Customer helps stop Victim Zone robbery attempt

November 22, 2004
Dayton Daily News

The gunman picked the wrong time to try to rob the Barnsider restaurant.

'Every time he'd get up, I'd hit him. ... I wasn't going to give him the opportunity to hurt anybody. ... I told him that he was under citizen's arrest.'

A customer, Troy Browder, 41, of Riverside, was sitting at the bar Sunday night as bartender Barbara Griggs was closing.

A man walked in just before 10 p.m.

"Can I get you something?" Griggs asked.

"Your money," the man replied, putting a .22-caliber revolver on the bar table. "All of it."

That's when Browder said he pretended to be sick in the stomach and crawled on the floor. He begged the gunman not to shoot him.

"As soon as he turned away from me, that's when I got him," Browder said Monday. He jumped and hit the gunman in the back with both hands, slamming the man to the floor and grabbing the revolver.

"I beat him with the handle of the gun," said Browder, who thought he was about three inches shorter than the gunman.

"Every time he'd get up, I'd hit him. I wasn't going to give him the opportunity to hurt anybody. I told him that he was under citizen's arrest," Browder said.

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A manager and a cook dialed 911, and Montgomery County sheriff's deputies arrived at the restaurant, 5202 N. Main St., at 9:56 p.m. to find Robert Tarter, 44, of Dayton injured and restrained by Browder.

"It could have been disastrous," said Griggs, who has been tending bar there for more than 20 years and has never been robbed. "We all were scared. He had no mask. Had Troy not have done that, the man could have killed us all."

Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.

Lorie Curtner, the restaurant manager, said she and a cook ran upstairs to an office to call police. While Curtner was on the phone with a dispatcher, the cook told her he saw a van in the parking lot. Curtner told the police about the van.

A sheriff's dispatcher radioed cruisers about the reported robbery and told them to look for a van near the restaurant, sheriff's Sgt. Glen McIntosh said.

A deputy spotted a van with its engine running in the restaurant's parking lot. When the van left the lot, the deputy and a Dayton police cruiser followed it south on Main to the parking lot of a Kentucky Fried Chicken at Main and Julia Avenue. Police stopped it there.

Two men in the van, one 31 and the other 18, were arrested and remained Monday in the Montgomery County Jail. Police found a revolver and a small amount of crack cocaine in the van, McIntosh said.

Tarter also remained in the county jail, charged with aggravated robbery and having a weapon while under disability.

While the restaurant staff is crediting a customer with halting a robbery, the sheriff's staff does not recommend that bystanders intervene when they see a crime occurring.

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"We ask that they act as good witnesses," McIntosh said. People should note descriptions of the people involved and the license plate number of any vehicles being used — and then call police, he said.

"(Browder) could have very easily been hurt. You don't know what you are up against," McIntosh said.

Commentary:
The customers in Barnsider's were prohibited by state law from bearing arms for self-defense because the restaurant serves alcohol. Note that this prohibition did NOT deter the criminal.

Now this Montgomery sheriff's sergeant tells them they should not defend themselves in any form. How terribly offensive.

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