The AYOOB FILES

American Handgunner, July, 2000 by Massad Ayoob

Besides, the black witnesses had been correct: no one could have known the gloved, masked man's race until after the shooting, and Aultman's bullet had rescued two young black women who were being terrorized by a violent individual who had already brutally assaulted one young woman.

There was no fertile soil for anyone with a personal agenda to plant a race-baiting press conference. That element of the incident simply disappeared.

The police and the district attorney's office saw a clear-cut case of justifiable homicide in defense of innocent persons, and ruled it as such without bothering to submit it to the county Grand Jury that met two months later.

Aultman's pistol, taken as evidence, was returned in due time. The dead man's gun, an AMT Hardballer identical to Aultman's, turned out to have been stolen in a burglary in a nearby community some weeks before.

The robber, age 27 at time of death, had grown up in the area. He'd had a promising start as a high school athlete. But, police and reporters later discovered he had become involved in drugs. The habit led him on a terrible odyssey of big cities and violent crimes, a journey that had ended at last with a single shot from an intended victim's pistol.

Workmen's Comp provided the SuperValu people with a psychologist to help them deal with the trauma. "She understood," Aultman told me softly. "The doctor had been the victim of an armed robbery herself. She was helpful."

No SuperValu employees quit after the incident. The three who were under the gun all personally thanked Aultman for saving their lives.

Business did not drop off. People in this part of Mississippi have a high level of common sense. Two years before, just a few miles down the road in Pearl, a youth had murdered his mother, stolen a rifle from her bedroom, walked into the high school and started shooting people. He had been stopped by another armed citizen, vice principal Joel Myrick.

Aultman's shooting was seen as a case of "good man kills bad man and saves good girls." The public saw it as good news for a change.

Aultman would say later, "It wasn't an easy thing to do, but it had to be done. After what we had been through with my parents, it was easier to deal with than it might have been otherwise."

The two accomplices, though described by witnesses, were never captured. It is common practice for accomplices in a getaway car to have weapons which they will use to come to the aid of the more active perpetrator if he is caught in the act. It is theorized that the two pulled up to the door, looked through the glass, saw a big man with a pistol standing over their dead partner, and decided to cut their losses and escape rather than risk their own lives.

Aultman says now, "I made one mistake. That getaway car at the laundromat across the street. I was looking around for other suspects, and my back was to them when they pulled up. I never knew they were there."

Roy experienced, to greater or lesser degrees, the three most common perceptual phenomena that occur in incidents like these: tunnel vision, auditory exclusion and the slow-motion sensation of tachypsychia.