« January 2005 | Main | March 2005 »
It started around 1:30 p.m. Thursday across the street from the courthouse in Tyler, Texas. David Hernandez Arroyo Sr., 43, wearing a bulletproof vest and a military flak jacket and reportedly armed with a Norinco Mak-90, a variation of the AK-47, opened fire. His ex-wife, Maribel Estrada, was killed along with another, and others were wounded.
Here's where the story gets truly remarkable because. A brave citizen with a handgun stepped up to the plate and performed heroically. The witnesses described the scene, as reported in an article titled Diners Eyewitness to Horrific Sight in the Tyler Morning Telegraph of 2/24/04:
Rick Wilbanks, a Tyler lawyer, witnessed all but the first few shots of the event while eating lunch at Don Juan's.
He saw another man with a gun, later identified as Mark Wilson, a former shooting range owner, hiding behind the gunman's parked truck.
"The shooter couldn't see him, but I could see both of them," Wilbanks said. "When the shooter stopped to reload, the guy behind the pickup came up and fired."
Wilbanks said he thought to himself, "I hope he is accurate."
"He hit him twice, he hit him bad, but he didn't kill him," he said.
The gunman, David Arroyo, was wearing body armor.
Wilbanks saw Arroyo turn around and fire at Wilson. Then the shooter got in his truck to leave.
"He did it unhurriedly and drove off slow. I could have run and kept up with him," Wilbanks said. "I think he was expecting to be killed by the cops, but no one but Wilson took a shot at him. That bugs me."
Wilbanks went to Wilson's aid after the gunman left the scene.
Mark Allen Wilson, 52, and Arroyo's exwife were pronounced dead.
Arroyo got in his pickup truck and drove off while officers gave chase. Bullets may have disabled the pickup truck, and Arroyo got out and fired at the officer. They shot back killing him as he tried to get back into the truck. The truck moved forward, and an officer stopped it with his police car. The photos, from the video camera of a law enforcement vehicle, show Arroyo standing beside the truck then lying on the street. Source: Downtown Became a Killing Zone in the Tyler Morning Telegraph of 2/25/04.
I'm sure somewhere in the news reports there will be statements that the police were "outgunned." Nonsense. It was the body armor not the gun. "Two to the body and one to the head" is the mantra in handgun defense circles as body armor always has to be considered.
But, that shouldn't take anything away from Mark Wilson. He was a true hero. A brave man. He could have run away, but he didn't. It took real courage to step into that situation, and he deserves to be honored for his bravery. Hats off to you Mr. Wilson. May you rest in peace, and may we be better citizens because of your example.
Update: 3/1/05 - Check out Musings of the Geek with a .45 who has photos from Mark Wilson's memorial service. And, the same blog has a nice rebuttal to an anti-gun letter to the editor, here.
And, here's a link to a KLTV's website where you can see a replay of newscasts from the scene and the video of the shooting from the courthouse cameras.
A huge thank you to Katherine in Houston for the links.
Followup: 3/6/05: John Lott, Jr., in a Fox News article, makes some points about the main stream media coverage of this case. He says that there are "2 million defensive gun uses each year," but main stream media, for the most part, neglect to tell stories about how citizens protect themselves and others with handguns.
And, about this case, he says:
Seems like pretty standard media coverage. But what makes this case different is that 21 percent of the news stories actually mentioned that a citizen licensed to carry a concealed weapon used his gun to try and help stop the attack. [emphasis added]
Thanks again to Katherine, a concealed handgun license holder in Houston, for the link.
The other night PBS ran the American Experience show titled "Fidel Castro". And, it was very educational. Castro took over Cuba in the late 1950s, and most of us alive today were either not born, too young, or don't remember those days.
In the mid 1950s Batista's government in Cuba was corrupt and weak - ripe for the taking by an ambitious rebel. Fidel Castro at the time was the leader of a gang of rebels, and launching the legend of Fidel Castro was none other than the New York Times. It was a series of three articles beginning with one on February 24, 1957, by Herbert L. Matthews, which produced an adequate physical description but missed the idealogy by a mile:
"Here is quite a man. A powerful six footer, olive skin, with a scraggly beard. He has strong ideas of liberty, democracy and social justice."
Helping to build Castro's reputation in the U.S., CBS followed suit with a documentary titled Rebels of the Sierra Maestra.
After Castro's rebels took over Cuba he was interviewed by an American TV crew. He was asked if he will return to civilian life. His response:
"My obligation with the people, what I have to do now and in the future, is what be good for the country. And if for my country is necessary, I renounce to any position I have. I would gladly renounce my position. Because, sincerely, I don't ambition power, money, nothing. Only to serve my country." [applause follows]
Well, we know how that turned out. He was getting pressure from Americans, in particular, Vice President Nixon, to hold elections. Castro reportedly told Nixon: "The people do not want elections. They produce bad government."
Castro proceeded to nationalize the land in Cuba, ousting the owners and issuing land titles to 200,000 peasants who had worked on the land. In an outdoor address with a million people in attendance he compared his new government with ancient Athens. Except his was better because Cuba's revolutionary government was not for the privileged classes or the oligarchy, "this is true democracy."
Cuba became a text book example of how to ruin a country with socialism. But, that didn't stop Castro from trying to export his revolution all over the globe. It didn't take long to get crosswise with the U.S., and the Soviet Union became an eager ally. But, then came the Cuban missile crisis, and Castro brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union frighteningly close to a nuclear war. Kruschev, according to the programs narrator, became convinced that Castro was a dangerous nutcase and was more than willing to withdraw the missiles from Cuba.
By March 1987, the human rights abuses within Cuba had become so well known that the U.S. sought to have the U.N. Human Rights Commission condemn Cuba. Castro invited the Commission to visit to see for itself. The resulting report and the reaction thereto was not what Castro had expected.
Jorge Dominguez, author and professor of international affairs, said this about it:
"It is at that moment when even activists from the political left, when left-wing democratic politicians begin to say to the Cuban government, your violation of the human rights of ordinary Cubans is wrong and unacceptable even by the standards of the international left, that the Cuban government finds itself cornered, humiliated, and for the first time understands that it is losing allies everywhere."
The Soviet Union was collapsing, and Gorbachev encouraged Castro to embrace perestroika and glasnost. But, Castro responded, "openness and reform are dangerous and represent a threat to fundamental socialist principles."
So, here we are. Castro is still in charge, and he's still a ruthless dictator. The lesson is that without fair elections a rebellion can produce a result every bit as bad as the regime it replaced. And what is Castro's legacy? It's longevity. By killing and imprisoning anyone who dares oppose him he has been able to hold on for a long time. Not particularly original, but that's his legacy. His only accomplishment was his ability to remain in charge for so long. But, while his co-rebel Che Guevara's legacy still lives on to a small degree in the form of T-shirt images, Castro's demise will be celebrated much the way Saddam's was. And, five years after he's dead a new Cuba will scarcely remember him.
[Here's the show's transcript.]
