[Jeff Higgins]

This actually happened several years ago; this write-up is from Massad Ayoob. It resurfaced on a gun forum the other day. Fine example of what determined citizens can accomplish against equally determined crooks, as long as they are in a free society that allows them to defend themselves.

Situation: Two particularly brutal and heavily armed criminals hit an upscale jewelry store--and meet a firestorm of armed citizen resistance.


Lesson: Sound planning beats seasoned perpetrators. Sometimes, the more firepower you have, the better. The best cops in the world can't help you if they aren't right there, right now.


December 2, 1994. William "Pappy" Head, 71, and Thomas Jefferson Salter, 56, are what today's young predators would call "OGs"--"Old Gangsters." Pappy is a known hit man, on parole after serving only a year of a five year sentence for conspiracy to commit murder, and both have a long history of robbing banks and jewelry stores. Salter has told his son he does it for the adrenaline rush. Both are members of a loose-knit gang of all-white robbers, killers and dope-runners known in the deep South as the Dixie Mafia.


Their target is Beverly Hills Jewelers, an upscale shop within sight of the Henrico County Police Department and the local FBI office on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia. The store has already been cased for them the previous September by crooked carnival workers tied to the Dixie Mafia, when they were in town for a fair. It looks fat and easy. Pappy unlimbers his double-barrel, 12 gauge sawed-off shotgun and Tom draws one of the two handguns tucked in his belt, a 1911 .45 auto. They roll ski masks down over their faces and burst through the door.


They don't know that when they emerge, they'll be wearing body bags instead of ski masks.


Preparation


In his mid-forties, married with four kids, storeowner Gary Baker was not a man who took chances. This was why he had situated his jewelry store in one of the lower crime suburbs of the area, the Wistar Mall on Staples Mills Road. The interior had the showcases laid out in a squared-off horseshoe pattern, reasonably well secured from unauthorized entry behind the counters. At the back of the store, the office area was elevated, offering a view of the store proper but shielded by an invisible steel-walled partition that Baker has designed himself.


A shooter since boyhood, Baker always snorted at police handouts that told merchants to surrender to armed robbers and put themselves at their mercy rather than resist. Not long before, it became apparent that an anti-gun governor was going to ramrod through a "one gun a month" law in Virginia. It seemed like a good idea to stock up. Baker had purchased eleven Rossi .38 Specials, five-shot snubbies, and laid them out at ten foot intervals behind the counters, invisible to the public but readily accessible to staff. All were loaded with Remington 125 grain semi-jacketed hollow points. He wanted simple "point and shoot" guns that all worked the same, and could be easily deployed under stress. In addition, he secreted his own Remington 870 12 gauge pump gun where he could reach it near the door to his office. Under one back counter, as incongruous among the little matte blue .38s as the Great Dane among the wiener dogs in the Disney flick "The Ugly Dachshund," lay a stainless steel Ruger Super Blackhawk single a ction .44 Magnum with ten-inch barrel.


Gary had hoped that he would never need these guns. But this morning, he would be glad he put them in place.


It's a quarter past ten AM, fifteen minutes after opening, when the two men rush through the door wearing ski masks. One is physically huge, pulling along a wheeled suitcase with one hand and wielding what Gary recognizes as a blue steel Army .45 automatic in the other. The second, average-sized, stands a few steps inside the doorway with a sawed-off shotgun. "You don't believe it's happening," Gary will say in a guest lecture to one of my LFI classes later. "It takes a few moments for the reality to sink in." The one with the pistol is rapidly moving up the aisle toward him, screaming, "We're here to clean you out!" The man with the shotgun fires a blast into a display case, and the employee behind that counter dives to the floor.


The reality has sunk in. Gary Baker's hand closes over the rubbery stock of a Rossi .38.


The fight is on.


War On Two Fronts


Massively muscled from years of pumping iron in prison, Thomas Salter easily leaps to the top of the four-foot counter at the left rear of the store as it faces the street. Directly ahead of him and slightly above is Gary Baker, who simply raises his right arm to eye level, directs the .38 at the masked giant's chest, and fires three fast shots. Within a heartbeat Gary's younger brother Charlie has also seized a Rossi .38 and, firing in the exact same stance, pumps three more shots at Salter from the criminal's left side.


The big ex-con pitches forward and falls behind the counter. He sprawls next to a female employee who has already hit the floor, with a Rossi .38 in one of her hands and her other hand stabbing at the holdup button, the silent alarm. She brings the gun to bear on the fallen gunman to protect herself, his masked face inches away from hers, but she realizes that he is not moving and holds her fire.


Meanwhile, on the other end of the store at the public's entrance, the second half of the armed robbery problem remains to be solved. Pappy Head points his sawed-off down the aisle at Gary and cuts loose. His wide-spreading swath of double ought buckshot goes wild.


But not the storeowner's return shots. The distance is some 40 feet and now Gary Baker takes careful aim, aligning the tiny sights of the revolver, and rolls off the last two shots in the cylinder. Pappy Head ducks behind a solid corner at the store's center island, a square of four showcases, and screams, "I'm hit!"


Charlie Baker fires at him, but without effect, and his .38 goes dry. Another employee hands him the big single-action .44. It occurs to Charlie that between the accuracy of its long barrel, adjustable sights and the barricade-penetrating power of its Remington 240 grain Magnum semi-jacketed hollow point bullets, this revolver might let him reach the well-covered gunman. He fires four shots.


Nothing has changed. Setting down the Ruger, Charlie seizes the nearest fully-loaded Rossi and moves forward across the back wall behind the counter. He has to step over the prone employee and the downed Salter to do it, and lie also crosses his brother's field of fire. Both Bakers are alert enough not to endanger the other.


Gary has dropped the empty .38 and grabbed his Remington 870. Now, as they face the second threat with the shotgun, Charlie is on the left with a .38 extended to arm's length and Gary is above and behind him, to his right, with the shotgun. They have the remaining gunman triangulated. Charlie orders the surviving criminal to surrender and throw his gun out. Head yells back that he's giving up and that he's going to toss out the shotgun. The Baker brothers hope that it's over, that the killing will end here.


But they don't know what a stone killer they're up against. Pappy Head has been trying to lull them off guard, and now he shoves the sawed-off out past his cover and fires at Gary, who can't get a clean shot at him at this angle. Charlie opens fire furiously, his gun extended in a right hand only position, looking over the sights and aligning it on Pappy's position and firing double action as fast as he can pull the trigger, moving down the counter toward the deadly gunman. The gun clicks dry. He snatches up another, empties it, drops it, picks up another, and continues, a relentless drumbeat of gunfire with one Rossi .38 after another as he closes rapidly on the threat. He is trying to stop Head with bullets, and if he can't do that, at least pin him down to where Head can't shoot at his brother anymore.


Pappy Head ducks out and fires another blast, this time at Charlie. The younger Baker is ducking down to retrieve a fresh revolver from behind the counter, and this saves his life. He feels and hears the buckshot go past his head. For Charlie Baker, fear has already coalesced into a controlled but white-hot anger. He picks up this next .38 and pumps more lead at the man who has tried to murder both him and his brother, still running forward toward the danger, closing the gap, trying to get an angle on Head where he can deliver a stopping shot.


Meanwhile, Gary Baker can see the shotgun blast directed at his brother, and the Remington 870 is already at his shoulder, and now that Pappy has raised his gun above the counter to aim at Charlie, Gary has a clear shot at him at last. Sighting carefully down the barrel, he squeezes the trigger. The gunman's head and shoulders disappear, and Gary pumps two more loads of double ought at the same place, just hoping to keep him down and prevent him from shooting Charlie.

continued...