Civilian drives robber to flee to the police

Here is a story from the Lubbock Avalanche Journal. Lubbock, Texas.

Armed robber gets his lights turned out and of course his family feels he was treated badly. The shooter should have just stayed at the location of the robbery and waited for the police while the suspect escaped with the money.

Story last updated at 3:39 a.m. Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Sister of slain store robber wants shooter punished

ANDRE L. TAYLOR
AVALANCHE-JOURNAL
When Jesse Pearson was shot and killed Saturday following an armed robbery, he took his side of the story with him.

Now Gayle Pearson, his sister, is hopeful that her brother's killer will be brought to justice.
"Yeah, my brother should have been punished, but he didn't have to die," she said.

Maj. Don Carter of the Lubbock County Sheriff's Office said Jesse Pearson, 32, robbed a clerk at Carl's Corner convenience store at knifepoint that afternoon and ran off with an undisclosed amount of money.

As Pearson sped off in his car, the clerk told another employee what happened and that man hopped into his Jeep and tailed Pearson from 98th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to U.S. 84, officers said.

Around 3:40 p.m., five minutes after the robbery, the store clerk shot Pearson in the chest with a rifle near the intersection of MLK and U.S. 84, Carter said. Officials are not sure how Pearson wound up in the driver's seat of the shooter's Jeep. Carter said paramedics pulled Pearson from the Jeep and began CPR on him as soon as they arrived.

He died on his way to a Lubbock hospital, officers said.

Carter said the sheriff's office has not charged the shooter with anything, but the incident is being investigated as a homicide. The shooter's name has not been released because he has not been charged "and he may be a victim."

"This is a homicide case," Carter said. "Someone lost their life."

Gayle Pearson of Dallas (300+ miles from Lubbock) said her parents called her Saturday night after two police officers came to their home and told them their son was found dead. She said her parents were only told her brother was dead. They relied on media reports for further details about his death.

The younger sibling of Pearson wants to know why her brother was shot and not arrested.

"He did call the police, he just didn't wait for them," Gayle Pearson said of the man who shot her brother. "It's almost like the law gave him a pat on the back and said 'Good job.' "

Carter said the investigation is ongoing, and potentially, the shooter could go before a grand jury within weeks. He said there is no telling when the investigation will be completed.

"It's not unusual for these cases to take a couple of weeks unless the district attorney puts a rush on it," Carter said.

Gayle Pearson said neither she nor her family denies that her brother robbed the store and should have been held responsible for it, but they're curious about the investigation. She said "it's disgusting" that her brother was killed by a shooter who chased him well off the store's property.

"It will be interesting to see what happens," she said.

Small correction on the purse-snatcher post: The husband fired a shotgun, but it was a witness/bystander who chased the purse-snatcher...

I laughed hard when I read this line...

"Let me in. They are shooting at me."

Well David, there is heated discussion going on at SIH about just such as this. I seem to be in the minority that does not think this can properly be called "vigilantism" or "taking the law into your own hands".

Though, I have to admit that the Pearson case seems like it might be a little extreme if the police had been called and the robber's location was known. It seems to me that killing him may not have been necessary to protect the property. However, I could not vote for conviction since the robber did threaten death to those he robbed.

At that point he surrendered any right he had to consideration. I most probably would not have shot him under the limited circumstances described. But he had no right to expect I would not have. He surrendered that in the store he robbed.

I hope the grand jury returns a no bill. However, I suspect if it went down as simply as reported above, that the shooter will have many haunting and eternal misgivings about his haste.

as for the would be purse snatcher, ain't it funny that he would rather take his chances with the cops than the intended victims?

But, of course, we shouldn't take a hand. After all, what would happen if everybody made a life of crime dangerous. Can't have that now, can we?

The Texas purse snatcher story is pretty durn funny. I like the eyewitness description of the perp "burning away" from the guy with the shotgun.

The Pearson case doesn't sound quite so neat. The clerk should not have chased the guy down with a rifle - he likely could have a very hard time justifying his actions in pursuing the guy well after the robbery was over and the guy left. But as for the dead perp's sister's comment: "It's almost like the law gave him a pat on the back and said 'Good job.'" I'm not so sure we shouldn't pat the guy on the back. Again, forgive me if I don't get too broken up over the guy's demise.