Man who fatally wounded robber recounts tense shootout
DEAN HOFFMEYER/TIMES-DISPATCH
The owner of the Golden Food Market said the support he has received in the community has encouraged him to reopen the store where he was shot and wounded.
The man who fatally wounded a would-be robber in a South Richmond store recounted yesterday a tense shootout and hand-to-hand struggle that ended when the man hit the robber on the head with a gun, knocking him out.
The robber, identified by police as James Grooms III, shot and wounded the owner of the Golden Food Market on July 11, but Grooms was shot by an armed friend of the owner as customers took cover.
At one point, the friend said, he could feel the heat of a muzzle flash as Grooms fired at him from a few feet away. He said he chose not to flee because he might have been shot in the back, and because it "wasn't over."
"I'd be a damn bold-faced liar if I said I wasn't terrified," the man said yesterday. "I had to get it done. He shot my friend. . . . What am I going to do, let him shoot everyone else?"
The man agreed to be interviewed but does not want his name to be printed and asked that he not be identified in any way. His account matches details in a surveillance video and statements made by authorities and witnesses.
Store owner Mustapha Kassou credits his friend with saving his life and the lives of his customers. Only Kassou and Grooms were hurt. Authorities say a preliminary investigation indicates that the shooting of Grooms was legally justified.
Kassou, who was released from the hospital last Sunday, reopened his store in the 2700 block of Jefferson Davis Highway on Thursday after receiving encouragement from the community, friends and City Councilwoman Reva M. Trammell. Stricken with fear -- a friend was also shot and wounded there a month earlier -- he had said Tuesday that he might return to his native Morocco.
"You feel that there is still love in this world," he said, referring to the community support. Kassou said he will not stay open as late as he used to, at least for a while. He also is having bulletproof glass installed on the counter of his store, which is three blocks south of where a shopkeeper was slain June 9.
Kassou yesterday agreed to show a reporter the surveillance video of the July 11 shootout. He emphasized he was not looking for more attention, but believed the footage must be viewed for the episode to be most accurately portrayed.
When the robber walked into the store about 1 p.m. that day, at least 10 people were inside the store, including the man who would fire back, two women, two men and at least three boys. At least one boy looked about 10 or younger.
The video shows Grooms walking into the store wearing sunglasses, a blue baseball cap and black clothes. He told everyone to get down, Kassou said, and then opened fire, striking Kassou twice as he stood behind the counter.
One young boy, standing between Grooms and Kassou, appears to duck just in time to avoid being shot in the head. He and another boy then ran outside.
Kassou dropped behind the counter, wounded. A boy lay behind the counter with what looks like a bag of potato chips, his foot shaking. Other customers also lay on the floor.
When Grooms walked into the store, Kassou's friend hit the floor and drew from his holster a six-shot, .45-caliber Western-style revolver. He said he told Grooms to drop his weapon.
But Grooms had run to the back of the store, where he took cover at the end of an aisle. Grooms walked toward Kassou's friend, apparently trying to get a good shot at him. He was crouched behind barrels containing cold drinks and ice.
The two men exchanged fire, with a bullet bursting cans of sardines. Kassou's friend said he fired several times but believes he didn't use all six of his rounds. Authorities say Grooms was shot once in the torso.
At one point, Kassou's friend said he broke the trigger on his gun when he dropped to the floor, but was able to fire by using the revolver's hammer.
He described Grooms as "hell-bent, dead-set, determined, and he weren't acting like he was scared."
Kassou's friend said that during the shootout, he was keeping count of how many shots Grooms fired, believing the robber's gun contained six rounds.
"He was trying to draw me out, telling me he was out of bullets," he said. "And I told him, 'Well, I'm not.'" Grooms apparently did run out of bullets, witnesses told police.
Kassou's friend said he could hear the click-click as Grooms tried to keep firing. People inside the store told him to finish off the robber, witnesses told police. He said yesterday that he did not do it because he believed he would not have been justified in shooting a man who had run out of bullets.
After Grooms ran out of bullets, he approached Kassou's friend. He said he grabbed Grooms' gun during a struggle, and the video shows him hitting Grooms twice over the head with a gun, knocking off Grooms' hat.
Grooms then lunges toward the door and collapses beside it, unconscious. Kassou's friend can be seen standing over Grooms as he called police on a cell phone at 1:01 p.m.
Police later charged Grooms with attempted robbery and two firearm offenses, but he died at VCU Medical Center on Wednesday, four days after he was shot. Members of his family have declined to comment.
In the video, Kassou's friend appears relatively composed during the shootout and afterward. He said he has had years of firearm training, but he declined to elaborate.
Yesterday, Kassou's friend summed up the harrowing ordeal in an understatement.
"I came by to say hello to a friend of mine," he said, "and everybody had a bad afternoon."
Contact Reed Williams at (804) 649-6332 or .
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wpanak
You continue to spew from both ends! You quote “statistics” compiled by the VPC, which has quite a history of “facts” that are in fact LIES! If you want truth, try looking in a non-biased source. BATFE is no real friend of firearms owners, but they actually do present data without the slant anti-Second Amendment types like VPC and the Brady Bunch pass off as “facts.“ You have made it very clear where you stand on this issue, and it’s obvious you will not be swayed. That’s fine, neither will I, nor the majority of others who see through all of the propaganda spewed by the vocal few like yourself. By the way, your condescending tone is a real piece of work, as well.
Thanks for the info, point taken.
“do not argue with fools. They will drag you to their level and beat you by shear experience”
binary1com—exactly where am I light on facts? Where am I generalizing? Why do you see that as a problem? Please, be specific.
You ask specific questions about drug criminals vs lawyers. I grant you that yes, the drug criminal with a gun will cause more trouble than the lawyer with the gun. However, that misses the point of the data I shared in my last post, so I will restate the point in numbers and words that I hope you will understand—the 200 lawyer with a CCW permit will have 81% more gun violations than the 200 lawyers who do not have a CCW permit.
Don’t you find that a bit curious, given that the 200 lawyers with CCW permits would have gone through background checks, would likely have fewer spotty issues on their records, would have lower rates of mental illness, and would have more training in gun safety and gun laws? Isn’t it the case that, given the presumption that the background checks weed out the gun nuts, and leave the CCW permit holders as a safer and more law-abiding cohort, that we would expect their gun violation rates to be lower than the lawyers who do not carry a concealed weapon?
You state that some people cannot be trusted with a toothpick. Given that the current system seems to issue CCW permits to people who later commit more gun crimes than people without the CCW permits, doesn’t it seem like the system is putting the guns into the hands of the wrong people?
Isn’t it the case that had the numbers shown the weapons violation rate to be 90% LOWER in the CCW permit holders, that you would have said “see, we who carry concealed weapons are safe, law-abiding citizens”?
I, for one, always find counter-intuitive data such as these very interesting. Don’t you?
Oops, forgot to provide the URL, and given your response, tman, I’d like you to read this and consider the following:
http://www.aphf.org/lodstats.html
Half of all cop murderers had no prior convictions. Let’s suppose that, in general, the handguns they used to kill cops were actually legal weapons, or at least weapons that the murderer thought he was obtaining legally (eg., bought it at a gun show not realizing the gun was stolen, or had been moved across state lines illegally).
Further, let us suppose that the rate of murder with legal guns (or guns presumed legal by the gun owner) is about 50% of all murderers.
Does it not seem possible, at least remotely possible, that if access to handguns were more highly regulated, more highly taxed, and CCW permits were not so readily available, and laws were more punitive toward carrying guns outside the home (eg., you can have your handgun as self-defense at home, but please don’t bring it with you when you are in public—if you are caught carrying a gun, mandatory 10 years in federal prison), isn’t it remotely possible that a large chunk of these murders would not occur, simply due to the reduction in the number of guns available to be stolen by criminals, and the reduction in the number of guns in public situations that then are used to murder in situations where nobody was planning to do that, but gosh, I guess passions just carried people away.
Furthermore, isn’t it possible that, with those murders no longer occurring, the police could focus more on the illegal guns held by youth offenders, gangs, drug criminals, and gun traffickers? Isn’t it remotely possible that this could further help to reduce gun violence as a larger portion of police resources is focused on a more targeted population of criminals?
Look, I’m not asking you to believe this. I’m just asking if this is a possible strategy. If you think it is not, then your argument is internally valid—your beliefs that gun control laws don’t work, that only criminals would have guns, and that the clock cannot be turned back, all of that is internally valid and each belief supports the final conclusion that gun control will not reduce crime, and would actually increase your risk of gun violence. And because the idea of restricting handguns in public is a 2nd amendment violation, you have the US Constitution backing up your beliefs. So all your beliefs seem rational.
However, in the end, if you are unwilling to consider alternatives, unwilling to acknowledge data that are counter to your beliefs, and unwilling to have a reasonable conversation, then your beliefs are…well, simply beliefs. Not true, not false, not facts…just ideas in your head.
Your ideas may be shared by others. There may be a lot of people who agree with you. That does not turn your beliefs into facts any more than when the majority of Congress voted to support invading Iraq based on a false belief of weapons of mass destruction. Or any more true than when Californians thought lowering property taxes was a great idea, and then drove themselves into bankruptcy.
Finally, I understand your analogy of drugs as a crime, and drug laws don’t eliminate drugs. However, drug interdiction eliminates a lot of drugs from the the pipeline, drugs that would otherwise increase supply, lower drug costs, increase the money supply for organized criminals, and in general increase the drug problem. I don’t think your drug example is a valid point. Drug smuggling and trafficking is a for-profit business, it lives because of the money it makes for organized crime, and because of the demand for drugs by drug addicts. Illegal guns are “out there” for a completely different set of reasons—there is not a lot of profit in trafficking guns because criminals don’t buy a new gun every day for a “fix”. Also, your argument is that, because laws cannot completely eliminate illegal guns or illegal drugs, then the laws should not be there. If that were valid, we should eliminate traffic laws, laws against fraud and embezzlement, essentially all laws because no law is 100% effective in deterring the act that the law is designed to deter.
since the anti’s are “light on facts” and now forced to generalize..
Let’s say 200 criminal defense lawyers are carrying a gun and 200 drug dealers are carrying a gun(illegally no doubt). How much do you want to bet that the LAWYER stays out of trouble with the law and the DRUG DEALER does not.
Certain people just “get into trouble” all the time.
Are you saying that the LAWYER is going to shoot the cop ‘in the heat of the moment’ at the same rate that a DRUG DEALER or THUG is going to shoot the cop ‘in the heat of the moment’?
There are people who should not be trusted with a toothpick, because they will harm themselves or others, and others that could probably carry a loaded grenade their entire lives without causing issue.
The point is: I don’t want the “left-wing”/suckle-the-government-teet type running the show.
Good point. Not all crimes are committed by previously convicted criminals. But MOST crimes that are committed with a weapon are with ILLEGALLY obtained weapons. There is no turning back and saying that we remove alot of guns off the steets and things will get better. The guns are already out there. No law will remove them, FROM CRIMINALLY MINDED people. Only from the good people. If TONS of drugs are smuggled into america each day, then how the heck do any of you anti-gun people think guns wouldnt be imported? Duh! Cocaine is illegal, cant even carry it concealed, BUT ITS OUT THERE, all over the place. Jeez people wake up.
“binary1com”—my comments were directed to VA Gentleman, who did not distinquish between violent gun crimes committed by CCW permit holders versus “weapons violations”.
Do you actually believe the illegal carrying of a concealed weapon (into a school or courtroom, for example) is somehow mitigated when the criminal holds a CCW permit? Do you believe that one form of crime should be excused because it is not violent, even when the crime involves the possession of a handgun, which is specifically engineered to kill?
You appear to be selectively soft on crime. Please respond—I’d like to hear more of your view on why certain gun crimes are should not count, and how you reconcile your soft view on gun crime with the court’s view as reflected by stiff penalties for gun crimes, even the “nonviolent” crimes you seem to wave off as inconsequential.
Your citing of population rates of murder is interesting. Did you take into account that the base rate of CCW permit holders is about 2.5% in Virginia? Are you actually saying that VPC’s argument has no basis unless the majority of murders nationwide are committed by the small minority of CCW permit holders?
That is what you implied in your statement. You are essentially arguing that the murder rate among CCW permit holders is concerning to you only if it reaches a level 20 times higher than non CCW permit holders.
Well, at least we now know where you are setting the soft bar on gun crimes.
Thank you for that contribution. It is very enlightening.
“tman”—I agree with your statement—gun regulations will not keep guns out of the hands of determined criminals. However, better regulations and the ability to enforce the regulations will reduce the murders of law enforcement officers, many of whom are killed in the heat of passion, not in a premeditated manner.
Please read this link, and tell us how you balance handgun rights with the fact that half of cop killers have no prior conviction (hence, are not criminals before the act of murder) and that most of these murders are committed with handguns.
How come no of you anti-gun people can never answer how restricting even more or completed eliminating guns will stop the criminals from getting them. You idiots dont and never will get it.
wpanak—What humble pie?
Your 81% number includes a majority of “unlawful carrying a weapon” charges, hardly a violent issue.
While VPC does promote a valid point, 2 years about 25 nut-jobs out of 300 million people.. You & VPC would have a point if only 20 other murders occured in the entire country during that time period, but it’s thousands, and 25 of them turned out to be nut-jobs..
Why not pull some statistics on the number of people arrested for carrying a concealed weapon ILLEGALLY and compare it with those carrying legally?
It’s out there, but it doesn’t work in VPC’s favor.
Well if you’re going to pick a design from that period, the 1875 Remmie is a better gun than the 1873 Colt. But the Colt was and remains the more popular choice and higher-quality replicas of it abound, many made in the US.
The Ruger New Vaquero is one, with a modern safety grafted in. USFA and STI make superb Colt 1873 replicas, or you can get a cheaper Italian clone.
In the Remmies, no such higher-end choice exists and Italy is the only source for replicas. Newer Italian clones are pretty good, especially since Uberti got bought out by Beretta. But older ones can be pretty cheesy, and it’s not always easy to spot issues. Especially if it’s about metal being too soft, one of the more common complaints about the early “spaghetti western guns”.
Making things even tricker, there have been multiple Italian makers: Uberti has been the biggest for a long time, Pietta usually makes a good gun and Armi San Marcos was the worst and no longer in business. But if you buy from an importer like Navy Arms or scads of others, you don’t always know which was the original Italian manufacturer.
Upshot is, the guy likely didn’t realize it was a questionable gun if it was at all…might have been OK except for a casting flaw in the triggerguard, which in that design isn’t usually a critical-strength part unless you belly-flop on it.
Anyways. May have been a mediocre gun, but it was a rock-solid design and it did get the job done :).
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