On January 5, 2023, in Des Moines, IA, an armed Apartment Manager noticed two individuals, a man, and a woman, in the skywalk outside of her office. They had been walking back and forth outside the door, and the Manager had assumed that they were looking to apply for a job.
Soon, however, she observed the female waving at the Manager’s son through the window. As the Manager was leaving, the female suspect started yelling at the Manager, demanding that she give her back her son, as she was the boy’s real mother and his real father was Thor.
At this point, the female suspect grabbed the boy by the arm and began attempting to leave with the child. The Apartment Manager pulled her gun and told the people to leave, which they did.
A Skywalk security guard followed the individuals as they were leaving until police arrived and arrested the pair.
A spokesperson for the city said:
“In this case, the display of a handgun had the desired effect, and a mother was able to protect her child.”
The presentation of the firearm did indeed have the desired effect. Defensive Gun Use stories are reported regularly (although not nearly as often as they could be since the media wants us to believe that “good guy with a gun” cases are rare and mostly a myth). Stories where the mere display of a gun stops a crime, are quite rare, despite the likelihood that they occur even more frequently than instances where shots must be fired. This is probably because these situations often go unreported, not only to the media but also to the police.