VIDEO: Walgreens Shootout Caught on Video Shows Pharmacist Fight Off 2 Robbers

…with a gun, one of those big, bad, scary guns. ABC News (warning, video auto-plays) (by way of IJReview):

Before firing, [Jeremy] Hoven first tried dialing 911. But before he could complete the call, the first of the two robbers had vaulted over a counter and was standing five feet away from him. That’s when the pharmacist went for his own gun and opened fire.

The video appears to confirm that Hoven’s actions were defensive, and were made only in response to the robbers’ attack.

Peter Kosick of St. Joseph, Hoven’s attorney, tells ABC News that, in his opinion, Walgreens should have commended his client for bravery. That, too, is the opinion of township police Lt. Delman Lange, who, after reviewing the surveillance video, told the local paper, “If it was me, I would have done the same thing.”

But, according to the video, Walgreen’s sacked him because of an “anti-escalation policy.”

His attorney seems to be raising some questions about whether such a policy exists. Mrs. Freeberg having worked for one of Walgreen’s competitors many years ago, I have some personal knowledge about this and I’m reasonably sure there is such a policy. And it’s a stupid policy, the sort of policy that is drawn up by people who have never been in, and never will be in, the situation that the stupid policy addresses. So it’s there, it’s just not given a lot of visibility to the general public because the chain is about as proud of it as they should be, which is not very.

A lot of stores in this industry are situated in neighborhoods in which you don’t have to wait too long for a robbery to happen. And banning guns during a robbery makes as much sense as banning fire extinguishers during a fire. Didn’t Jeremy Hoven experience that first-hand? How many digits of “911” do you think he managed to dial before the robber was five feet away?

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