This young man surely didn’t make the best choices in life. A. White, 18-year-old from Alabama, proved this once again when he tried to rob a local Dollar Store while he was out on bond for a shooting.
While trying to rob the store, there was a good Samaritan who was also shopping at the Family Dollar store at the time.
When the unnamed good Samaritan noticed a masked gunman, he knew he should take an action. “He had the gun to his head. He had him on his knees,” the man recalled, describing the scene that played out in front of him involving White and the employee. “I drew my gun on him and I said, ‘Hey don’t move.’”
White didn’t listen. As the good Samaritan recalled, “At that point, he swung around, and before he had a chance to aim the gun at me, I fired.” Although he “didn’t want to shoot him,” the concealed carrying savior pumped out five rounds, dropping the would-be robber to the ground. Those five rounds struck White in undisclosed locations, and he was rushed to a nearby hospital to be treated for gunshot wounds.
He survived, and while it’s understandable that parents and family members would be emotional had their child or loved one almost been killed, most would also be furious that their kid, who’s actually an adult and should know better, put themselves in that position.
Not White’s family, though. They were furious alright, but not with White, who was already a repeat offender at that point. Instead, their anger lied with the good Samaritan who shot the robbery suspect.
Instead of the whole “actions have consequences” conversation that they should have been having following the shooting that White brought on himself, his family voiced outrage that the boy had been shot “unnecessarily.”
Speaking of the customer who shot White, an unidentified female member of the boy’s family said:
“If his life was not in danger, if no one had a gun up to him, if no one pointed a gun at him – what gives him the right to think that it’s okay to just shoot someone? You should have just left the store and went wherever you had to go in your car or whatever.”
The good Samaritan will not be charged with breaking any laws in the intervention, but the conflict does bring up an interesting question with the conflicting views expressed.
