Only a minute after the initial 911 calls, the first officers were on the scene. The chaos that greeted them included two men brandishing .40-caliber firearms and a third armed man lying unconscious and bleeding out.
On May 24, two separate good Samaritans ended a shooting at an Oklahoma City bar and grill. The two armed citizens didn’t know each other, but they teamed up to put down a shooter wreaking havoc at the popular destination. We reported on the incident, but details were thin at the time, as there was a lot of confusion at the scene. Now that the dust has settled, those two armed citizens have been identified and the details of their heroic actions have been disclosed.
Juan Carlos Nazario and Bryan Whittle were the two concealed carriers who took down a potential mass shooter in the restaurant, according to the Washington Post.
Officers arriving on scene were confronted with three armed men, with only educated guesses about who was who and what had happened. Nazario and Whittle had only sized each other up moments earlier, each determining the other was an ally based solely on eye contact and a single command shouted over the din of fleeing patrons.
As the duo told the Post, they both told the shooter, who was wearing muffs, to drop his weapon. Whittle signaled his command, and the gunman responded by firing at him. Nazario fired back, hitting the man in his thigh. When the shooter regained his footing, both Whittle and Nazario fired until the assailant collapsed.
Police took both into custody, as confusion was thick and opinions varied. Eventually, eyewitness accounts indicated they were the good guys in this unfortunate scenario and they were freed.
National media coverage of these two armed citizens who stopped a potential mass shooter was lacking, despite their heroic efforts.