A man in his 70′s shambled into a tony Manhattan clothing store this week with a cane and pulling an oxygen tank, then pulled out a gun and said it was a stickup.
He shot at a customer who was running away and then shot off two rounds at the manager, shouting, “You want one? You want another one?”
No one was injured but one of the bullets did pierce eight suits before ending up in the jacket pocket of the last one.
Foiled by the lack of anyone handing over any money, the would-be Dillinger moseyed back to his shiny black Cadillac so he could go catch Maury.
Geezer thief raises cane [New York Post via CrimeUnitNYC]
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“one of the bullets did pierce eight suits before ending up in the jacket pocket of the last one.”
What was he using, a .22? Some kind of low velocity round? Plus, he shot 3 times and only hit *something* once?
I’d have to wager an old man that needs a cane can’t really manage the recoil of, say, a .45
Could have been old powder.
Actually, it was a magnetic railgun shooting teflon coated depleted uranium .50 caliber shells….
The suits just happened to all be bulletproof.
I just bought some uranium off of Amazon. Are there instructions on the web to make these bullets? I’m real good at making them now, I make sure my face is directly above the lead smelter so I can watch.
He was using the same Colt Dragoon he used to fight Injuns alongside Teddy Roosevelt.
Not surprising really. Most bullets are designed to expand once they hit something, some are designed to tumble. Either of these actions will reduce penetration once initial contact is made.
That is just pathetic.
It really is. I mean, I don’t know what he was expecting. I don’t know what I’d do, if I were in that store. He had a gun, but…he had an oxygen tank…he’s frail, but he has a gun…
I’d whip out my gun and aim for the oxygen tank. If I had a gun.
That’s about the stupidest answer to this problem I could have imagined. Good job.
That’s it! /loads a .22 caliber sarcasm round. /shoots /deflected by sarcasm proof vest.
So there a re a couple things that could happen here:
a) The O2 tank explodes sending out shrapnel potentially hurting lots of people (probably the least likely)
b) you puncture the o2 tank and cause it to go rocketing around the room due to o2 getting released potentially hurting number of people and doing a fair bit of property damage
c) (most likely) the bullet ricochets off the tank into a random direction, potentially hurting someone and probably going through property.
All of these possibilities lead me wanting to be no where near a person like you with a firearm.
Threat of deadly force is there. If this weren’t NYC (where the citizens are disarmed by law) and in some other sane state, like maybe in Detroit or Atlanta – then, were I in the store to witness this, I would stop him with force in kind.
force in kind? So you would also discharge your firearm 3 times without hitting anyone… It sounds to me like you just can’t wait for a situation to occur where you get to be a “hero”.
Either they mean to fire 3 times and hit nothing, or fire and take out a 70-year-old man on oxygen. Take your pick.
Personally, I’ll take my chances with the fact that a huge number of people with guns don’t know how to aim worth shit. It’s a lot harder than it looks unless your target is trapped at very close range. If potential victims can move, they should move. Staying to shoot it out and be a hero just gives the cops a bigger mess to wade through. More often than not, the person stupid enough to play hero is a worse shot than the criminal and just gets into trouble (think that mall cop who fired into the air).
He is threatening with deadly force, regardless of his control over it.
Force in kind = deadly force, in this instance.
And I’m much more accurate.
I am perpetually confused by this idea that people are safer when everyone is armed. Clearly, the people saying this have not spent a lot of time in countries where most people walk around armed all the time. Not pleasant places.
And the crime rate in NYC is much, much, much lower than either Detroit or Atlanta, so you’re not helping your case by suggesting NYC should be more like those cities.
Depend what you mean by armed. This man with an oxygen tank I could take down by hand easily. And with a correctly placed pen or pencil, or even a key, I could use deadly force. Which would mean most people are armed all the time. That being said some weapons are deadlier than most, i.e. guns and knifes, as they don’t need to be used exactly to be deadly, which is why they are banned. Case in point is the man who robbed the store with a marker, or the police thinking the bank was being heisted by a cardboard cutout man.
You can take down a 70 yea old easily?
No shit?
Well I beat up 1st graders.
Like, say, Israel? where the murder rate is 1/6th that of ours, INCLUDING attacks from hamas?
Guns don’t kill people!
Old people with oxygen tanks kill people .
At least he didn’t shoot his oxygen tank.
If his bullet could be stopped by a few suits I’ll bet it would bounce off the majority of the O2 tank. And he’d have to aim at the valve, and considering he couldn’t hit his targets before.
Besides the worst it would do is create a rocket out of the tank anyway.
Maybe, maybe not. Pure oxygen is very explosive.
Oxygen isn’t explosive. It’s an oxidizer which means that by *aids* combustion but doesn’t burn by itself.
Example: Lighting a cigarette near 100% oxygen means that the cigarette will burn RAPIDLY (like a second or two, that’s it and it’ll be gone) but the oxygen itself does not catch on fire.
So you’re saying Hollywood has lied to me all these years? The scoundrels.
Next you’ll tell me that shooting at a car and hitting the gas tank won’t make it explode in a glorious ball of fire…
Only if you’ve put a lit model rocket engine in the gas tank beforehand!
Where on earth did you get that from??
You must have been born before the 1950′s to say, “This is a stickup.” That’s the rules
And you can only add a “see?” to the end of it if you’re smoking a cigar.
Witnesses stated that as he was waddling out of the door, he shouted “Cheese it, it’s the coppers!”
LMFAO! That sounds like something Bender would say.
I can only wonder at how quickly this man moved with a cane AND a oxygen tank. I can only imagine he had a lot of practice.
Dang. Take a shot every time I say ‘I can only’, much?
There are some O2 tanks that are slung over a shoulder. He might have been wearing one of those. Or he could have had one of those canes with four feet that stand by themselves.
This may be the geek in me showing, but I read the title as “70 year old Gundam with cane and O2 tank fails to rob store.”
http://www.angelfire.com/droid/hazukikyan/Gundam_comic_002.jpg
“a tony Manhattan clothing store”?
“Stylish, high-toned, upscale.”
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tony
“Take that ya filthy animal”
Sounds like someone on their death bed looking for a little adventure before time runs out. This definitely seems more like an act of desperation rather than actual malice.
Nice writing yet again by The Post. We don’t know why he failed, or if they got the plate number. All we know is a gun was fired and this is the clerk’s story. I’d give the story a 50/50 chance of being somewhat true.
this is what happens when rain man can’t see his wapner…
Wow this is one of those ‘hear a word for the first time and in the next two days encounter it 5 more times’ kinda things. This was JUST on TV last night, on Modern Family (the Valentine’s day episode). Too funny, in a kinda sad way.
Just get behind him, and turn off his O2… Or say “hey hey…. ok. You got us quickdraw. There’s no money in the cash drawer see… just IOUs from those dead beats that come in and pretend to be customers see… You look like a nice guy. Why don’t you put that peashooter away and let us get you in a nice suit… We’ll even take an IOU. Then you can go out with the dames with the nice gams see…”
(said in my best Elliott Ness accent)
Later, the man gave up without a fight after the power company turned off his power.
“Simpsons did it”
This guy is a copycat of the Geezer Bandit in San Diego.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/06/25/2010-06-25_geezer_bandit_strikes_again_elderly_robber_pulls_off_11th_california_bank_heist.html
Okay, here’s an explanation. A few years back in my area we had a similar incident. Basically the man was broke and alone; and he decided to rob a bank because he knew it was a federal offense and that he’d be placed in the prison system where they would provide food, medical, and shelter until he died.
It is a sad day in this country when someone decides that they are better off in prison than in society. Unless this guy was off his rocker, I’m guessing he did it for the above reason.