In this remarkable video out of Dallas, a witness to a defensive shooting interviews and cares for the injured victim, keeping his cool and knowing pretty much exactly what to do. You may want to watch the video first; summary and thoughts below.
The top two priorities after a DGU are the wellbeing of the victim(s) and getting police to the scene. Sure enough, the witness, who’s already demonstrated his good sense by hitting ‘record,’ takes care of those two things first.
“Hey, bro, did you get shot, bro? Or is that his blood?” asks the witness. He keeps asking until he gets a definitive answer.
Next, he directs the victim (and bystanders) to call the police. “Call the cops, bro,” he says.
He also makes sure the police dispatcher knows the victim needs urgent medical attention. More points scored there.
Next, he works on getting the most crucial and time-sensitive information: the attacker’s physical characteristics and the direction he went.
“Where’d he go, bro? What happened, bro?” he asks. He confirms that what he witnessed was an attempted robbery. He also tries to determine whether the attacker was injured when the victim opened fire.
When he’s reasonably sure the victim hit his target, he offers some spirited reassurance: “You got his ass, bro! He ain’t going far!”
Since he witnessed the crime from a distance, he tries to find discrepancies between what he saw and what the victim saw.
“Are you sure the dude wasn’t black?” he asks.
“No, he was Mexican,” the victim responds.
He asks bystanders to help track the attacker’s escape route: “Hey, y’all see someone with a white shirt? Running away?”
Meanwhile, he’s relaying specific location information, with landmarks, to the police dispatcher so the ambulance and police can get there as quickly as possible.
Disoriented, the victim starts tapping on his shattered car window. “No, that’s evidence!” the witness says to him, and of course, he’s right. A little later, he again reminds the victim to keep evidence intact: “Hey, don’t touch anything. Don’t touch anything.”
Within five minutes, he’s checked all the boxes: the police have been called, the victim’s injuries are known, evidence and witnesses have been identified, the attacker’s description and direction of flight have been recorded, and the victim is being kept relatively calm and within reach.
Near the end, he tops it off with a common-sense observation about the attacker’s possible motive: “Is that a Rolex on your wrist? That’s why, bro!”
All in all, this DGU witness got it about as right as you can. The victim, on the other hand, could’ve exhibited better judgment. He noted that the watch almost certainly made him a target for the robbery attempt. Additionally, he had to get into his car to access his weapon before he could defend himself. He’s lucky he had time to do that.
Following the incident, the police did catch the guy. He was hospitalized with gunshot wounds later that day.