Gramma Grammer and the gunman: the Janet Grammer incident

American Handgunner, Sept-Oct, 2005 by Massad Ayoob

Situation: An armed robber terrorizes a senior citizen checkout clerk and opens fire on her.

Lesson: Grandmothers always know how to fix what's wrong. In this case, it was literally time to fight fire with fire ... return fire, that is.

April, 2005. It is spring in Jacksonville, Florida. The poets say that in springtime, young men's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. But one young man's fancy has lightly turned to thoughts of armed robbery. Outside the Apple Gate Food Store at Wesconnett Boulevard and 105th Street, he pulls a ski mask down over his face and draws a loaded revolver as he opens the door. He sees a sweet-looking older woman by the cash register. This looks as if it is going to be easy.

He does not realize that he has suffered a sudden and acute failure of his victim selection process ...

Background

Janet Grammer has packed a lot into her 64 years on this Earth, but that doesn't mean she isn't planning on doing a lot more. When she married her husband, he already had three boys and she had a son and a daughter. "I gave him three boys and a girl, and we adopted another girl," she told me later, enormously proud of her ten kids. "We have 32 grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren." On that April day, Janet Grammer had a lot to live for.

She was no stranger to guns, or to crime. She had spent a decade as a security guard in Charleston, South Carolina, carrying a Smith & Wesson .38 Special with which she qualified every six months. She had never been uncomfortable around guns. "My father showed me how to hunt deer when I was very young," she remembers. "He set up three tin cans and told me if I hit two out of three, I could hunt with him. I did it, and I was so proud. I got my deer that year. I was fifteen."

The gun had been out of her holster more places than the range during her ten years in security. She remembers drawing on a burglar she caught coming out of a drug store he had broken into. He took one look at her service revolver and fled. "I had just been to a use of force class that very day," she recalls. "I didn't see a gun, so I didn't shoot. He got away, but I recovered everything he had stolen."

Later, she would accumulate 25 years experience working in markets and convenience stores. She had been through two robbery attempts. "One--he was pretty young--I was able to talk out of robbing me. He said he had a weapon under his jacket. I told him, 'Honey, look at the security camera. You're being taped. You really don't want to do this.' He walked away. The other time, more recently, I was filling in at another place, making coffee. I went into the cashier's cage and this guy grabbed the door. I wrestled with him, he hit me upside the head with something, and I finally pushed him out the door. He ran away."

The Incident

And now, she's behind the counter at the Apple Gate Food Store. Off work for a year because of serious diabetes, she has been asked to fill in for an employee who has to leave for a medical appointment. The store has been held up twice in the last two weeks, and this employee was the victim who was terrorized in the last robbery. He still feels like a basket case and has called his doctor. He tells Ms. Grammer, "Can you cover for me here for a little while? I have to see the doctor and get some pills." She has replied, "Sure, Freddy. I'll be right down."

It is a quiet moment in the store, and Ms. Grammer has been rolling coins in the cash register. The man she is replacing has pointed out the .38 Special behind the counter. She doesn't know the make or model, just that it's a black snub-nose revolver, double action, the kind she used to carry at work. He assures her that it is loaded. She knows how it works.

It occurs to her that it's a little far away for her to reach. She picks it up carefully and sets it closer to her, on a shelf out of sight near the cash register. "I don't know if that was a sign from God or what," she will tell me later, "but it was right after that that he came in."

"He" is about 5'5" inches tall, a light-skinned black man from what she can see past the mask. In his hand is a long barreled, silver-colored revolver that looks so huge to Ms. Grammer she assumes it has to be a .357 Magnum. "Give me the money," he screams. "Give me all the money out of the register!" He slaps a pink hat down on the counter, indicating that he wants her to fill it with the cash.

She begins to pull money from the register's cash drawer and put it in the hat. Apparently, she is not fast enough. He screams, "Hurry up!"

And then he raises the gun and fires past her head.

She can hear the bullet hit the wall behind her. Shocked, her ears ringing, she tries to move faster. It's not fast enough for the criminal, though. He fires again, the bullet barely missing her this time, and again he screams, "Hurry up!"

And now she realizes, the third shot is not going to miss. This out of control maniac is pointing the gun to her head, and it looks to her as if this time he's deliberately going to put a bullet in her brain.