Key Takeaways
- A fight between two armed men inside a Daytona Beach bar spilled onto Main Street around 2 a.m. on October 12.
- Police say both men began shooting at each other on Main Street near Grandview Avenue, and a bystander then shot Steven Ott.
- Ott, 26, of Port Orange was charged with attempted second-degree murder and is being held without bond.
- Both Ott and the person he fired on were taken to the hospital in critical condition.
- No charges against the bystander have been reported.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
DAYTONA BEACH, FL — A fight between two armed men inside a bar spilled onto Main Street around 2 a.m. on Oct. 12 and turned into gunfire, and it ended with a bystander pulling a gun and shooting the man police say opened fire.
Daytona Beach police arrested 26-year-old Steven Ott of Port Orange and charged him with attempted second-degree murder, as reported by WESH. The shooting happened near Grandview Avenue just days before Biketoberfest. Both Ott and the person police say he fired on were taken to the hospital in critical condition.
According to police, it started as a fight inside a bar between two people, both of whom were armed. The fight moved out onto Main Street. Police say the two began shooting at each other. Ott opened fire on the other person. A bystander pulled out a gun and shot Ott. Both Ott and the other person were hit.
The first lesson here has nothing to do with the bystander. Two armed men took a bar fight into the street. Some states allow carrying a firearm in places that serve alcohol. Florida does not allow carrying in bars, so the two men who started this were already carrying somewhere they were not supposed to be before the first punch was thrown. If you carry, a bar fight is something you walk away from, not something you finish outside. The gun on your belt raises the cost of every bad decision you make while wearing it, and escalating a fistfight when you know you are armed is about as bad as those decisions get. Mindset is what keeps a carrier out of that bar and out of that street in the first place.
The bystander’s position is harder to judge from the outside. Stepping into a gunfight already underway means reading, in a second or two, who the aggressor is, what is behind him, and who else is on a crowded tourist street at bar close. Carol Boprie-Daniel, who owns Carol’s Cat House nearby, told WESH she had never seen anything like it and was thankful she was not in the line of fire. That is the backstop problem in plain language.
More from USA Carry:
Police arrested Ott around 8 p.m. that evening. The arrest report is heavily redacted, but it indicates officers spoke to about six witnesses and describes Ott as armed with what it calls an automatic handgun. He is being held without bond. The charge is an allegation, and he is presumed innocent unless convicted. Nothing in the reporting indicates the bystander has been charged, and no charging decision regarding that shot has been reported.
Two men are in critical condition and one of them is in jail without bond, over a bar fight that both of them could have ended by walking out the door.
