May 22, 2023

"You said I always lie!"/"I just couldn’t believe it. It just didn’t sound real, until there was proof. It sounds like something you would see in the movies"/"Mom, stuff in the movies can and do happen in real life."

From "His mom got him a $3 slingshot. He used it to stop a kidnapper, police say" (WaPo).
Troopers said they found the 17-year-old suspect hiding at a nearby gas station.... 'He had obvious signs of an injury consistent with those that would have been sustained from the slingshot strikes to his head and chest,' police said.... Maggie said that, at first, she didn’t believe her son had sniped a stranger from some 200 feet away. She thought he was talking big. Then, police informed her of the 17-year-old’s telltale injuries. They said that, as investigators interviewed the suspect, the marble-induced goose egg on his head kept growing....

39 comments:

RideSpaceMountain said...

Nice shootin' Tex. Somebody get that boy a Red Rider!

M Jordan said...

Please tell me the kid is named David.

Rocco said...

Sounds like the next Carlos Hathcock.

Rocco said...

Sounds like the next Carlos Hathcock.

n.n said...

Biblical.

Narr said...

It's not proper to comment, or even have an opinion, until we are told the races of those involved.

Slingshots are well known to be a gateway weapon for White Supremacists, after all.

cassandra lite said...

"The shot hit him — right between the eyes."

The only way this story could be better: if the kid's name was David instead of Owen.

Duke Dan said...

It’s about time we have common sense slingshot control. We can’t just have kids running around with these thing.

Enigma said...

Projectile weapons very often outperform the expectations of ignorant or inexperienced people.

Take a look at the stone slingers of Mallorca. Slings have a 150 meter effective range and have been used for thousands of years.

https://mallorcaphotoblog.com/2009/06/28/stone-slinging/

Take a look at the German goofball who runs The Slingshot Channel, and who has turn many household items into lethal weapons:

https://www.youtube.com/user/JoergSprave

donald said...

Hell yeah.

mikee said...

Very good price for the slingshot. While frozen paintballs are the more modern means of self defense by toy use, nothing wrong with a classic wrist rocket.

Skeptical Voter said...

Did the kid have a telescopic sight on that slingshot?

tim maguire said...

I wish somebody had broken into my house when I had a slingshot. I never got to shoot anything really cool.

7.62x54 R said...

Making and buying slingshot 100% illegal in Massachusetts in less you belong to a club that has regular sporting events. Yea Massholes.

Mike Yancey said...

Non-WAPO story:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/20/michigan-boy-saved-sister-kidnapping-slingshot-speaks

madAsHell said...

200 feet?? Marble-induced??

We had slingshots we called wrist rockets. The sling shot looped over your wrist. It did not depend on keeping a firm grip of the handle.

The best we could do was break windows, and kill small rodents, but mostly we missed!!

FullMoon said...

Too bad the kid didn't have a .22 long handy.

Bill R said...

I do love a happy ending!

R C Belaire said...

At 200ft that's a damn good shot!

Leland said...

Good thing he lives in Michigan. Had this happened in Manhattan, Bragg would be working on grand jury indictment of the kid.

Wince said...

Dennis the Equalizer.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

RideSpaceMountain said...

Somebody get that boy a Red Rider!

Red Rider, my ass! He's ready for a 5.56 and some range time!

Gospace said...

Use what you got. A 30-30 would have been better- there's be no repeat action from the criminal. An evil scary looking AR-15 would be even better and easier to handle for someone his age. A shotgun in this case, the weapon of choice according to Brain Addled Biden, would have been worse then uselss. Couldn't fire at the criminal without hitting his sister.

Owen is lucky he doesn't live in NY, of thse other places:

The following are some states and cities make possession of a wrist-rocket illegal:
Massachusetts.
Duluth, Minnesota.
Louis, Missouri.
New Jersey.
New York.
Columbus, Ohio.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rhode Island.


He'd be facing jail time for defending his siter. Especially heinous crime in Alvin Bragg's NYC, where defense of the innocent is a crime in and of itself.

n.n said...

He could have lost any eye. He wasn't caught red-handed. Does Michigan have a bag limit?

The criminal, civil, and defamation cases are pending.

Owen said...

Great result. Next step? Train 8-year-old girls in the use of hat-pins, paring knives and a strong set of teeth.

Joe Smith said...

A gun would have been better...

Pillage Idiot said...

The only way to stop a physically dominant bad guy intent on kidnapping and rape, is to have a good guy with a ... slingshot!

KellyM said...

Knowing the general WaPo readership, I bet the comments were 80/20 for the kidnapper. Nevertheless, the kid deserves a medal.

MadTownGuy said...

Sitting in the office in the eastern suburbs of L.A. County, one of the tempered glass windows next to a co-worker disintegrated and fell out of its frame. We had seen gang members shooting at each other from cars before, so we were nervous.

Turns out it was a neighborhood kid from across the street, who used a wrist rocket to fire a hard plastic ball at nowhere in particular. Not a targeted event, but the shot from the back yard behind the block wall was easily fifty yards, so it must have had plenty of velocity.

DRP said...

Someone buy that kid a pack of ball bearings...

Tomcc said...

Good outcome. Not really believing 200', maybe a typo or a gross exaggeration. (I say that as a former 14 y.o. with a bad-ass slingshot that stored 1/4" metal balls in the handle.)

Narr said...

Looks like one of those massacre-capable assault slingshots to me.

YouTube has some good vids on the sling in war. No toy at all, and we're discovering more about them all the time. The Romans, and perhaps others, had stones shaped to shriek and howl when loosed--psychological warfare, and Balearic Slingers were always in demand as mercs.

takirks said...

"The suspect allegedly told detectives that he planned on beating the girl after abducting her. He was charged Thursday with one count of attempted kidnapping/child enticement, one count of attempted assault to do great bodily harm less than murder, and one count of assault and battery. The 17-year-old was charged as an adult and his bond was set at $150,000, according to MLive."

Smart move? Save some other girl's life down the road, and put a bullet in this creature's head. "Planned on beating the girl after abducting her", my ass. That thing planned on doing a hell of a lot worse, and undoubtedly will if he isn't stopped permanently.

This is why modern Western society is collapsing around our ears: You've got clear evidence that this thing is neither truly human, and presents a threat. Yet, I can almost guarantee you that he's going to wind up out on the streets in a few short years, and will almost certainly wind up harming some other little girl who won't have a big brother there to stop the bad things from happening.

This is one case where I'm pretty sure I'd have no problem with applying the left's sainted "precautionary principle"; if it saves one child's life? No issues with immediate summary capital punishment being applied. Shoot his sorry ass, and charge the family that raised this monstrosity for the bullet and clean-up afterwards.

I love that little bit about beating her... We all know damn good and well where this was ending, and nobody wants to acknowledge the feral dog in the room. 8 year old girl... What on earth could she have done to earn "a beating"? Looked at him funny? Made fun of his haircut?

People won't do the hard things, which leads to even worse things happening down the road. That creature is a serial killer in the making. Deal with him now. And, even if he isn't? Beating an 8 year old girl up? To even form that plan means he's inhuman and worthy of culling.

All y'all can call me a horrible person, but I'm not the one who's going to be letting this thing free to eventually kill other little girls and probably not get caught. He'll have learned from this... Make sure ain't nobody there to witness or stop him. I'd provide him with another "learning opportunity", entirely: Try to kidnap little girls, die.

But, then again, I'm a simple man with simple solutions.

Nancy said...

The WaPo commenters are all in favor of Owen.

Bob said...

Back in the late 1960's when Wrist Rocket slingshots first came out, they figured into a cop show as a murder weapon, with a demonstration showing a ball bearing penetrating deeply into a plaster "head." As has already been noted, they were quickly banned in various states known for criminalizing tools rather than their misuse.

Big Mike said...

If older brothers protect their younger siblings, is that “White Supremacy” too?

Big Mike said...

The perp got off lightly when you think about the fate of Goliath.

Richard Aubrey said...

You can see what this kid was doing in his spare time.

takirks said...

Ah, yes... The beauty and truth of "restorative justice" demonstrated for one and all...

https://thepostmillennial.com/man-on-lifetime-parole-for-raping-killing-child-charged-with-sexual-assaulting-elderly-woman

Dude kills and rapes a 10 year-old girl. The bright lights of New York didn't kill him then, and Kathy Hochul proudly releases this guy to prey on more women. At least two more victims, and they're debating the "justice" of demanding, demanding I say, bail for him.

Well, at least his victims are of the same sex that is primarily responsible for this BS, voting for these "felon-friendly policies" and the idiots who espouse and put them into action. I think I'd rather live under the bad old patriarchy, where things like this were forthrightly identified and then given clean executions.

More I see of today's world, the less I think of the changes we've made, and the people who voted for them. So many of these "felon friendly" ideas and policies are the ones women want, failing to grasp that they're the most likely victims of those they fail to cull from the population.

Ah, well. Experience is the best teacher, but she keeps a dear school...