Thanks to a heads-up from looooongtime reader Garrett Banse, my coffee doesn’t taste good anymore this morning. Check this out from the AP on MSNBC.com:
The sidewalk outside the Harlem store still was smeared with blood Friday, and the glass on the door still was blown out.
Above the entrance, someone had scribbled the words, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”
Less than 24 hours after a deadly showdown at the shop worthy of a Clint Eastwood script, Charles “Gus” Augusto Jr. entered his store — oblivious of the inscription taken from Dante’s “Inferno.”
The 72-year-old wholesaler of commercial restaurant equipment had been up all night, questioned by police about how he’d drawn a shotgun and killed two of four armed robbery suspects who entered his Kaplan Brothers Blue Flame store Thursday afternoon.
Two of the young men died on the street. Two remained hospitalized in stable condition with gunshot wounds.
This man’s a hero. At the age of 72, he took on four young, violent criminals — and put two of them on the ground and two more in the ground. Instead of celebrating his feat, MSNBC sneers at him as kind of an “oblivious” old Dirty Harry, who “smeared” the sidewalks with blood.
The closest the AP can come to publishing someone defending Augusto is this quote:
Frida Rodriguez called it “a sad day” for the neighborhood.
Augusto “was defending his work, his business, so you could perceive that as being heroic,” she said. “But on the other hand, these kids died.”
Those same kids who came in, pistol-whipped one employee, directly threatened another, repeatedly demanded money, and refused to leave even after Augusto fired a warning shot.
New Yorkers should pass the hat around for Gus Augusto.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member