of “Well, you guys in the judicial system aren’t doing anything to prevent this guy from coming after me again, so I just killed him to put an end to that threat…”
Which, I hate to say it, is a rational response. This ain’t taking us anywhere good…
I’ve taken multiple training sessions on self-defense, and all of them have the following 4 “easily popped balloons” that are required at every moment to make a successful self-defense claim. In (extremely) abbreviated form they are:
– Reluctant participant
– Immediate danger of death/grievous bodily injury
– No lesser force will stop the attack
– No practical retreat
Using these legal criteria as a basis for judging each shot, it is seen that the first 4 shots are completely justified. The second set of 4 might be somewhat more difficult to justify, but given that the robber was still moving and in possession of his weapon would probably be given a pass.
It’s that 9th and final shot that cannot be justified as self-defense. The shooter has paused in his shooting, the robber is down on the ground and is incapacitated, the shooter has actually picked up the robber’s firearm (fake or not is totally irrelevant), and then with time to think about his action, has fired the final shot into the robber’s head in an execution. Not a SINGLE ONE of the required criteria is met at that time to justify the homicide.
No wonder the local cops are “looking to interview him…no criminal charges are pending” (yet). He’ll be charged with some sort of homicide, depending on the state laws, as soon as he’s found. Given that they have video of him and his truck, I’m surprised he hasn’t been arrested already. I feel bad for him, since (as H. Beam Piper once noted), “Not shooting a thief is the same as encouraging him”, but that’s not the law in the US.
I’ve been carrying a firearm every day for the past 18 years and have never had to draw it from my holster except to fire it at the range or to clean it, and I pray that I never have to. But if I do, I don’t want the example of this person to be used against me for a justifiable shooting.
I was a crim def lawyer for a time, handled some self-D gun cases like this. Also am a gun owner/carrier, and helped teach a few carry classes. (Not in Texas, but the laws are similar.)
If this guy came to me for lawyering help after this shoot, I’d tell him that my goal would be to minimize the time he was going to serve, but that he should expect some time.
The fact that the perp had a BB-gun is going to hurt the case, even though the shooter couldn’t have known this. A jury will know, and the perp is going to seem less monstrous and less deserving of death.
I think you’re going to see a lot more of this sort of thing, going forward.
People see the “justice system” breaking down, all around them. Once enough of them reach the conclusion that calling 911 is useless and that involving the courts is a waste of time, then they’re going to quit. It will be gradual at first, and then it will be all at once.
Vigilante action won’t be the thing to worry about. The thing to worry about will be the casual way people are going to stop calling the cops, and start taking care of business themselves.
The death of Ahmaud Arbery is a perfect example of this; the day he was killed wasn’t the first time he’d been in that neighborhood, nor was it the first time people noticed him doing suspicious stuff. The cops had been called; they basically said “Hey, can’t do squat… Sorry! Need evidence!”
That’s why Arbery died that day. It wasn’t “vigilantes looking to kill them some poor innocent black man…”, it was the cops and the justice system first not doing their damn jobs. The cops and the other idiots that chose not to deal with the Arbery situation before it “got big” are the ones who should have been in the dock, right next to the guys who actually shot him.
Maintaining public order is what we’re paying them for. If they won’t do it, something else will take that place, and you’re not going to like whatever that is, because it’s going to be random, nasty, and entirely inhumane. What the numpties and luvvies don’t realize here is this: They’re not actually acting in the long-term interest of all those downtrodden folk who make up the criminal classes. What they are actually doing is creating the conditions for the current relatively merciful system to go away, completely.
The shooter has spoken to authorities and the case is being sent to a Grand Jury to determine if charges should be brought. I don’t particularly disagree with some of the legal analysis in comments, but the jury pool will be interesting. I’ve been on a Harris County jury that convicted a guy for aggravated sexual assault of a child (adopted daughter). We had two women on the jury that had reservation in convicting, not because they had reasonable doubt, but ordinary doubt from uncertainty. This was over a decade before this criminal friendly justice system we seem to have now.
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