A mother and daughter working at a liquor store found themselves in a fight for their lives when a robber with a shotgun entered the store. In a brilliant display of bravery, the women emerged with guns of their own and started to fire away.
An armed robber was no match for a mother-daughter duo in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The harrowing event was captured on video showing the robber, later identified as Tyrone Lee, waltzing into Forest Acres Liquor Store while armed with a sawed-off shotgun. The store owner, Tina Ring, and her daughter, Ashley Lee, appeared to comply at first with the gunman.
The video shows Ashley opening up the register and then putting her hands up as he rifles through the money. But when he tried to take off with the money, Ashley grabbed a pistol from underneath the register and handed it to her mother. Before the robber got to the door, the duo hit their security system, which automatically locks all doors. He headed back towards the two women.
Tina Ring fired at Tyrone Lee, but he kept coming at them. At one point, he wrestled the gun from Ring and pistol-whipped her, leaving her with a wound to her head that required seven staples to close. Ashley Lee fired at him with her own gun before he eventually gave up. He arrived at a nearby hospital in critical condition.
“All I saw was his hood and a mask over his face and he said, ‘It’s a robbery,’ and I said, ‘It’s a what,’” Tina Ring said. In the surveillance video, you can see the masked man walk inside and point a gun, then take money from the cash register and appear to leave, but the ordeal was far from over.
“When he came over here, you know, and we’re squatted down and I’m thinking he’s gone, and then it’s just like there he is, and there’s his face and his shotgun again, and it’s just like, yeah,” Tina added. The store owner also said after she fired the first shot it looks like Tyrone Lee is walking away, but she said he turned and acted like he was coming back, so she kept shooting.
“I just didn’t have a whole lot of time to think other than just stop, stop,” Tina said. But he didn’t stop. “I just kept pulling the trigger, and I just kept pulling it, and I kept pulling it and kept pulling it. So, to make sure that it was empty, and then eventually he ended up getting my gun, and, I guess he come up from behind me and he hit me in the head. I got like seven staples,” she added. “I thought he was going to kill us.”
Eventually, you can see Ashley Lee shoot Tyrone Lee as he was pistol-whipping her mother. The mother and daughter team ran outside to safety, happy to be alive. “I’m just blessed that she looked out for me the way that I would look out for her,” Ashley said. According to KOTV, Tyrone Lee was a suspect in multiple armed robberies in Tulsa.
According to KTUL, Tyrone Lee pleaded guilty to four counts related to the robbery and was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison. “Violent criminals like Tyrone Lee are a threat to the lives of every Oklahoman. This robbery could have ended in tragedy, but it ended with justice,” said U.S. Attorney Trent Shores. “We are pleased the court handed down a sentence of 22 years in federal prison. Chalk this up as another success story for Project Safe Neighborhoods, as another ‘Alpha criminal’ was removed from our Tulsa streets.”
