Good Guy with a Gun Sees Officer In Trouble, Immediately Steps in to Help
Because of the brave actions of an armed good Samaritan, one Utah police officer made it home alive this past weekend.
According to Salt Lake City station KSTU, the drama began last Saturday afternoon when an officer with the Springville City Police Department spotted a man’s feet dangling from a Tabitha’s Way donation bin in downtown Springville.
Apparently, that man and thug, Paul Douglas Anderson, had been digging through the bin for goodies.
The unnamed officer pulled over and ordered Anderson to exit the bin. KSTU notes that though Anderson “eventually” complied, “he kept his hands in his pockets,” leading the officer to worry that he might be armed.
The Springville officer then repeatedly demanded Anderson remove his hands from his pockets. Again, Anderson “eventually” complied — this time by abruptly removing his hands from his pockets and decking the officer right in the face.
What happened next was horrifying: Anderson just kept punching the cop over and over again like a rag doll.
Had an armed good Samaritan by the name of Derek Meyer not been driving through the area at that very instant, that cop may have very well died or sustained traumatic brain damage.
KSTU reported that, upon seeing the officer being pummeled, Meyer pulled up alongside the cop’s police cruiser, jumped out of his vehicle, drew his weapon and pointed it right at Anderson, provoking the thug to halt his attack on the officer and try to make a run for it.
He was caught hiding underneath a flatbed trailer nearby shortly thereafter and booked into the local jail “on suspicion of assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, theft, burglary, and failure to stop at the command of a police officer,” as reported by Utah’s Daily Herald.
The officer whom Anderson attacked was meanwhile treated at a local hospital for a fractured orbital eye socket and lacerations to his face.
“Had he not been in the right place at the right time, who knows what would have happened,” remarked Corporal Cory Waters, referencing Meyers’ invention. “But he definitely stopped the attack from continuing and becoming much worse.”
True, though Meyer reiterated in a statement to KSTU that he intervened “because of who I am. Not to get any extra attention or to have people talk about me or anything I did.”
Plus, he happened to be armed.
“I carry a gun to protect me and those around me, but primarily I carry a gun to protect my family first and foremost,” he said. “Outside of that, if I were to use my gun to protect anyone it would be law enforcement or military personnel.”
Thank you for intervening, Mr. Meyer. And thank you as well to America’s Founding Fathers for granting all of us as Americans the right to bear arms and, in cases like this, use that right to protect the innocent.
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