November 12, 2018
An Alabama man is being hailed as a hero after he used his concealed firearm to stop a masked gunman at a McDonald’s in southwest Birmingham. The suspect entered the restaurant as it was closing on Saturday night around 10:45pm, according to local media. He gained access by entering just as an employee was unlocking the door for a father and his two sons to leave. The suspect opened fire as soon as he entered, but the father drew his own concealed weapon and returned fire.
An Alabama man is being hailed as a hero after he used his concealed firearm to stop a masked gunman at a McDonald’s in southwest Birmingham.
The suspect entered the restaurant as it was closing on Saturday night around 10:45pm, according to local media. He gained access by entering just as an employee was unlocking the door for a father and his two sons to leave. The suspect opened fire as soon as he entered, but the father drew his own concealed weapon and returned fire.
“He’s my hero,” Markus Washington, a McDonald’s employee, told WBRC. “Because I can only imagine how it would’ve went if he wasn’t armed. We might not be here having this interview.”
When police arrived they found the father, one of his sons, and the suspect suffering from gunshot wounds. A witness told AL.com that she heard eight or nine shots ring out as she was waiting for her food in the drive-through. She heard two more shots as she watched people running from the restaurant, including children.
Washington, who found cover in one of the restaurant freezers, told a similar story.
“All we hear is like different gunfire, so in my mind, I’m imagining everybody is dead. He’s looking for us,” Washington said.
A South Carolina woman used her handgun last week to defend her home and her three sleeping children against a burglar who had kicked in her front door.
Security camera footage shows Cecil Charles Parnell, 43, along with an unidentified woman, attempting to break into the home owned by Ashley Jones. Jones told WSPA she heard banging on her front door and two people speaking on the porch.
“He was like, ‘this is my house, let me in. I’m not going to hurt you’ kind of thing, and I was like ‘What do you want?’” Jones said. “After I called the police, I grabbed a gun and went to the top of the steps and was like, ‘I have a gun. I will shoot you. Do not come in my house.’”
Jones said Parnell went around to her back door, but the lock prevented him from entering the house. The man returned to the front door and continued his attempts to force his way inside the home.
At that point “something just came over me, and I got calm,” Jones told FOX Carolina. “My heart slowed down and I got focused. I told myself if he comes in here, you can’t let him get past your doorstep. You have three young children to protect.”
