Vinson’s Variety: Know facts before passing judgment
A friend recently revealed to me a story that caused me to gasp and my bottom lip to drop. I just sat there speechless, staring my friend in the face, he staring right back at me. Fact of the matter is the story had such a profound effect on me that I feel compelled to share it with you. Here goes, as the story was told to me:
In a Midstate county, a lady pulled up to a gas station to fill up her car with gasoline. Well groomed in a business suit, the lady commenced pumping gasoline into her Lexus. However, as my friend told me, she was smoking a cigarette while pumping the gasoline — a potentially hazardous no-no! Casually puffing on the cigarette, she held the gas nozzle in her right hand as the pump continued pumping. Not paying attention, daydreaming, she allowed her gas tank to overrun, gasoline suddenly gushing out of the tank onto her arm and saturating her suit coat sleeve.
Further, gasoline sloshing onto the coat sleeve startled the lady, and her cigarette fell from her mouth onto her gasoline-saturated coat sleeve, setting it ablaze. Horrified, she commenced screaming and thrashing about, frantically waiving her arm in the air in an attempt to put out the fire! However, waiving her arm in the air merely fueled the flames — in more ways than one.
About that time, my friend continued, a county deputy pulled up to the scene, got out of his patrol car, said nary a word, pulled his Glock 10mm pistol from his holster, and shot the lady.
“No!” I retorted to my friend. “Surely, he didn’t do something bone-headed like that!”
“Indeed, he did, Mike, and I don’t blame him one little bit. I would have done the same thing,” my friend defended.
At this point, I was thinking to myself: I’ve known this friend for years, but, obviously, I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did. He used to be a nice, caring human, but no more. The more I thought it over, the more incensed I became.
“What gave that deputy the right to pull up to the gas station and shoot that poor woman — on fire! — without first attempting to find out what was going on?” I demanded. “Is the deputy in jail? Surely the woman pressed charges!”
“Nah,” my friend giggled. “She didn’t press charges, and the deputy didn’t get into any trouble.”
“That takes the cake,” I answered, my blood boiling. “Why would the sheriff’s department have some trigger-happy sort like that on the force? He’s a menace, not an asset!”
“No-no, you’re wrong, Mike. That deputy had every right by law to pull up and shoot that woman on sight, on the spot, just like he did.”
“How in the world can you sit there and justify the deputy shooting that poor lady before finding out what really was going on–that, actually, she needed his help,” I fired back.
“Mike, again I say, the deputy was within his rights by shooting her,” my friend said with the coolest of demeanor.
“Just how, exactly, was he within his rights?” I spat, thoroughly agitated that my friend was so smug and giggly about a tragedy.
“Simple: She was waiving a firearm at him.”
As I said in the opening paragraph, we just sat there and stared at each other for a few seconds, then burst out in total laughter. I conceded and told my friend that he had “gotten me” with his joke, and “gotten me good!”
If there’s a moral to this story, and there is one to each and every story, it’s this: Know all the facts before passing final judgment.
Mike Vinson is a Warren County columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].