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Up Jumps the Devil: Idaho Falls, Silver Rail Shootings | What Would You Do? · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music Podcast.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Aaron.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, and thank you guys so much for coming back for another show.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: On this show, we talk about all kinds of different topics, but tonight we're going to talk about something educational.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to educate the folks listening to the world of self-defense, to the world of justifiable homicide, to the world of when can I and can't I take action to defend myself or a third party.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I bring this to you in wake of some recent events, specifically the shooting in Twin Falls, Idaho, the In N Out that occurred back on August 1st of this year, and then the October 15th shooting that occurred in Bend, Oregon at the Silver Rail Elementary School.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this podcast, today's show, is not designed to break down the investigations or talk about any of the inside details because, frankly, folks, I don't have any.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: While I worked in the Pacific Northwest, I know some Bend police officers.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: I worked alongside.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard them on the other shows.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, first of all, they have their hands way too busy to talk to me.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And second of all, I'm not going to armchair quarterback anything that is going on in any of these investigations.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: These agencies are amazing and they will do an amazing job.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I have no inside information.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: As a disclaimer, I'm also not a lawyer.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: So don't take this information and say, well, you know, Aaron said I could shoot this person, so I did.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: That is not what I'm saying.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think there's a lot of unknowns.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of things that the general public doesn't know about when are you justified to use force and when are you not?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody is stealing your car, can you shoot them?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if somebody is pointing a knife at you from 75 feet away, is it justifiable to shoot that person?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, maybe not.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what I want to talk about on today's show.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: My hope is that people leave this show today knowing just a little bit more about what they can and can't do, but more than that, being self-aware.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that the people's situational awareness when they're out in the general public is so weak at best.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I I just want to walk you through this and maybe you can wake up a little bit as people move through this world, you, your kids, whoever, and just be more aware of what's going on around you.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: The world we're living in today is not the same as it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the world we live in today gets very violent very fast.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to demonstrate that here in just a moment as we break down one of these shootings.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who don't know me, my name is Aaron.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a retired police officer of 21 years.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that I can come and talk to you about this because of my background.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: In my 21 years, I was involved in two active shooter cases.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Both of them resulted in people dying.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've done many officer-involved shootings, and I've done numerous civilian shootings that ultimately, based on the fruits of the investigation, were deemed justified homicides, self-defense or other.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And besides all of that, I have also been a defensive tactics instructor and a use of force instructor for law enforcement for many years.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So taking all of that information, that is why I want to bring this to you and break down a couple of these cases.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: In law enforcement, everything that we do is broken down when we apply law to a certain fact pattern or a set of facts, we have to apply criminal statutes to it.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that criminal statute says if somebody does this, this, and this, it is illegal.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's illegal, then it's punishable as a misdemeanor or a felony or an infraction, so on and so forth.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's important to understand that when we start talking about the world of justifiable homicide or defending yourself or defending a third party, those same statutes apply to you, the civilian.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: I like to explain it like this.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: If we're looking at a statute, because when you read a statute, I'm going to read one to you in a moment, it's a lot of legalese, it's a lot of shalls and mays and nevers, and just words that combined together, it sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: But in there, there are some buried things called elements.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Elements of a crime are like ingredients in a recipe.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you combined this ingredient, that ingredient, and this ingredient, at the end you will have chocolate chip cookies.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's say, and that's your end goal is a chocolate chip cookie.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: But let's say you include this ingredient, that ingredient, but you leave out the chocolate chips, which is that third ingredient, you have a cookie.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: You have something that resembles a chocolate chip cookie, but it's missing the key element of chocolate chips.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it doesn't mean that it's not going to be tasty.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that what the person did may or may not be a crime.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: It just may or may not be that crime.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: It may or may not be that chocolate chip cookie.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you need the full chocolate chip cookie in order to present a case or to justify your actions or to charge somebody with a crime.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when you don't have that chocolate chip cookie, all you have is a cookie.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: That is sometimes not enough to get it across that hurdle of prosecution or justified use of force or self-defense.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So let me get into the statute for you.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm going to talk about Oregon revised statute.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: That is where I was last a police officer.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I know best.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is the case law and the statutes that I applied in my work almost daily before I left the police department.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Under Oregon Revised Statute 161.219, a person is only justified in using deadly physical force if they reasonably believe the other person is committing a felony with threatened physical force, committing a dwelling burglary, or using or about to use unlawful deadly physical force.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: That is when you are justified in using physical force or deadly physical force upon another person.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oregon law does not allow you deadly physical force, lethal force against somebody for a property crime, for stealing your car, something like that.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very important that we understand the differences.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you are going to carry a gun, if you are going to, and we're going to talk about it because not everybody wants to carry a gun, but just because you don't have a gun doesn't mean you can't help out in a situation if one were to pop up in front of you.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: So with that being said, if you're going to carry a gun, please go out and get the training for it.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Understand the rules of the road, if you will, when you can, when you can't, and be prepared to use it.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you introduce a gun into a situation, be prepared to use that and potentially take the life of another person.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can't bring yourself to press that trigger and potentially take somebody else's life, be it a 16-year-old kid or a 66-year-old man or woman, whoever, then reconsider carrying that firearm because all you're doing is introducing a liability into a situation that is already violent and tumultuous and unknown.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, you yourself could become a victim or others around you could become a victim as a result of your actions.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the last thing that we want to do.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm going to take that statute that I just read to you and I'm going to break it down into three prongs.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially, it goes like this.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: In order to be able to use justified deadly physical force upon another, you need to be able to articulate and explain the following three things.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: One, the person had means to hurt or kill you, either cause serious physical injury or death upon you or a third person.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Means means that they had a weapon.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: They had something that they could use against you to hurt you.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a gun, it could be a knife, could be a crowbar, could be a screwdriver, could be a rock, could be a car, could be any of those things.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Something capable of causing serious physical injury or death to you or another person.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Jeopardy.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be able to articulate that you felt jeopardy, that you were going to get hurt.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Jeopardy is the feeling of this is imminently going to affect me or another person.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Fear.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is jeopardy.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And opportunity is the person within range to use said weapon.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So the three prongs are means, opportunity, and jeopardy.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: If the person has a two by four threatening to kill you, but they're 150 feet away from you.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the same person has a two by four and they're 10 feet away from you, swinging it, telling you they're going to kill you, approaching you.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: They have the means, they have the ability, and they have the opportunity and the jeopardy to hurt you.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: So at that point, you may be justified in using a level of physical force up to and including deadly physical force to defend yourself or a third party.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I keep talking about this third party, because the third party is anybody else.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Could be you, your family, a stranger, could be somebody inside of the In N Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: When you feel opportunity means jeopardy has been met, that is the trifecta, the three-prong approach to being justified in using physical force up to and including deadly force to stop their unlawful threat.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: So as we go back to August 1st of 2026, everybody in the world saw the hero shooting back, the civilian shooting back and engaging the bad guy in that scenario.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not going to name any of these bad guys because they don't deserve the air time.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: But everybody sees the pictures, the videos of the civilian with the suppressed handgun shooting back at the shooter, the bad guy in this case.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that made headlines across the nation, probably across the world, if I had to guess.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And some people criticized him because he didn't put the shooter down and he didn't eliminate that threat.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And while I understand from a lay point of view, how that could be perceived as the goal of his intent, of his of his actions, rather.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it may have been, he may have wanted to eliminate that threat.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: But what actually occurred that day is he provided a distraction to that bad guy.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: He took the bad guy's attention and focus away from the civilians in that area.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he made the bad guy direct his attention directly at him.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And by doing so, the hero that everybody saw allowed others to escape, allowed civilians to run and flee and hide and get away from the potential sights of the bad guy in that case.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I tell you this to tell you this.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about if-then thinking in a moment.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: But if you find yourself in a situation in the middle of this environment, and all of a sudden, up jumps the devil, he's in front of you, and this scenario is happening in front of you at 2.29 p.m.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: in the In N Out Burger or the McDonald's or wherever else, just because you don't have the gun doesn't mean that you can't cause a distraction.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can't do something to divert the attention from the bad guy and potentially save lives.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to be thinking about this ahead of time.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to come up in the moment, chances are.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about if-then thinking in a moment.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: We'll come back to that.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: What you guys didn't hear, see, or maybe understand is that day at the In N Out, there were three people who engaged the bad guy.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Three people.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: There was the hero that everybody saw.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody saw the civilian.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: But you probably didn't know that the bad guy was also confronted by two off-duty police officers.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let's break this down.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Off-duty police officer number one, who was formerly with the Twin Falls Police Department as well as Idaho State Police.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: He approached, now, this is a trained law enforcement professional, and I'm not judging what he did.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm giving you the facts.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's a trained law enforcement professional, presumably been through at least one academy, but maybe two, since he worked with two different agencies.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: He approached the shooter.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: He ran towards the gunfire, which is very, very hard to do.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: But he ran towards the gunfire.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: However, he did not draw his gun.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he didn't draw his gun until after he was shot.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: But he he said he didn't draw his gun because he didn't want to be mistaken as the shooter by responding law enforcement personnel.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't want to mistake an identity of blue on blue.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't want to be shot by a responding police officer when they mistook him for the bad guy.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: But what that does is there's this concept of action versus reaction.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And action is always going to win.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Always.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you find yourself having to react, you are already behind the curve, the thought process.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're having to see a threat.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're having to mentally process it.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, he's pointing the gun at me.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: I should lift up my shirt and get my gun.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let me get my gun.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And by that time, his gun has gone off and you've been shot, right?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Action versus reaction.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that is a concept that we have proven many, many times.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And historically it's been called the 21-foot rule.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just a way to demonstrate it.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: But if you have a trained police officer with a with a training firearm in a holster, 21 feet away, you give somebody a magic marker.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you tell that person with a magic marker, run towards the police officer and mark them in the face.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Take off whenever you want.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's on you.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: When that guy starts running, the police officer who's trained reaches down, indexes his gun, brings it out, and by that time he's got a mark across his face.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's already been marked because the action versus reaction time is so distinct and there's such a huge delta there.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it takes so long to process that threat that nine out of ten times reaction is going to lose that battle.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what occurred.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: You have a trained police officer with a firearm in a situation that he is trained for, the active shooter.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: He goes to it with the mental thought of, I don't want to get shot.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he's got every intent in going and eliminating that threat.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: The threat sees him and puts him into an action versus reaction, and the officer loses and gets shot.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's officer number one.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Officer number two is an off-duty state trooper.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: There is an exchange of gunfire with the off-duty state trooper.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: The bad guy's handgun jams.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of giving up the fight, the bad guy goes outside, gets into the trunk of his car, and pulls out a rifle, and he is ready to continue fighting.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: The bad guy's mental mindset is he is not going to give up.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: He is not going to quit.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: He is prepared to fight this out to the end.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes out, has a secondary gun, it's a rifle, and then engages civilians and kills civilians with that rifle.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of this whole thing, bad guy flees off into the woods, gets confronted by law enforcement, and ultimately commits suicide because he's a coward.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're all cowards.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: They are all cowards.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And anytime they are confronted, they don't want an equal fight.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: They want to take innocent lives of people who are helpless and defenseless, and they want to injure, wreak havoc in hell, and then when confronted by somebody bigger than them, they want to kill themselves and call it quits.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, the Idaho In N-Out shooting left seven people injured, three good guys dead, and one bad guy right where he belongs in the grave.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's how that day ended up.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to talk here in a second, again, about what you maybe you can do or what you can think about if you ever find yourself planted in the middle of one of these situations.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: But before we do that, let's go to the Ben shooting, October 15th, 2026, Silver Rail Elementary.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about the timeline of this case because I think it's important.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want you to know this is only based on media reports.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: I have no inside information, but the timeline based on the computer automated dispatching, the 911 call, the video surveillance at the school shows a series of events that unfolded very rapidly.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I'm talking about this is I think it's important to demonstrate how fast things can go sideways in a situation, in a dynamic situation like this.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: At 1259 p.m., there was a 911 call that there was a suspicious person shooting at people at the school.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: The way that call came in is a civilian sees a guy throw a shotgun over the fence at the school and jump the fence.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: The civilian engages and yells at, talks to, contacts somehow the bad guy.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: The bad guy starts shooting at the civilian who is sitting in his vehicle.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: While this is going on, there's a father at the school who sees the gunfire, hears it, and sees the bad guy run into the school with the shotgun.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: The father goes to his car, retrieves his handgun, and follows the bad guy into the school with the intent on eliminating the threat.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to remind you at 1259 is when the 911 call came in.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Based on the evidence that's been released, a teacher engaged the bad guy inside the school and got into a physical altercation with him at 101 p.m.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: At 101 p.m., the father came in and used lethal force against the bad guy.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: He shot him, he killed him, and he ended the threat.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, he saved many, many lives.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: As a result, the teacher saved many, many lives.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the police arrived shortly thereafter between 101 and 102 p.m.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: In this scenario, the father was mentally prepared.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now he was in a gun-free zone, and there's people criticizing him for having a gun in a gun-free zone.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Does it really freaking matter at this point?
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think not.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a moot point that we need to dismiss.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, he is somebody who is armed and prepared to sacrifice his life for the lives of others.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: That is a hero and deserves to be applauded for that.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: The second hero is the teacher who had, if then thinking, if somebody comes into my classroom causing this kind of a problem, I am going to die protecting my kids.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And got into a physical altercation with a gunman who had already shot people.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the reason it's important to talk about 1259 to 101, that is two minutes or less.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: In that two minutes or less, the gunman killed three students and one teacher.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Additionally, he shot one more teacher and shot another seven-year-old little girl in the face.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then he was killed.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So again, five people dead inside of two minutes.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is a very fast amount of time.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: A very quick amount of time to think, process, understand what you're going to do, implement action, take action, eliminate a threat.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're a civilian or a cop, it is a very fast amount of time.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's why if then thinking is so important.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, we had a father who was armed, who was mentally prepared to engage.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Eliminate the threat.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: We have a teacher who is mentally prepared to sacrifice themselves for the students.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: They were prepared with if then thinking.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you carry or not, you have options available to you.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: You have your vehicle, you can have a gun, you can have a knife, you can have a bar stool, you can have a rock, you can have a crowbar, whatever it is, improvised weapons work.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people have been killed with screwdrivers and crowbars.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Improvised weapons work.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you need to start thinking about it today.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you're willing to sit back and allow people to die around you because you're too scared to step up there, then I would consider you a coward.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say you probably don't need to get involved in that fight.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're a liability.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: But if that's not you, and I suspect that when the rubber hits the road, more people are likely than not to want to step into that fight versus run away from it.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if that's the case, if then thinking, if I'm driving down the road and I see a vehicle traffic stop by a state trooper, and I see the bad guy outside of his car shooting at the police officer, and I see the police officer hunkered down behind his car trying not to get killed.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: If then thinking, as I drive my 2,000-pound missile down the road, I am going to aim it towards said bad guy, and I would have knocked the shit out of him and probably kill him.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'll run, run right over the top of him.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And even if I don't hit him, I am throwing up a distraction with a 2,000-pound missile that is going to jump in his oodaloop.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is going to get him thinking about something else, like getting killed by a car, and he's going to take his attention and focus off of that state trooper so the state trooper can engage accordingly, right?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: If we are in the mall and we see something unfold in front of us, we see an attempted kidnapping.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: A girl is over there riding the little 25 cent pony.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Some hairy man looks like he drives an ice cream truck, comes, tries to grab her and pull her away.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, No, you're not my dad, kicking and screaming.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he tells her to shut up, slaps her a few times.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the scenario going in your head.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: What are you going to do there?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: You step in.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: You may not be able to use deadly force.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: You may, depending on the circumstances.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: But you step in, you intervene, you put yourself, you sacrifice yourself for the good of others around you.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: If then thinking, come up with the scenarios in your head based on where you live every single day.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: What can happen when somebody comes into my office at work and all I hear behind me is, this is a robbery.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Give me your money.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: What am I going to do?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Be prepared.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Being aware of our surroundings is something that I think folks have lost the art, the ability, or the common sense to know.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Some folks live in a world that is so vanilla and white that they think nothing is ever going to happen to them, or they believe that the world is just, you know, rainbows and butterflies and that bad things don't happen.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we are very susceptible to this if we think about small cities, small towns, small town USA.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: We think nothing happens here.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here to tell you that whether you live in the town of 500 or you live in the town of 5 million, at the end of the day, people are people.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: They all have problems.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: They all have emotions.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: When you add drugs and alcohol into people, it affects their emotions and they do unpredictable shit.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: That can happen in the town of 500.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: That can happen in the town of 5 million.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: You live in one of those two cities.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you can be present.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can be caught up in the middle of the devil come into town and not even know it until it's around you.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: So be prepared.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Watch your surroundings.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're at the gas pumps, watch the people approaching.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's not COVID anymore.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Take the masks off.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the dude, when it's 75 degrees outside, he's dressed head to toe with a woolen mask over his face, dressed in black, and he's approaching you.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: That might be a clue.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: You might want to pay attention to that, right?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: So just be aware of your surroundings.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: God gave us that spidey sense, that like hair on the back of the neck, where we feel, man, this just isn't right.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: That is God telling you that's self-preservation.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like figure your stuff out.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Take a look around.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, put your head on a swivel, make eye contact, let people know they're seen.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Those are different types of things that we can do to protect ourselves, protect our families.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if we were to get into a situation where we were to have to use deadly force and we were to kill somebody or seriously injure somebody, the aftermath is something you need to consider.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's clear cut.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in this Ben shooting, it's a clear-cut, justified shooting.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: However, not all of them are that clear cut.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them there's more question.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them relies on facts and evidence and witness statements and eyewitness statements and video in order to put the full puzzle together.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: And in those times, people are going to look at the fact patterns of that event and expect some scrutiny.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: It is not going to be clear-cut.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: You may feel like the hero or you may feel terrible for killing somebody.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, slow down, think about your actions, justify what you were feeling, be able to articulate what you were feeling, and go with your gut.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Nine times out of our 10, our gut is going to lead us the same way.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to lead us in the right direction and help us make the right decision.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Unless you're just a lunatic and you're out there and you've got zero common sense and you're a loose canon and you're out there just doing stupid shit with police lights all over your car and you've never, you know, been to a police department before, and you're out there feeling like the hero, that guy can get himself into some trouble, or that girl can get themselves into some trouble.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, as good human beings, we are our gut is going, we know the difference between right and wrong.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: And our gut is going to help get us in the right direction and make those right decisions.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now we may not know what it's called in a statute book.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: We may not know what it is called to articulate it in our words to the police, but we can describe what we were feeling.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: What did it feel like on the inside when all of a sudden this guy came up and was doing X, Y, or Z?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Or when he presented the gun, what was something you were feeling and how did that make you feel?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: And why did you respond the way that you did?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Those are all things that we have innate in us.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Those are all things that instinctually we know right from wrong.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: So think about that if you ever get into this.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: But as we get into these situations, it may be that the case is not as clear-cut as you would hope it would be.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we do something that muddies the water.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I worked a shooting once and the shooting was in a Walmart parking lot.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact pattern is this the fact pattern is two cars are driving down the road, minding their own business.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is getting tailgated.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: He passes the truck in front of him.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: The truck in front of him flips him off because the guy's driving like a jerk or whatever.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little road rage, it happens all the time.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: The two vehicles continue eastbound on this road, and one vehicle turns off into a parking lot.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Unbeknownst, the other vehicle, the lead vehicle, goes in and turns into the same parking lot.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're both in a Walmart parking lot, but they don't know they're there because they went into opposite ends of the parking lot.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: But as they're driving around, they see each other in the parking lot.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: And as they see each other in the parking lot, one vehicle is stopped.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: The first vehicle, the one driving like a jerk face, that guy gets out, he has a gun, and he walks up and he gets outside the window of the truck and he makes a comment, something similar to you don't want any of this smoke.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he starts to bring a hand up.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: At that time, the guy inside the truck is armed and he shoots and kills the guy outside the car.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, action versus reaction.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the bad guy outside falls and the good guy gets scared.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: The good guy is a white guy, the bad guy is a black guy, and the good guy who is a white dude with probably a Trump flag and an American flag in the back of his car, he takes off out of the parking lot.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: He's scared.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's scared because he, when he went through his concealed weapons course, they told him that in this county, if you shoot and kill somebody in self-defense, there's a good chance you're gonna have to go to jail and they're going to have to prove that your actions were justified.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: So all of that happens.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, we have to track the good guy down at his house, and he refuses to talk to us.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: So this turns into a little bit of a SWAT standoff.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, he comes out and talks to us, surrenders, and we end up arresting him.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: But we arrest him because he's not willing to talk to us and tell us what happened.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And all we know is he was a shooter and there's a dead guy in a parking lot.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't until we got to slow things down, have a conversation with him that we were able to understand what was happening.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then my partner and I had to go to the DA's office and explain to them why this is a justified homicide.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is what happened: action versus reaction.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: Presented a weapon, blah, blah, blah, all the stuff I've already told you.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: My whole point in telling you this story is at the end of the day, the homicide was justified based on the facts in front of us.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it didn't mean there wasn't scrutiny.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this guy muddied the waters.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Had he stayed around in the parking lot that night and said, hey, this is who I am, this is what happened, this is what I did, and what are we going to do about it, it probably would have had a different outcome for him.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: He probably would have not seen a day in jail.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: But instead, his actions muddy the waters.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: My whole point is if you get into one of these and you truly feel you are justified, stick around, explain your side of the story, he let people know what is going on, collect witnesses that saw what happened, do your own work to preserve yourself and present that to law enforcement when they arrive.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Other times, it'll be crystal clear, like the Ben shooting.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: My whole point in this episode is I wanted to take time to break down use of lethal force.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to break down the three-prong approach, means, opportunity, jeopardy.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: What do they mean?
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: When can you use and when are you justified in using the lethal force to protect yourself or protect a third party?
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: What is a third party?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to explain the two shootings and how quickly things can unfold as these dynamic situations develop.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: When the devil jumps up, he usually does it in a very loud and dynamic way.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: And before you know it, you and your family and your loved ones are surrounded by evil and you have to take some kind of action.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: That action you're going to take is based on the if-then thinking and the scenarios you've already played out in your head.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't carry a gun, I don't carry a knife, but you do drive a car, you've got a screwdriver, you've got a butter knife at the table, you've got things around you to improvise as weapons to step in.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you don't eliminate the threat and neutralize them, you can cause a distraction, which will also save other people's lives.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted this to be an educational podcast.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to teach people, I wanted people to be thinking, because if we believe that this is the last shooting we're ever going to be involved in or we're ever going to hear of, we are so wrong in the world that we live in today.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Be prepared.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be paranoid.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Live prepared, not paranoid.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you see something that is suspicious and you don't understand what it is, maybe you don't see the gun, but you see a guy throw a duffel bag over the fence at the elementary school and then jump the fence.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: That in itself isn't illegal.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: You don't see a gun.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: But why is a you know a 30-year-old man jumping a fence at an elementary school go ahead and call the police?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we do.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: We come and check this stuff out.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's literally suspicious circumstance and what we get paid to go and investigate.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Don't hesitate to pick up the phone and call.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, I will hopefully you guys never have to get into a scenario like this.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: But if you do, I want you to be mentally prepared for what it may be.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: I want the if-then thinking, I want you to be thinking about how you can protect yourself and your families first and then the third parties around you.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to live prepared, not paranoid.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, that is a Murders to Music Podcast.