But he didn’t, deputies said. The chase was reckless, according to a witness. Royes, driving the wrong way down a one-way street, then crashed the car into a pole near Lucerne Avenue and Federal Highway, witnesses said, according to the report.
At this point, Royes grabbed his roommate’s knife and jumped out of the car.
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He chased Sherrill down and started to stab him, according to the report.
The roommate said he stayed in the car and didn’t see the stabbing. When he heard a gunshot, he asked for an ambulance.
The witness who fired the warning shot got involved after hearing the car crashing. He stepped outside to see Royes chasing Sherrill with a “large military style black knife,” the report stated.
The man fired the shot while Royes was stabbing Sherrill, the witness said.
“All subjects immediately stopped and (the witness) held them at gunpoint,” the report said.
via Paul Royes: The Lake Worth man faces an aggravated battery charge after stabbing – Sun Sentinel.
I still not happy with the idea of Warning Shots, but I was not there and I am not going to say if it was safe or not from the standpoint of Rule 4. If it is stupid but works, then it is not stupid.
I titled the post a “Somewhat Happy Ending” because the victim was injured but at least no killed. If anything it reminds us once more that we don’t do 100% guarantees or your money back, just a fighting chance.
So a Warning Shot was done in Florida and yet the planet did not come off its axis, blood is not flowing in the streets and a bus full of handicapped children and nuns did not explode.
All the doomsday warning wasted….
Hat Tip to John Lott
Does the shooter ever call it a warning shot himself? He might have fired a shot and missed, and then decided to hold them after they froze. Granted that’s still not what training usually dictates IIRC, but it’s possible the media is using it’s own terms.
Maybe the shooter did not feel that his level of training was good enough to make a shot against a target too close to a non-shoot? That woud indicate a sober head on top of the shoulders which should indicate he was also careful placing the warning shot somewhere with a decent backstop.
But we only get to speculate. 🙂
That’s my thinking, they might very know that warning shots are generally bad, but if you’re watching someone get stabbed to death that might have been the best option at the time. I can’t say for sure that I’d be confident enough to only hit the attacker if two people are struggling like that.
If you want to fire a warning shot, carry a flare pistol, or a starter pistol, since those things are signaling devices.
While my guns are indeed loud, I don’t carry them for the noise they make, and under most circumstances the bullet it fires is invisible to the human eye, making it a very dangerous, and not idea signaling device.
It IS good at other things, hence why I’m carrying a gun right now!
As “warning shots” go, this is probably a nearly ideal scenario: the gunman didn’t know the backstory, but also didn’t want to witness someone bring stabbed to death.
Assuming he put the bullet somewhere with a good backstop, I don’t think I can really fault him.
From my perspective, and again assuming that he selected a good backstop, he made a reasonable set of choices based on limited information.