A Reddit user said he had two real draw-without-shooting incidents while working as head of security for a local hip-hop club, but the second one was the one he called “sheer stupidity on so many levels.” According to his comment in the thread, he was standing at the front entrance doing the normal routine — pat-downs, checking IDs, taking covers. The club had a food vendor set up outside the main entrance selling grilled food, and that vendor had forgotten to bring the iPad and Square reader needed to take card payments. So the owner, whom the commenter called “Phil,” swung by in his pickup to drop the equipment off.
What happened next turned into pure chaos in seconds.
Phil parked the truck, jumped out, and made the classic bad move people always talk about later: he left the driver’s door open and the engine running. His wife — the commenter called her “Sheila” — was in a separate vehicle nearby. As Phil went to hand off the payment gear, the commenter suddenly heard Sheila start screaming. A homeless man who was not even a patron of the club had run up, jumped into the front seat of Phil’s truck, and was trying to steal it right there in front of the entrance.
Then it somehow got even worse.
The security guy wrote that Phil took off running toward the truck to stop the theft, but as he did, his pants — boxers and all — fell down around his ankles and he went face-first onto the pavement directly in front of the vehicle. That was the moment the whole thing stopped being a ridiculous theft attempt and turned into something that looked like it might become a fatality. The commenter said he saw the guy in the driver’s seat reach up and pull the gear shift down, and the thought that hit him instantly was: “He’s going to run Phil over.”
According to the post, the gun was in his hand before he had time to really think it through. He said he was aiming at the man’s chest through the open driver’s window while Sheila was still screaming, Phil was on the ground trying to get his pants and himself back in order, and the whole parking lot scene had turned into “just fucking chaos.” He started issuing commands immediately. He told the man to show his hands, put the truck back in park, take out the keys, and throw them on the ground.
The man complied.
The commenter said the whole time the would-be thief was begging him not to kill him. He explained in the thread that by that point he had already spent 10 years working as a bouncer and had seen all kinds of ugly things — stabbings, three drive-by shootings, a guy get run over, and one incident where he was nearly beaten to death in a bathroom stall. Even with all that behind him, he said he had never imagined one of the moments he trained for would involve what was basically a felony traffic stop on a stolen pickup outside a nightclub. Still, the commands worked. The man put the truck in park, threw out the keys, got out, and went down on his knees. Police arrived and took him into custody.
He added later that the man ended up serving 18 months on a plea deal and, in his words, got some much-needed help. He also said one of the responding officers told him afterward that he would have shot the guy. That comment stuck with him. The entire ordeal was enough that he decided that night he was finished with bar work. He wrote that the money had been good, but not good enough to keep stepping into that kind of insanity. He gave notice the very next night.
The story he told was brutally simple once all the pieces are lined up. He was working security at a club entrance while a food vendor was set up outside. The owner of the vendor’s operation rolled in to drop off a payment device, left his truck running, and in a flash a homeless man jumped into the driver’s seat to steal it. The owner sprinted toward the truck, fell flat with his pants around his ankles, and the security guy realized the thief was about to put the truck in gear and run him over. He drew, aimed through the open window, barked commands, and the thief did exactly what he was told. Police arrested the man, and the security chief walked away with one more story he never expected to live through.
What do you think — if you saw a guy trying to steal a running truck and the owner fell in front of it with his pants around his ankles, would you trust yourself to stay calm enough to do what this guy did?
Original Reddit post: What was a time you had to draw but not shoot?
