A Chicago man with a long rap sheet tried to commit one crime too many and wound up dead when his would-be victim, who had a concealed-carry permit, shot and killed him.
The incident occurred last Tuesday around 6:00 a.m. A 25-year-old woman whose name has not been released was waiting at a bus stop in Fernwood, a crime-ridden neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, when 19-year-old Laavion Goings, Jr., approached her and attempted to rob her at gunpoint.
Surveillance video shows that the two struggled, and then the woman pulled out her .38-caliber handgun and shot Goings in the neck. She fell to the ground but got up and ran across the street after Goings took off toward his home. He never made it, collapsing in the foyer of a building in the next block, where we was found by police and taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. He died within an hour. The woman suffered only a minor injury.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Goings
had a record of arrests, mostly for drug charges. But last June, he was charged with attacking a sergeant and a police officer after he and his father were arrested during a narcotics raid in Englewood where the father lived, according to court records….
As police escorted the younger Goings downstairs, he became “very irate, stiffened up’’ and “pushed” and “grabbed’’ a sergeant, the report said. Another officer got him under control and into a police car.
As they made their way to the Englewood District police station, Goings kicked the door and cage area of the squad car, the report said. A camera in the squad car captured photos of the incident. He was “placed directly into a padded cell,’’ the report said.
This compounded Goings’ problems by adding more charges — “aggravated battery of an officer, criminal damage to government property and resisting an officer,” reported the Chicago Sun-Times — to the drug charges he was already facing.
On November 1, Goings pleaded guilty to possession of methamphetamine. The remaining charges were dropped, and he was released from jail on probation.
Goings, therefore, could not legally possess a firearm under Illinois law. In fact, the Illinois State Rifle Association claims his gun was both “illegally obtained and possessed.” Of course, as advocates of gun rights have long pointed out, criminals by definition ignore laws, including gun laws. Thus, peaceful, law-abiding citizens should not be disarmed lest they be sitting ducks for crooks.
Goings’ intended victim, who will not be charged in the incident because she legally possessed and carried her weapon and used it in self-defense, surely now appreciates the Founders’ wisdom in enshrining gun rights in the Second Amendment. Her neighbors, too, are pleased that she exercised her God-given rights.
“It’s tragic that he did die, but the lady had to do what she had to do,” neighbor Bianca Daniel told WLS. “She’s on a bus stop, probably going to work, you know, and she has to encounter that early in the morning. I’m kind of proud that, like, that’s what she did because she stuck up for herself.”
“I’m glad that she had concealed carry and good aim, because there is so much going on in these streets,” said another neighbor.
These people, who must live in constant fear of thugs such as Goings, know they can’t count on the police, let alone gun laws, to protect them at all times; they need to be able to defend themselves. Perhaps a few nights in Fernwood would convince anti-gun politicians of the same thing.
