Dunno if this story got covered outside of the Philly metro area. Here’s a link (reg required - ugh!) to the complete story.
There are too many handguns in the wrong hands in Camden, which had 54 homicides in 2004. But the city is fortunate that one of those guns was in the hands recently of a shop owner named Ngoc Le.
An immigrant from Vietnam, Ngoc Le and his wife, Kelly, run a cell-phone and fishing-supply store in the city. On Dec. 31, they were working in the shop when a man came in and asked to buy a cellular-phone clip.
As Kelly Le turned her back, the man jumped over a counter and grabbed her, holding a knife to her throat. She called out to her husband, who was in another room.
In that room, he kept a licensed .380-caliber revolver in a drawer for protection.
What happened next was captured, on audio and partly on video, by a security camera in the shop.
Ngoc Le, holding his gun, pleaded with the assailant: “I’ll let you go if you let her go.”
But the attacker kept holding the knife to Kelly Le’s throat and threatened, “I’ll kill her.” He moved, with the woman in his grasp, toward another room.
The tense standoff continued. Ngoc Le repeatedly told the assailant that he wouldn’t shoot if the man released his wife. The attacker refused.
Ngoc Le was pointing his gun at the man from four feet away, but the man was using Kelly Le as a shield. At that moment, Kelly Le’s knees buckled, and she slumped in her assailant’s grasp. Ngoc Le saw his opening and fired once, hitting the man in the head, killing him instantly.
Perhaps 20 seconds had elapsed from the time the intruder jumped the counter until he was shot dead.
Ngoc Le’s split-second decision turned out to have significance even beyond saving the life of his wife. DNA tests on the dead man, 32-year-old Antonio Diaz Reyes, proved that Reyes was the serial rapist who had attacked three women since November in broad daylight in Camden’s central business district. He also was suspected of robbing a pharmacy in Camden at knifepoint.
Had this occurred in England, Le would either be dead or his wife raped in front of him. However it happened in New Jersey and one less psycho is walking the streets. Writing as someone who once supported gun control and who has been robbed at gunpoint (for $530 and Playboy Sexy Lingerie 3 at a vid store I once worked at), all I can say is I’m glad we have the 2nd Amendment.
