Gun owner tells harrowing story of saving cop from attack

mcall.com

An Upper Darby gun owner who pulled his firearm to save a police officer from an attack by a group of teens on Friday said the incident has left him shaken.

"It was scary to do it," the good Samaritan gun owner said. "Would I do it again? Of course, but I don't want to have to."

In an article in the Philadelphia Daily News on Tuesday, Upper Darby police Superintendent Michael Chitwood detailed the terrifying incident and said if not for the gun owner's actions, the officer would "have been dead meat."

The gun owner spoke with the Daily News on Wednesday on the condition of anonymity, because he fears retribution. 

According to the 35-year-old good Samaritan, he was on Wayne Avenue near Marshall Road around 3 p.m. Friday when he saw a group of 30 to 40 high school kids surrounding an Upper Darby cop who was trying to break up a fight between two teen boys.

The gun owner said at first, the cop seemed to have the situation under control because he had grabbed the two fighting teens and had one in each hand.

"Then, in a matter of seconds, two to three other teens who were there jumped on the officer's back," the man said. "It was scary. Very scary."

A million thoughts raced through the man's mind.

"My thought process was a ton of stuff in a short period of time," he said. "The first thing I did was yell 'Get off!'"

The good Samaritan said he repeatedly yelled "Get off!" so loudly that he lost his voice as a result, but all his yelling did no good.

"They were doing what they were doing and they weren't going to stop for me," he said of the teens. "So then I thought 'Do I go over and get physically involved?' but then I could have gotten jumped too."

The gun owner, who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, said he decided to draw his gun from its holster when he saw the teens' hands on the officer's waist, near his service weapon.

"I said to myself 'This time something bad is going to happen,'" he said.

According to police and the gun owner, the good Samaritan never pointed his gun at the teens, but he did let them see it in his hands. When one boy noticed the man's gun, he "whispered it down the lane" to the other teens and they all took off running, the gun owner said.

The only teens who did not run were the two the officer was miraculously able to hold onto throughout the incident after nabbing them for their involvement in the initial fight.