At about 3:30 p.m., four individuals wearing ski masks entered the store in the 700 block of Indian Hill Boulevard, Pomona police Lt. Iain Miller said.
In response, the person working inside the store fired a shotgun, prompting the masked individuals to flee.
As officers investigated, they learned the homeowner saw a shadow near a window and believed someone was trying to gain entry. The homeowner told deputies that he was armed and fired his weapon, apparently shooting the individual attempting to enter the residence.
Officials said the man killed was a 67-year-old man who had also been living in the Saint David area.
Police found 34-year-old Carson Helmling with a gunshot wound to the chest.
Police say Helmling owned the home. He had gotten into an argument with two people his brother had allowed to stay there. Officers say Helmling tried to get them to leave and swung a board at them.
Police say based on evidence and statements from witnesses, the shooting was done in self-defense.
After reviewing video footage, authorities learned that the victim arrived in the area in a dark SUV, got out and confronted another person. That’s when the suspect pulled out a handgun and shot the victim.
“The victim then appeared to pull a handgun and could have fired a round as well,” stated the MNPD.
Police said the offender entered a home in the 900 block of North Lavergne Avenue at approximately 3:16 a.m. August 28, 2026.
Adult female resident confronted the intruder, and a brief physical altercation followed.
Firearm discharged during the struggle, striking the offender in his left arm. Police did not say who fired the weapon.
Police said a group came to a towing company in the area looking for a vehicle that had been repossessed.
The department said two people went inside to speak with the owner when an altercation began and one of the people searching for the vehicle, later identified as Darius Jones, pulled out a weapon.
Officers said the business owner pulled out a weapon of his own to defend himself and shots were exchanged between the two.
The shooting remains under investigation. Preliminary investigation indicates that the two men met up for the sale of a firearm. The 22-year-old then pulled a gun and attempted to rob the 20-year-old, and the two shot each other.
Police said their investigation has been consistent with the shooter's account of what happened. Cuts on Conley's arm were consistent with cuts from reaching through the door glass.
The shooter heard Conley trying to enter and repeatedly told her to leave. He also warned her that he was armed, police said.
Leesburg police said Conley continued attempting to gain entry, at which point he fired a handgun through the door, breaking the window. That's when she reached through the broken window in an attempt to open the door from inside.
The homeowner fired a second time, striking Conley and killing her, police said.
On Saturday, August 15, 2026, at about 1:30 a.m. on the Virginia State University campus, shooting broke out. Five people were wounded, one of them a 20-year-old student at the university. Camron Rarris, 19, was found hours later and was charged with four counts of malicious wounding. The Virginia State student was treated and released with non-life threatening injuries. A 21-year-old man remains in critical condition, according to foxnews.com. Police are seeking others to determine if some people fired back in defense of self and others. A 23-year-old man, a 17-year-old teenager and a 19-year-old woman had non-life threatening injuries. The crimes appear to have had little to do with the school except for the location.
Virginia State University is located about 25 miles south of Richmond and has close to six thousand students. It is an historically black university. The cause of the shooting is not yet known.
Sandy Hook Promise, a non-profit with a mandate to reduce school violence, referenced the Virginia State incident and posted this on X:
Gun violence is an ever-growing public health epidemic that demands our attention now.
"Gun violence" is a political term designed to associate guns with social problems. The term conflates suicides, murders, justified homicides, and firearm accidents as all part of the problem, and thus, defines the "problem" as "guns". Suicides and homicides have different causes and solutions. The number of guns in a community is not correlated with the number of suicides or homicides. Fatal accidents with guns have been dropping for over a hundred years and are at an all time low, in spite of firearms ownership being at an all time high.
In 2025, and it appears likely in 2026, the murder rate in the USA was and will be at an all time low.
At the Sandy Hook Promise non-profit website, there are several policies the organization supports which work to help keep children safe in their schools. The have programs to reduce violence in schools. They have programs to aid in preventing suicide. Those programs appear to be helpful and probably are helpful.
Unfortunately, Sandy Hook Promise is actively working to:
Sandy Hook Promise Action Fund is working to expand background checks on all firearm sales, pass temporary transfer orders, create secure storage laws, limit high-capacity magazines, and institute high-capacity magazine limits.
There is little reason to believe these policies would actually reduce active school shootings. There is no consideration of the costs of such policies or the reasons such policies are becoming more and more difficult to implement. Instead the site promotes highly controversial statements such as:
Background checks rarely provide false-positive results.
The FBI makes the claim, but John Lott presents plenty of evidence the claim is not correct, that a large number of false positives are created, and the false positive have large racial biases. There is little, if any evidence more background checks would reduce the murder rate or the number of active mass murders. A bill has passed the House, and is pending before the Senate, to force the FBI to share NICS demographic data with the Congress. Currently, the FBI refuses to do so.
Sandy Hook Promise promotes what they call "Temporary Transfer Orders", which appear to be "red flag" laws designed to allow courts to take people's guns without due process. As the statement at Sandy Hook Promise claims these orders respect due process, it is difficult to see exactly what they are promoting. All states currently have processes to place people under care if a court has evidence they pose a threat to themselves or others. Those processes do not focus on firearms. They focus on the individuals and the potential threat they may pose. It is unclear exactly what Sandy Hook Promise is promoting with this policy.
Sandy Hook Promise also opposes some weapons modifications. Auto sears are already heavily regulated and almost impossible to legally obtain. "Glock switches" are a type of auto sear. Bump Stocks are almost never used in crime. Forced-reset triggers are almost never used in crime. The premise used to oppose these modifications is that more shots fired mean more innocents hurt. The example given is Sandy Hook. None of these devices were used at Sandy Hook. These devices make some incidents less dangerous by making the firearms hard to control and aim, thus reducing casualties.
Analysis: Why does an organization such as Sandy Hook Promise promote such dubious policies? The leaders may not even be aware there are arguments against such policies. They may not know there are strong legal, moral, and Constitutional reasons to oppose such policies. As the organization gets is name and its foundation from a mass murder at a school, it is very difficult for them to carefully consider such foundational questions. If they question the premises in support of more gun control, they question the foundation of their reason for existence.
Fortunately, Sandy Hook Promise appears to be spending more energy on positive programs to help students, and less on dubious political issues involving firearms. May they continue to put more resources into productive policies and programs, and less into dubious gun control efforts.
©2026 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Gun Watch
Deputies immediately detained Strickland, but Cook said White ran into a home in the nearby neighborhood through a detached garage near Meadow Drive and Grafton Drive.
The homeowner and his wife were inside the home at the time. Cook said the homeowner shot White in the leg.
Police initially said the shooting followed a fight between people who knew each other. Further investigation found that a security guard at the business fired a gun during the incident, striking the suspect before he fled, according to police.
Officers later learned the suspect had arrived at Northside Hospital in a private vehicle. They found 23-year-old James Jenkins, who was taken into custody and charged with aggravated assault.
According to the San Antonio Police Department, the man was involved in a physical altercation with his sister when he pulled out a weapon.
The 35-year-old man was actively hitting the other person when the woman's 25-year-old boyfriend intervened, retrieved a handgun and shot him in the torso.
He was taken to University Hospital in critical condition but later died from his injuries.
Around 12:30 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 20, deputies said a shooting happened on Mays Drive in the Edgemoor area. The Chester County Sheriff’s Office said there was between altercation over a vaping device which led to the shooting.
The sheriff’s office said Brandon Tavon Cassidy shot the first person multiple times and died.
Deputies said a second person returned returned fire in self-defense and Cassidy exchanged gunfire and he was struck and died.
BSO's Crime Scene and Homicide units also responded to the scene for the investigation. According to detectives, the preliminary investigation showed the man, who was identified as Maurice Wright Jr., and the shooter, an adult woman, were known to each other.
The BSO said that the woman told detectives that she needed to defend herself from a physical attack during the incident, and said the shooting was in self-defense.
Police said officers detained the shooter, whom they identified as a uniformed security guard contracted by QuikTrip.
Investigators say the man who was shot pulled a gun during a confrontation, and the guard fired in response.
The guard was later released, and the man who died has not been identified as the investigation continues.
EPD says both victims stated they did not know who had shot them, or why. Officers say the victim who had been shot in the chest did admit to shooting back as they were being shot at. Both victims’ injuries are listed as non-life threatening.
A preliminary investigation indicated that four unidentified men robbed the victim's cousin of a Rolex watch reportedly valued at $25,000, police said.
An additional suspect approached the 25-year-old man on a bicycle and pointed a handgun at him, according to investigators.
Police said the man, who is licensed to carry a gun, drew his weapon to defend himself and his cousin. His firearm malfunctioned, however, and he was shot.
The suspects fled eastbound on Juniata Street. Police recovered the victim's gun at the scene.
HCSO Sgt. Sofia Silva told ABC13 that around 2:30 p.m., deputies were dispatched to a shooting call. She said a man called 911 and told them a man was trying to break into his girlfriend's apartment.
The woman was not home at the time, but the caller was inside, according to law enforcement.
HCSO said while on the phone with 911, gunshots could be heard.
When deputies arrived, they said they found a man dead inside. The caller told deputies where he was inside the unit, according to HCSO.
What we know:
The shooting happened at 3:30 p.m. on Misty Glenn Court, located near Interstate 30 and East Loop 820.
According to Fort Worth police, a resident returned home to find an intruder inside the house. A physical fight broke out between the two men, and both drew firearms and shot at each other. Both men were struck during the gunfire.
The intruder died at the scene. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office has identified him as 29-year-old Darius Levy.
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