Dramatic photos of convenience store robbery suspect
With an Eastwoodian cheroot dangling from his lips, this gun-toting convenience store robber looks like an action movie anti-hero. As Joshua Bearman says, "Just look at this fucking guy and tell me he wasn't supposed to go out like this." Take a look at the photos by the very brave David Proeber.
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I don't know if the denim shirt/jeans combo makes him look more badass, or if you already have to be that hard to carry off the look. Either way, I wish he'd added a jacket for the full "Canadian tuxedo."
I disagree; this guy endangered the lives of plenty of people and he is a thief.
Uncool, if you ask me.
I don't like that he is being made into a celebrity
This is my favorite thing of the year so far.
#2 Well he is dead, so, there you have it.
The comments in that article are interesting to read. Lots of friends and family of the guy, talking about what a nice and sweet old man he was, and how they can't believe anything like this could have happened.
#2 I agree, everything isn't a movie.
If you look closely, he's got a cigarette in his mouth during the "action" shots. It really is like something out of an action movie. There's nothing wrong with pointing out how, sometimes reality looks like art, instead of the other way around.
The fact that he robbed a Check-N-Go mitigates the crime somewhat in my book. Yes, armed robbery is a crime But, what these check cashing and payday advance businesses do is just as bad, in my opinion.
You can order a 20" x 30" framed and matted print of each photo for $299.99
I just love that under each photo there's a link to "Buy a reprint"!
Sure, give me a big 8x10 of his bullet-riddled corpse laying on the highway.
This is local to me. It is a sad story, for everyone (including the cops who had to shoot him). The robber does have a pretty impressive rap sheet, but it's mostly traffic tickets and fist fights (including domestic battery).
The photographer had balls of brass, though -- at one point the gunman made for him, and he just kept snapping.
Nice of the cops to handcuff him AFTER they gun him down.....Yes, BART cops I am talking to you.
The best photo is a somewhat decent size, but I wish newspapers would put a stop to the postage stamps they put on their sites and call photos.
Come on. It's not 1997, none of us are on dialup, and we all understand the concept of scrollbars. Give me a big photo to see the details! It's 2009! Don't make me squint!
We can go back and forth about the subject matter itself and we'll never achieve a consensus. That said though, I think the photographer did an AMAZING job of capturing all this. The photos themselves are amazing and are far better than the majority of photojournalism I see these days.
#7 Yeah, 'coz wrong + wrong = right, huh?
grandpa?
Just read the story and maybe I'm missing something. Since when can a State Attorney override the family's permission to allow organ donation? Did he want those organs for evidence?
#7
"The fact that he robbed a Check-N-Go mitigates the crime somewhat in my book."
I dunno, I doubt you'd be saying that if you were the cashier that had a gun pulled on them...that probably wasn't very cool.
Nobody's made this into a New Balance ad yet? C'mon people...
@#16 -- We don't know for sure yet, but what I've heard locally is that the body has to be held for autopsy and the standard Internal Affairs investigation. (We're also hearing the cop is on desk duty and receiving counseling while the IA investigation is pending, all very by-the-book.)
I'm not sure if shot-by-cop bodies are ever allowed to donate, but in this case the investigation will probably move fairly slowly, as police departments and communities in the area are small and only rarely have to deal with issues of this magnitude. It's not unusual to wait on the Chicago PD or the state Sheriff's office to send expert assistance to make sure everything is by the book, which could provide even greater delay.
While the pictures are indeed excellent, the subject matter...not so much. Great pictures, of a bad yet inevitable ending (I say inevitable only because an armed robber fleeing the scene of a crime has pretty much no chance whatsoever of surviving intact, when he refuses to give up to police).
To the folks complaining about cuffing a guy after shooting him, have you not seen any movie where the cop shoots the bad guy and then either leaves him there or rushes up and calls an ambulance, only to have the bad guy jump up and pull a gun?
It's not like you're going to have Sgt Al Powell standing around all the time to make sure they stay down.
He totally needs some Six Million Dollar Man sound effects.
#2
This is another reminder that all that is cool is not good or right.
And all that is good and right is not necessarily cool.
(see cigarette smoking.)
It wasn't me, it was the one-armed man!
I don't want to make any moral commentary on the situation, but that guy looks like a combination of Burt Reynolds, Steve McQueen, and Super Star Billy Graham.
If you're looking for an Action Figure, there's your model.
@#21 You missed the point. #11 is saying he's glad they cuffed him after the shooting. Unlike the BART cops who shoot you AFTER they cuffed you.
Well they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late that month
Ralph went out lookin' for a job but he couldn't find none
He came home too drunk from mixing tanqueray and wine
He got a gun shot a night clerk now they call him johnny 99
Down in the part of town where when you hit a red light you don't stop
Johnny's waving his gun around and threatening to blow his top
When an off-duty cop snuck up on him from behind
Out in front of the Club Tip Top they slapped the cuffs on Johnny 99
Well the city supplied a public defender but the judge was mean John Brown
He came into the courtroom and stared poor johnny down
Well the evidence is clear gonna let the sentence son fit the crime
Prison for 98 and a year and well call it even Johnny 99
A fist fight broke out in the courtroom they had to drag Johnny's girl away
His mama stood up and shouted "Judge don't take my boy this way!"
Well son you got a statement you'd like to make
Before the bailiff comes to forever take you away
Now Judge I got debts no honest man could pay
The bank was holdin' my mortgage and they were gonna take my house away
Now I ain't sayin' that makes me an innocent man
But it was more `n all this that put that gun in my hand
Well your honor I do believe I'd be better off dead
So if you can take a man's life for the thoughts that's in his head
Then sit back in that chair and think it over just one more time
And let `em shave off my hair and put me on that execution line
@Cazart
New Balance Ad:
http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/3774/46516248qp2.jpg
West of Normal is where this took place, according to the captions. If that's not a title for a Western I don't know what is...
Be careful about which old man you're giving a hard time to.
Clearly this is someone who doesn't understand how dangerous smoking can be to your health
@MikeP It worries me somewhat that this was stuck in my neurons, but Karen Hughes' memoir was called "Ten Minutes From Normal."
It's a literary device masquerading as a town!
I'm just amazed that someone actually had a camera and not just a low-res phone. Doubly amazed that they were steady enough to get the shots. I would have been shaking like some some mad shaking person.
I also think I see Herc in one of the shots, pointing a gun.
Comment #8: The fact that he robbed a Check-N-Go mitigates the crime somewhat in my book. Yes, armed robbery is a crime But, what these check cashing and payday advance businesses do is just as bad, in my opinion."
...Tell that to the low-level clerks who got a gun pointed at them!
I think this guy's a jerk and I feel bad for the officer who shot him and has to deal with that experience now
I blame GW Bush and the economic crisis his administration wrought. Also (while I am at it) I blame the Transportation Security Administration.
New Balance! When you absolutely, positively gotta outrun every mthrfckr in the room!
what wold have been your emotional reaction to exactly these same images save that the man with the gun had brown skin?
@ Eyebrows
"The photographer had balls of brass, though -- at one point the gunman made for him, and he just kept snapping."
As someone who's been in a similar situation, it's not necessarily balls, but a combination of foolish devotion to a job, dubious luck and a lack of better options.
The New Balance kind of kills the whole badass thing.
I couldn't help myself.
http://www.theminiblog.com/humor/ripped-from-the-headlines/
Here's what a friend of his said of the pictures in the comments section of the newspaper story.
"...As for the picture, sad to say but if bobby would have lived, he would have been damn proud of it. R.I.P. Sly."
Heh! The last thing I'd expect to see on boingboing!
I live in Bloomington-Normal, and this was big news for our local paper! One of my friends actually used to see the guy at one of the corner stores once in a while, and coworker waited on this guy about an hour before he the last robbery.
#38. At 57, exactly the same. It's the age of the dude that makes this story.
#35. If you take a job on the Death Star, you better have your life insurance paid up.
Dude, it's like the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid!
Reminds me of a scene from point break :)
I used to live in the area. The cops there are trigger happy. Sure, if you're waving a gun at the police you're going down, but I'm also sure there's more to the story. The Pantagraph is one of the worst papers you will ever read, but they do have some good photogs. A few years ago the Lexington Police (featured in photos) made headlines for shooting an unarmed retarded man through the back of his car seat and killing him (on almost the exact same bit of interstate), he didn't pay for his gas. The Pantagraph will not ask the police any pointed questions so don't expect anything to be cleared up. Knowing States Attorney Bill Yoder's character, I suspect the organ donation was halted out of pure spite.
I get why this is amusing (after reading the setup and going to the larger photo, the first thing I did was laugh a little), but the guy was a down on his luck 57 year old man who had been an ironworker for 30 years. Yes, he was a crook, and yes, anybody who points a gun at someone in a robbery is dangerous. Sure. But still, there is something just sad about this.
At 57, he wasn't an "old man" yet at all (Al Franken is 57), he was just someone who didn't "get" society, I guess.
I don't want to be amused by his death.
I can't comment on the amorality angle, but damn, that's some good photography.
I think the guy may have partially knew he was being photographed; thus a) it affected his actions, i.e. 'performance' for the cameras, and b) he allowed the photographer to photograph him, thus why he didn't shoot or assault / threaten the photographer.
The guy's obviously in good health; he may have had all this assessed in his head very rapidly the same way countless pilots / athletes / acrobats assess vast copious amounts of information in seconds. (i.e. adrenaline.)
OK, Msrk, I just gotta vent a little here: a bit later than this post, you take Joel Stein to task for poo-pooing nut allergies because your daughter has them. This happened in my neck of the woods. I wonder if you would be so quick to talk this dude up as "an action movie anti-hero" if, say, he'd been slinging bullets around within earshot of your daughter's school instead of Normal Community West High School. Little food for thought there, chum.
Count me among the naysayers. This butthole endangered the lives of others, and reactions to it should not be treated like an episode of "24". I'm disappointed in Boing Boing.
I'd love to know how guns got so deeply embedded in our collective unconscious. Is it a dick thing? I guess I'll never know.
I will say that the cowboy-action-anti-hero meme is one of the most powerful and enduring myths of our time. Hollywood gives us dose after dose and apparently we'll never get enough no matter how many people die.
I will never forget walking with a friend in Oakland (many years ago) past a small memorial for a young man killed outside a gas station bathroom. A half-deflated mylar balloon, some cheap flowers wrapped in cellphane, the requisite teddy bears and candles. A pathetic, but hardly noteworthy display given the number of gun deaths in Oakland every year. What was truly noteworthy, and unforgetable (unforgivable?) was the gigantic billboard display, whose light illuminated the wilting flowers. Nothing less than Hollywood's latest greatest blockbuster shoot-em-up, in this case Bad Boys II.
http://www.combatcasting.com/WebPhoto/Movie%20Posters/badboys2.jpg
Many there is glory in some deaths, maybe not. I really don't know... but I gotta go. This has been your PC PSA for the day. Peace!
I'm just gonna own up and admit that liking these photos makes me a damn hypocrite when I expressed disgust at the photos of the Greek riots a few weeks ago. I feel like a privileged, amoral, post-modern ass, but I don't care. This whole thing is just so "No Country for Old Men."
The fact that the imagery conjures up images of anti-heroes and old time western ideology when in fact, the truth is most likely brutal and empty and false as those old notions were, just makes it perfect fodder for a contemporary short story or a movie.
#38 Takuan: C'mon, now. This is just a hate crime against white almost-senior citizens robbing with handguns.
It's exactly like Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.
Look at these photos:
http://laweekly.blogs.com/joshuah_bearman/2009/01/just-look-at-this-fucking-guy.html
Then look at this:
http://mormonmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/butch_cassidy_and_the_sundance_kid1.jpg