A former Marine deftly and successfully disarmed a man who brought a grenade into a gay bar in Wilton Manors, Florida.
The incident happened at local watering hole The Corner Pub on Tuesday around 9 p.m. The man reportedly walked into the bar and displayed a grenade to the bartender.
“He said, ‘Don’t be scared.’ It kinda freaked me out a little bit,” bartender Joseph Shakespeare told ABC affiliate WPLG. “I was just thinking, ‘Stay calm,’ because we have a lot of people in there, and this is our community, so I want to keep everybody safe.”
Shakespeare said the man also claimed to have guns in his car.
But Darrell Darling, a former Marine, overheard the conversation and stepped in to help.
“He was agitated at somebody in the bar, looking to pick a fight,” Darling said. “He had shown me a grenade immediately as I walked up. It looked real.”
Darling says he knew the owner had called police, so he tried to keep the man preoccupied. He says he and the man bonded over their military and police service, allowing others to quietly escape the establishment.
“As people started to clear the bar, I used certain intentions to just keep his focus on me so we would be the last ones leaving the bar,” Darling said.
Darling then convinced the man to leave with him to go hang out. As they stepped outside, he tackled the man to the ground and prevented him from pulling the pin on the grenade.
“He could be a threat — I don’t know how’s he’s feeling, so I grabbed one hand, swept his full leg out and just put my full weight on the back of his body so he could not get up,” he said.
The Wilton Manors Police Department did not release the man’s name, but described him in a news release as an “emotionally disturbed male” who was also “intoxicated” and “in need of mental health services.” They confirmed he had an inert grenade — meaning it could not have been detonated — in his possession, but did not have any firearms on his person.
The man reportedly told police that he was “distraught” by the “recent deaths of close friends.” Police say he has since been taken to a facility to receive the necessary mental health services he needs.
A group of students, parents, and teachers in Florida have reached a settlement with state educational authorities that clarifies several provisions in the state's infamous "Don't Say Gay" law.
The "Don't Say Gay" law, officially dubbed the "Parental Rights in Education" law, sought to limit students' exposure to LGBTQ issues and identities under the guise of keeping parents informed and giving them outsized influence over what subjects are broached in the classroom.
Soon after its passage, proponents of the law quickly dubbed opponents "groomers," claiming they wanted to indoctrinate children into adopting values or embracing ideas that run counter to their parents' morals or beliefs or expose them to age-inappropriate subjects. Republican lawmakers soon expanded the law's restrictions on K-3 classrooms to apply to all K-12 classrooms in the state.
A Florida man has been charged with second-degree murder more than a month after fatally shooting a gay man whom he had allegedly previously harassed
Gerald Declan Radford, 65, shot 52-year-old John Walter "Walt" Lay on February 2 at the West Dog Park in Tampa, Florida, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.
Radford called 9-1-1 and told dispatchers that he had been in a "scuffle" with Lay when he pulled out his gun and shot him.
Initially, Radford had claimed self-defense, invoking Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, under which a person is allowed to use deadly force if they reasonably believe doing so will prevent their imminent death or bodily harm. He claimed to have shot Lay following a "scuffle" at the dog park.
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