Claim: An off-duty sheriff's officer apprehended a gunman by shooting him in a
TRUE
Example: [Collected via e-mail, December 2012]
Media Quiet About San Antonio Theater Shooting
On Sunday December 17, 2012, 2 days after the CT shooting, a man went to a restaurant in
Now aren't you wondering why this isn't a lead story in the national media along with the school shooting?
There was an off duty county deputy at the theater. SHE pulled out her gun and shot the man
Only the local media covered it. The city is giving her a medal next week.
Origins: According to news accounts, on the evening of
As Garcia was running through the parking lot, he shot the windshield of a officer was not injured. Garcia then ran inside the movie theater, where he continued his search for the restaurant employees. Movie-goers in the lobby, bathroom, and some theaters reported hearing multiple gunshots. The gunshots caused people inside the theater to panic. "Everybody was just coming out of the side of the theater, running out the emergency exits. And everyone was screaming and running," a woman who was at the theater said. Authorities said one person was shot by Garcia. Garcia was finally stopped by an off-duty Bexar County Sheriff's Department officer who was working security at the theater. Officials said the officer,
The employees inside the restaurant fled out a side door into the parking lot. Investigators said Garcia began chasing the employees and continued firing at them as they ran through the parking lot and into the Mayan Palace Theatre next door.
Sgt. Castellano was awarded with a Medal of Valor on
Bexar County Sheriff Amadeo Ortiz presented the According to police and deputies at the scene, 19-year-old Jesus Garcia ran into the Santikos Mayan Palace after firing several shots inside a nearby restaurant [and] in the parking lot. Castellano, who was off duty, yelled for people inside the theater to get down on the ground. When Garcia came out of the restroom, Castellano ordered him to drop his weapon. When he refused, she shot him multiple times. "I'm not going to lie; it was frightening," she said. "But, you know, the training kicks in. And thank you to the sheriff's office for all of the training that we're given."
Sgt. Lisa Cuello Castellano was met with a standing ovation.
Some of the details in the example at the head of this article appear to be inaccurate: news reports indicate Garcia didn't shoot his ex-girlfriend (she wasn't even present at the restaurant at the time), and it isn't yet clear whether he was deliberately intending to shoot innocent victims at the theater (as the gunman did in the July 2012 Aurora, Colorado, theater shootings) or whether he was firing aimlessly in a fit of rage.
In general, the San Antonio theater shooting received little coverage outside of local news media, primarily because it didn't include any of the factors that typically propel such stories from local to national news: it was not an especially horrific crime (or part of a larger crime), it did not involve any deaths or the wounding of large numbers of people, and it featured no prominent persons: it was a shooting incident in which a single person was injured. The possibility that an armed guard may have prevented additional casualties by shooting the gunman might have made the incident more newsworthy than usual, but that aspect of the story was speculative, and as others have observed, the news media tend to highlight negative events rather than positive ones: "reporters don't report buildings that don't burn."
Last updated: 30 December 2012
Sources: |
O'Connor, Hollie. "Two Wounded in Theater Shooting." San Antonio Express-News. 17 December 2012. Willson, Stacia. "Deputy Awarded Medal of Valor for Shooting Movie Theater Gunman." KENS-TV [San Antonio]/ 19 December 2012. WOAI-TV [San Antonio]. "Deputy Shoots Gunman at San Antonio Movie Theater." 16 December 2012.