Wednesday, January 26, 2005

A SCUM-STOPPER

On Friday, 24-year-old Johnny Lee Williams scowled as he was led away in shackles. On Saturday, his mug shot from inside the Cochise County Jail shows the same angry demeanor. Williams is a former decorated Marine who served one tour in Operation Iraqi Freedom during 2003. The Pentagon says he received a bad conduct discharge for marijuana use last February.

Willams had recently been living in his hometown of Tyler, Texas, where he allegedly kidnapped 19-year-old Wal-Mart employee Megan Holden as she was leaving work Wednesday night. On Saturday... Holden's body was found in a ditch near Stanton, Texas.

An APB had been out on Holden's truck since the kidnapping. Early Friday morning, a Willcox police officer spotted the truck, and Williams outside a local hospital, ending the interstate manhunt.

So why was our black gentleman at the hospital? Because his next act was an attempted holdup of a gun-owner named Ritchie:

[Ritchie] says, "I just drew and fired." His one shot went thru 24-year-old Johnny Williams's shoulder and through the cinder block of the building.

Ritchie doesn't want his last name known. He says the suspect walked into the Mountain View RV Park in Bowie at 5:45 a.m. and told him this was a robbery and to give him all the money in the cash register. Ritchie says, "I saw his gun coming out. He reached inside his sweatshirt. I saw a gun and I said 'Oh well, time to react.' I reacted faster than he did." Ritchie told Eywitness News 4 that after he shot the suspect, he called 911, looked out the window, and saw the would-be robber running through the parking lot and getting into his parked truck.

Ritchie was the wrong man to mess with. His weapons instructor told Eyewitness News 4 that all the locals know he carries a sidearm. "We've never been robbed, seeing it changes a lot of people's attitude. It's an attitude-adjustment tool," Ritchie says. It's that tool, Ritchie says, that saved his life and probably the lives of others. "He put my life in danger by drawing his weapon. He brought on it himself."

See here and here





Super wacky! UN pressed to adopt treaty on global gun tracing: "Arms control activists urged U.N. treaty writers on Monday to approve a system for tracking small arms sales around the world, saying it was easier to track lost airline luggage than a machine gun.Amnesty International, Oxfam International and the International Action Network on Small Arms called for a legally binding global marking and tracing treaty covering small arms and ammunition at the start of a two-week U.N. conference weighing how to deal with the problem."

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