Washington man arrested after fatally shooting teen who had BB gun
usatoday.com
Myers, who says he's a licensed security guard, was sitting in his car Wednesday to conduct "overwatch" while his son trains because "he has seen numerous crimes occur" in the parking lot, according to the probable cause statement.
The surveillance footage shows Myers approach the teens with a gun in his hand, point it directly at them and then move quickly toward them, police said. One of the boys pulls a BB gun out of his pocket, lays it on the ground and extends his arms out as if to show he has nothing in his hands, police said in the document.
"Immediately after ... it is clear that he has been shot because he abruptly jerks his body away from Myers and falls to the ground," the document says.
He seems to be okay with open carry so I wonder why he thought they were going to commit a robbery.
Oh. He was brown.
Also, this guy is why an armed society is absolutely not a polite society. More people carrying around guns means more dipshits carrying them.
Open carry for my, but not for thee.
This is like a few months ago, when a gun rights advocate realized that "every body having the right of having guns" also included LGTB and they all lost their shared braincell.
Shithead Tucker Carlson did a piece a while ago fear mongering that militant trans people were arming themselves and that they should not be allowed to.
Conservatives when someone says people should have to go through a psychological examination and be proven to be mentally well to get a gun: 😡
Conservatives when trans people have guns: "Th-they're mentally ill! They shouldn't have guns since they aren't psychologically fit!"
I think it's cuz they realize constantly having fantasies of someone doing wrong that justifies you to shoot them and being extremely narcissistic, irrationally hateful towards certain groups, and paranoid makes them unfit to handle a weapon.
That being said, I like oppressed groups being able to arm themselves, and I don't trust the conservatives who have run where I live for centuries to enforce gun laws equally, so I prefer to keep my way-too-lenient gun laws... since I'm moving to a large urban area soon though, the only thing I'll need a rifle to defend against is the landlord
Ronald Reagan and the Repubs when black people are holding firearms.
https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support-mulford-act
That's because they're into guns, not the right to self defense.
The problem is that they will use lethal force in defense of their pride/ego. They will simply escalate any dumb situation just because they can
Was there any doubt?
Behold, Libertarians and 2nd Amendment nutters: Your "good guy with a gun". Aren't you proud of yourselves?
What do you expect them to say? That they're proud of this guy? Even though he's clearly a madman?
I know IRL gun nuts, and none of them would identify with this person. Also, none of them subscribe to the fallacy/straw-man of a "good guy with a gun". The ones who carry concealed would remind you that they are carrying for themselves, not for you. If you find an active shooter in a mall, you can count on them... to run away.
Skillful gun nuts know that shooting defensively is never worth the legal hassle unless it saves your life (or a family member's life).
The shooter in this article is nothing like any of the gun nuts I've ever met. This shooter is another Kyle Rittenhouse, someone anxious for a chance to kill a person and get away with it under the excuse of defense.
I could be considered a gun nut myself but I will not pretend that this behavior is some abnormal outlier. There are plenty, plenty of American gun owners who think like this man does, they just haven't had the opportunity for their malformed amygdala to get someone killed.
You mention Rittenhouse but he's a gun culture hero. Zimmerman and the like, all heroes. People who get to use their gun to lay down the law like the Earp posse are generally seen as heroes when they don't completely fuck up like this guy, they're not shunned as short-sighted and reckless.
A set of excellent counterpoints. I'd also point out that "gun nut" is quite different than "2nd Amendment nutter". You're into guns. Maybe the mechanics, maybe the design aspect, maybe you enjoy shooting as a hobby, maybe all of the above and more. That's fine, if you're also a responsible gun owner who secures their weapon, does not leave it loaded when off your person, does not point it at something they don't intend to destroy, and so on and so forth.
A "2nd Amendment nutter" thinks the 2nd Amendment absolves them of responsibility.
Also important to note the difference between all varieties of nuts and acorns, which are natural predators of gun nuts.
At least the ones that are cops...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/video-shows-florida-deputy-repeatedly-shoot-man-thinking-falling-acorn-rcna138829
So, you know responsible gun owners - note I didn't mention them. I'm happy they exist. But you don't know every gun owner, or even a significant fraction of them, and if you believe nobody with a gun subscribes to the "good guy with a gun" fallacy then you're delusional.
Yes, that's what I expect. And then for the shooter to appear on podcasts and political rallies
Maybe not, but when they resist any and all legislation to control access to guns, don't support mandatory training, red flag laws, etc, they accept that people like this can legally get them. That's an acceptable tradeoff for them. Maybe your gun nut friends support reasonable legislation, it's possible I suppose.
Ultimately this is no true scotsman territory I think.
Wow, tell me you don't know anything about the Kyle Rittenhouse story without saying it directly, lmao.
I love how the Rittenhouse story has become such an effective litmus test to easily distinguish between honest left-wingers/progressives, and ones who are either gullible enough to swallow the narrative that is clearly disproven by all of the evidence (up to and including publicly-available direct video evidence) and testimony, or malicious and dishonest enough to cling to said narrative out of solidarity for their political 'team', knowing that it is categorically false.
All Kyle had to do to not have any of that happen is not show up. The odds of that dramatically increased when he decided to show up with a gun where he knew a bunch of people, some of whom would would be armed, would be out in force and opposing his views.
Much like a lone women wandering late at night through a crime-ridden part of town getting raped, he may not have done anything wrong, but his bad judgement led to the expected consequences. And before we talk about defending his workplace, there's a reason many places say to not try to stop robberies - the insurance claim is far cheaper than the cost of most outcomes of trying to stop the thefts, even the relatively positive outcomes.
Victim blaming.
Open carry state, nobody gave a fuck that he was there while armed. He showed up while obviously visibly armed, and was there walking around while obviously visibly armed, for hours, with zero negative reaction from anyone. He gave some degree of medical assistance to at least 8 people there, according to the trial, and handed out water bottles on request, while walking around yelling "medic" and "friendly".
Nobody attacked him for "his views"--he wasn't even counter-protesting (and literally stated he supported BLM in an interview, to boot)! Literally every action he took there, before he was forced to defend his left not once, but three times, was objectively altruistic/benevolent. Hell, we have evidence he was cleaning graffiti off a high school earlier that same day.
The ONLY reason things started to go south is because he put out a particular dumpster fire that happened to be set by a literal homicidal maniac (someone literally released that day from a hospital, where he was held for a recent suicide attempt), whose horrific plan was to wheel said flaming dumpster into a nearby gas station (want to take a few guesses why he wanted to bring a big fireball into a gas station?), and said maniac decided to scream death threats at him (as well as calling him and a few other people (all of whom were white, far as we know) the n-word) for putting out his fire, and later, LITERALLY tried to make good on those death threats.
If someone else had put out that dumpster fire, they would have been attacked instead. This argument is absolutely idiotic. What, are you going to try and tell me that putting out a fire is some sort of aggressive or provocative act?
Kyle never aggressed on anyone, and his FIRST response to EVERY act of aggression against him, was literally TO FLEE. If any of the people he ended up shooting literally LET HIM RUN AWAY, they'd all be alive/not injured. But they INSISTED on attempting their murder, and chased him down, until they had him cornered, and then tried to kill him. He prevented them from succeeding and protected his life. End of story.
You'd imply it was her fault by saying that her presence is the reason it happened, lol.
Bad judgment to put out fires, okay, lol. That's the lesson everyone should learn from this, right? Don't put out a fire with an unknown cause, just in case it happened to be
I AGREE with you! Kyle Rittenhouse had NO CHOICE but to Cross State Lines with a Weapon! Literally NO other choice!
He never did any such thing, that would have been illegal. He crossed a state line, then got a weapon ….. see, perfectly legal
It's hilarious how after so much time there are still people brain-rotted enough by their ideology to be this smug while saying something that's literally false lol.
Assuming all of this is true, and I'm not saying it isn't, how does that in any way refute what I said? Sure, call it victim blaming if you want. I'm very careful when I have to go into bad parts of town at bad times, and avoid them altogether when I can because, even if I'm not doing anything wrong, that's cold comfort when I'm lying in a hospital or a morgue. So far it's worked pretty well for me. I suppose that makes me a perpetual victim. Sure, it shouldn't have to be that way, but I don't think my being mugged or murdered is going to tip the scales and I don't have any great desire to be a poster child.
It sounds really similar to what I teach my kids about driving - it doesn’t matter if you’re right but someone else crashed into you, you’re still the one injured or dead
And if someone tries to run you off the road for no good reason, and your swerve to avoid them results in them missing you and crashing into the median and dying, it'd be pretty stupid to blame your presence for their death.
Doesn't make jaywalking on a racetrack a brilliant idea.
Jaywalking is a crime, and a race track is a place that is specifically not meant to have pedestrians on it, ever.
Ridiculous, terrible analogy.
That's a pretty cool story.
This is “licensed security guard” with a gun.
Just diet cop.
Hahaha no, he's not even a "diet" cop (but I love that term), though he clearly fuckin thinks he is. I actually took a security guard training course when I was a teenager, and this motherfucker did everything they tell you not to do. If he saw a suspected threat, he should have called the cops and gotten to safety, according to the training. Even with a gun, you're not supposed to use it. We got that training because guards who can wear firearms get paid more, and the agency training is would make more on us if we had our certs.
It was just middle-manager levels of power tripping, with a gun.
No, no, if we had removed all regulations, like the libertarians want, this gentleman would have voluntarily formed a non-aggression pact with the teens and not shot any. The real problem is the regulations and laws preventing him from forming a pact. If we remove all laws and taxes it will work.
This guy was never not going to murder someone.
Psss... Let me let you in on a secret. It's not just this guy.
It’s always the ones you most suspect
Isn't that the main argument? "I have a gun because you have a gun... And they want guns because we have guns". It's rednecks version of "assured mutual destruction".
The insidious part is a lot of people who don't want guns end up getting them because those who want them have them.
Seems like a damn good reason to get a poverty pony.
His son was taking a jiu-jitsu class next door. This guy is like peak gravy seals/tacticool wannabe.
See also
101st Chairborne
Cosplaytriots
Delta Farce
Fartilery
GI Sloppy Joes/GI Doughs
Goutlaws
Gravy Seals
Green Buffets/Beignets
Irrational Guard
Meal Team 6
The National Lard
O-Dunkin-30
Operation Dessert Storm
The ParaMealitary
Patridiots
Timid McVeighs
Veteran: Normandy Beached, Cold Cuts War, Vietnaan and Dessert Storm
Whisky Tango Foodtruck
Steven Seagal clone
Wow, the article even has a section detailing why the boys were there with BB guns:
Myers straight up murdered the kid. Fortunately the article also points out he was arrested and the video evidence shows clear 2nd degree manslaughter, so he's going to jail, losing his guns, and most likely won't watch his kid grow up. His kid has a chance to grow up without a bad influence in his life now, so that's good.
No time to call 911 my ass.
Fucking murderer didn't want anyone else getting the credit for his kill.
You want to know what is even more fucked up. The
Renton policeKing County Sherriff's office was conducting an emergency response drill in the same parking lot less than 250 feet away from where his car was AT THE EXACT SAME TIME THIS HAPPENED. He didn't have to "call the fucking police", he could have literally rolled down his window and screamed for help, and they would have come running. Also the police station is literally like 3 blocks away from where this store is located anyway. Fuck this dumb cunt. If it was up to me he would be getting life in prison without the possibility of parole.Edit: (Source)
Weird the article didn't mention that. Did I miss it? Otherwise do you have a source?
See my original comment above. I added in a source for you.
Thanks!
Justifiable homicide fetishist: "Today is my day"
He probably imagined glowing headlines about his great heroism and vigilance
Let's be real, here. If those guys were intending to commit a violent crime, and were literally in the parking lot of the establishment they were going to commit a crime at, do you really think a call to 911 would have resulted in anyone on the scene any earlier than long after the crime had been committed?
It didn't justify his action, obviously, but come on. This isn't Night City where cops magically materialize on scene the moment something suspicious happens, lol
I mean, if I’m going to go initiate an armed conflict with some criminals, I’d want backup on the way no matter what, right?
But that wasn’t going through this maniac’s mind. He was way too excited about it being his time to act!
Ah, yes: pre-crime. Gotta shoot em early before they commit a crime
Try reading what I wrote again, you clearly failed on the first pass.
I'm saying he shouldn't have done anything, but also that he is definitely correct that calling 911 wouldn't have prevented anything in the worst case scenario.
I think this is where most such efforts fail; this is the “good guy with a gun” fallacy. It’s usually NOT “the worst case scenario”, and people are bad at recognizing this (in both directions)
Holy fuck it's not that deep, the literal only point I'm making is that police response times are typically slow. That's all.
From me? No certainly is not, because I'm not saying that the above fact justified his vigilantism.
Can you guys stop ignoring that part of what I write? It's getting obnoxious having to keep repeating myself.
It's not the BB gun that got the kid killed. He literally put the gun on the ground and had his hands up.
It's because the "security guard" is a stupid, trigger-happy moron.
I agree, but for clarification it was a different teen whom he shot, who still had his BB gun.
There were 3 teens, two with BB guns. The first dropped his and was on the ground, straddled by Shooter McFuckhead when the second, still standing, was shot.
Thank god there was a "good guy with a gun" there. Otherwise nobody would have died!
To make things clear (and worse), this man wasn't even on the job! Nobody asked him to do this! He just dropped his kid off for a class nearby and decided it was his duty to shoot anyone he deemed suspicious.
Licensed Security Guard = Someone who couldn't meet the (absurdly low) minimum standards to be a cop.
I definitely don't trust those guys!
They're not that low, you have to be a frat-bro, shoot-fist, style douchebag to even be considered
And this guy couldn’t even reach that bar.
Cool. Killed a kid because no fucking reason.
"The 17-year-old shot and killed was identified as Hazrat Ali Rohani by Kent-Meridian High School Principal David Radford, according to the Kent Reporter."
And from another article:
"According to court documents, Myers said he "had a duty to act to stop the individuals from hurting someone innocent and to protect his son who was at the location next door to Big 5 Sporting Goods." "
...and ...
"Myers reiterated to detectives that the teens would not follow his commands. It should be noted that Myers is not a uniformed law enforcement officer, and they did not need to follow his commands. " source
...and....
"Myers said he thought he saw a teen reach for something in his waistband, so he fired multiple times. According to court documents, he stood over the teen on the ground and continued to fire."
So Main-Character-Syndrome middle aged guy was pointing his gun and the teenager wouldn't obey his commands, so decided to live out his vigilante fantasy and murder a teen. Lock this guy up for good.
God knows how long this fucking freak has been itching to kill someone. He thought being a security guard would get him the cop treatment for murdering someone in broad daylight.
Probably tried to be an officer and wasn't accepted. A lot of people who want to be a cop start out as security.
Jesus Christ, this dude freaked out seeing kids taking a BB Gun into a sporting goods store.
Christ knows what this guy thinks seeing people go to a gun range.
Ranges (that have staff at all) mostly require guns to be cased or holstered, you'll get kicked out waving one around all willy nilly.
These are also a thing, very real looking BB guns.
Though from the description given in the post it seems the kid was shot after he put the gun down? That's a bad shoot if so.
This is a bad shooting no matter what. HE approached the kids. He instigated the confrontation. He murdered a child. There is no room for any other narrative here.
It doesn't matter if it looked like a real gun, or even if it WAS a real gun. He had a real gun too, should he also have been shot for having a real gun that looked like a real gun?
Read the article.
Another kid who also had a BB gun was shot after the first put his down.
I did but I missed the change in kids. How 'bout you learn some interpersonal skills? Rude, rude person. Shame.
...?
Dismissive and rude. Politeness isn't a crime, feel free to utilize it.
You implied you only read the article summary in the post (since that's what you used as your reference), and were missing key info that you then made a conclusion based on. I replied with the correct info (at least, according to the article).
I guess I could have been more gentle, but it's extremely common for people not to read articles they comment on, which is pretty rude and seemed to be the case here.
So I apologize if I came across brisk, although boy, if you're going to be this sensitive on the Internet you're going to be fighting about it at some point in almost any discussion.
I went back to the source and read it to check, but still just missed the part where it said the one who got shot wasn't the first kid. It happens.
And I could've just called you a cunt and moved on, but admonishment seemed to be the correct course. Though I see you've elected to continue by insinuating me calling you out is "being sensitive" and so I see now I should've just chose the "manly" option of insulting you back. My mistake. I forget half the people here are not adults.
Why would you call me anything...?
Whatever has you so worked up and aggressive, I hope it gets better for you.
I called you rude for being rude, you insinuated this was somehow sensitivity, perhaps I should have been "stronger" and simply been rude to you back.
Perhaps the above rephrasing will aide your ability to understand. I'm not being aggressive, if anything I'm being defensive lol, you're the one who engaged with my comment and chose to do so in a smug way, frankly I'd prefer you never even bothered myself, so it seems we agree on something: this is a waste of both of our times. Good day.
Weird.
Every sporting store in my area specifically states to not bring firearms/guns into the store. I have seen many models of pellet/bb gun that look like real firearms until you handle them.
I'm not defending the actions of the security guard but rules like these could help prevent a similar situation in the future.
Point of clarification - yes, the individual may be employed as a security guard elsewhere, but he was importantly NOT a security guard in this situation. He's just a dude who dropped his kid off for a class nearby and deemed it necessary to "patrol" the area to go on power trips. He's a bully with a gun.
MAY be employed as a security guard too. At least from the article the guy claimed to be somewhere. At some point.
So how do you return one of the guns you can buy in such stores if there's an issue with it?
You inform an employee and they escort your gun with you in the store. It is also important to note I am in Canada and we have different gun laws.
That's really not at all how it works in Washington. Or anywhere else in the U.S.
These kids were doing absolutely nothing wrong or even out of the ordinary.
I never claimed they did anything wrong. I propose a set of rules that could help prevent anoter incident.
Your set of rules puts the onus on the victim to avoid getting shot. You're putting restrictions on the wrong party.
How many deaths would such rules prevent per year versus things like mandated safety lessons and training?
Well fucking congrats for contributing to the statistic.
I'm sorry, another?
I mean, my high school had at least 1 suicide a year, so it’s not too much of a reach to say that some other event happened resulting in the loss of life.
Maybe it's different from when I was in high school in the 90s, but at least a couple of kids died each year because they were drunk and driving.
Kent is not the best school district...
You would be surprised how many children die because of gun violence. It’s not necessarily at the school, but at the home or situations like this.
Also due to non-gun violence too.
The ONLY way this could have been prevented is if the teen had an ACTUAL Gun and shot the Security Guard first! And the ONLY way to prevent THAT situation would be if the Security Guard shot the teen first! There's LITERALLY no other way we could play this scenario out!
I'm so tired of hearing this argument.
Of course there's a better way this could be resolved, no matter how much you try to pretend otherwise.
A cop could shoot both of them and their dogs. And that's peak freedom. Maybe think about that next time.
But who will shoot the cop? And who will shoot the cop shooter?
Christopher Dorner satisfies both of those!
😼
What if we put a sniper on a nearby roof, to shoot them both as they approached eachother, but before any crime had occurred.
When there’s a shitload of people carrying around hammers there’s going to be a bunch of them trying to find a nail.
Good guys with guns sure seem pretty afraid of other good guys with guns.
I mean, going from this example it seems like everyone should be afraid of good guys with guns.
Why would anyone not be?
The victim wasn't a "good guy". He was brown. Only white conservatives are "good guys".
See, it's this bullshit. This well-intentioned man, actively employed in a fashion that would train him, fucked up, and killed someone's child. When it comes to the use of deadly force, there is no take-backs, no do-overs, no second chances. How many people handle guns perfectly? Now take that person with perfect gun knowledge and drop them in a situation where they don't know everything, are only given a small glimpse of what could be a weapon, and BAM, you have a tragic loss of life because in reality, 99% of the time it's just somebody being stupid, and not doing anything that should result in their death.
No. The article says
Meaning off the clock surveillance, for the purpose of engaging in vigilantism.
I meant that, in his mind, he had "good intentions." That's where the distinction comes in, as everyone walking around with a gun, is really just waiting for their moment to "save the day." And when you go looking for something, odds are you'll find it. And by that I mean that they'll assume whatever scenario their in IS their moment to "save the day," as they ultimately ignore contrary evidence and push aside any doubts as to the situations innocence, because they want so badly to be seen as a hero that saved the day.
Dude decided to play cowboy, found himself a situation in which he saw two teenagers with what looked like weapons, ignored the fact that they weren't attempting to conceal themselves or their "weapons," ignored their body language and demeanor, ignored his doubts, and killed somebodys child. And that, ultimately, is going to be the fate of most people who walk around with guns, you're going to end up hurting someone close to you, or someone entirely innocent, and then you'll spend the rest of your life unable to sleep or rest because you decided deadly force was necessary when it absolutely wasn't.
A story I'm writing has this as a point. The characters fuss over the trolley problem (renamed in the story), with divisive answers about not getting involved, etc.
The protagonist's answer to the trolley problem is: To fear it, agonize over it, and not prepare an answer for when it comes. Basically, don't pre-engineer scenarios in your mind that you're "ready" to make some fatal, definitive solution for - because probably the biggest issue with the trolley problem is working out every last detail to verify with 100.0000% certainty that you are in a trolley problem with no other solutions.
Right so again, not well intentioned. Delusional.
I just want to step in here and say: you're arguing over the dumbest thing. Stop trying to pick a fight when you agree with the overall sentiment of what they're trying to say.
It's not dumb to call out apologetic framing in commentary. This dude doesn't need kid gloves, and what other people like him need is a very clear description of what's right and wrong here. This isn't a grey area. If you go out and use your personal firearm to police other people, you are a vigilante. If you don't think you are engaging in vigilantism, you are delusional.
Main stream news should be responsible enough to call a spade a spade in these cases.
The guy saw people with what looked like guns going towards a shopping center that contained, among others, his child in a karate class. If the situation had been real, then his actions could have potentially saved lives, which is what his intention obviously was. I said that phrase specifically to evoke in the readers mind, how they have similarly been well-intentioned in the past, but the situation turned out doing harm. We've all had instances where we tried to do something good, and it turned out bad. This guy tried to be a hero, and instead he's the villain. Calling him well-intentioned isn't "apologetic framing," it's what happened. And it should serve as a stark reminder to everyone still walking around with guns, that their good intentions mean absolutely nothing.
The situation of returning guns to a gun store?
He intended to confront other people open carrying while he was openly carrying.
This same mindset, you could describe cross burnings or working at the DMV as well intentioned.
I feel like you're being deliberately obtuse, or just trying to be adversarial for the sake of it. His point is that what was going on in the asshole's head was that he was stopping an active shooter situation. He thought that because he was a moron. Had he not had a gun, the moron couldn't have murdered people.
There's always going to morons, so the problem here is that he was allowed to have a gun. Unless your position is that morons should be euthanized, then you must agree that the solution is gun control, or that morons murdering indiscriminately is 👍
For a bunch of types of people, good intentions legitimise behavior. It wasn't legitimate behavior.
Gun control absolutely needs to happen. Until it does, news and discussions should center around decrying vigilante behavior.
It doesn't matter what he thought. It matters what he did.
Get this man a badge!
We outlawing guns yet?
See yall next horrific act of gun violence.
You can try, but we will still keep them regardless of the outcome.
Yeah i know the folks itching to kill people will resist the attempt to disarm folks itching to kill people.
That has nothing to do with what I said.
Security guards are often losers wanting to feel like they have power who tried to become cops but failed. It's to an extent where you'll frequently see them (often illegally) put flashing lights on their "security vehicle" and plaster decals meant to mimic those of police on it. Some of them even buy a bunch of stolen police equipment to wear around them and put in their car. A large portion of the people that get arrested and charged with impersonating law enforcement is security guards. It's sad but it's also disgusting the lengths they will go to cosplay for their power trip.
These kinds of people are way more trigger happy than normal.