While working the graveyard shift, a gas station clerk proved unwilling to end up buried when a man pointed a gun at him and his customers. Feeling as though he had no other choice, the clerk pulled out his own firearm and blasted the armed robber. He’s since learned his fate for shooting the suspect.
A gas station clerk, only identified by the first name Brian, was working the graveyard shift at the Chevron gas station in Avondale, Arizona when he found himself facing off with an armed robbery suspect. The would-be robber reportedly entered the store on 107th Avenue and Indian School Road at approximately 5 am on a Wednesday morning, and it didn’t take long for Brian to realize the man had bad intentions.
After barging into the Chevron gas station with his face covered, the suspect began waving a handgun, blabbering about “money,” and mumbling the word “rob.” Although the face covering made the man’s demands nearly unintelligible, Brian said it was apparent what was happening. The Chevron gas station was being robbed.
“In all reality, he didn’t need to say anything,” Brian told Fox 10 Pheonix. “The moment he pointed the gun at me, it was pretty obvious what he was there for.”
Unwilling to watch himself or his customers end up dead and buried, Brian waited for an opportunity to act, and then, he saw it. According to police, the “suspect became distracted by another person in the store.” When the armed robber took aim at a customer, the clerk reckoned that it was pretty obvious what he had to do. Brian, who said he had been long trained with a gun, pulled his own firearm and fired, striking and injuring the suspect.
“I had the opening to pull my gun and shoot,” Brian recalled, according to KPNX. “That’s pretty much the whole thing.”
Thanks to Brian’s quick thinking, no one was hurt, except the suspected armed robber who was blasted by the store clerk and taken to a hospital in critical condition. “Everybody is fine,” an employee at the Chevron station told The Arizona Republic, referring to staff and customers.
As for Brian, the Chevron gas station clerk admitted that he isn’t happy that he had to shoot someone. However, he put the blame directly on the suspect.
“I’m not happy I had to shoot him, but I’m not stressing. The moment he pulled the gun on me he set the situation and I just followed it. He made the situation what it was,” the clerk declared.
Thankfully, investigators said Brian will not be charged for the shooting, The Blaze reported, but the outlet added that Joshua Black, an employment attorney, said fellow clerks should avoid following in Brian’s footsteps, despite the outcome of the incident, even though Black admits that employers may not be liable for failing to protect you if you get injured during a robbery.
“My advice would be to someone working at a gas station would be, do not carry a gun,” Joshua Black, an employment attorney, suggested to AZ Family. “Do not bring a gun. There is nothing at that job that is worth risking your life,” he said. When asked what responsibility companies have to protect their workers in these dangerous encounters, he explained, “If an employee is working and someone robs them and they’re harmed in that process, the workplace has something called workplace compensation which has them covered for certain type of injuries.” However, liability is limited if these dangers are “unforeseeable,” Black admitted. “Just because that job, you’re more likely to be at a job where you get injured or held up or rob you, that in of itself does not make the employer liable. There has got to be something that’s extra bad about the situation,” he said. “That’s going to be the difference. Is there something more liable that is foreseen, and if it was, did they take steps to prevent it?”
With no shortage of robbery survivors in the news as well as those who have saved innocent lives by being armed, many might feel compelled to discredit the employment attorney’s advice for the same reasoning he gave; namely, a job isn’t worth risking your life. As many have proven time and again, the best way to ensure you stand the chance to make it out alive is to be ready to meet deadly force with deadly force if the need for self-defense arises.
Often, this means carrying a gun, which has been referred to as the “great equalizer,” meaning a small person with a firearm stands a chance against a much larger nemesis when they otherwise wouldn’t. It’s really a matter of whether or not you are willing to shoot or be shot. I know which I’d rather if it came down to it, and apparently, Brian did as well.
