Pizza Boy fired for defending himself with a Gun

[Blinky]

and here is the other side of the coin...

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll...ETRO/804110488

Cops arrest four suspected of robbing pizza driver
Catherine Jun / The Detroit News

DETROIT -- Police have arrested four men suspected in the attempted robbery and shooting of a pizza delivery driver Thursday.

Some time before 8 p.m., a driver for "Happy's Pizza" was delivering pizza to a home on the 8200 block of Decatur. When he got out of his car, four armed men approached him and demanded money, said Sgt. Eren Stephens Bell.

The deliveryman turned to flee and was shot several times. He got back in his car and drove himself back the store where he worked on Plymouth Road east of Greenfield Road.

He was transported to a nearby hospital where he remains in critical condition, police said.

A tracking dog picked up the scent and led officers to a vacant house at 8270 Carlin where four men between 18 and 20 years of age were found and arrested, police said.

Authorities also found two weapons believed to belong to the men nearby.

[KaeZoo]

Here's the thing:

Pizza Hut has no other choices here. None. There's really nothing that they can do, other than what they've done.

Have a policy that allows their drivers to go armed? Then it's only a matter of time before they're held liable for an employee that kills someone. It's not a matter of whether it will happen, it's WHEN it will happen. There's literally no limit to the amount of loss they can suffer in punitive damages, if a driver feels threatened, pulls a weapon, and accidentally or deliberately kills an innocent person. Or if a driver's weapon is stolen, and later used to commit a violent crime. Or if a driver doesn't follow proper gun safety procedures, and harms himself or someone else.

Allow employees with CCW permits to go armed? Won't work. CCW requirements vary wildly from state to state. There's simply no way to predict how an employee is going to react under extreme stress. Trained police officers don't always do very well, when they need to use deadly force. You can't assume your employee won't be a danger to anyone, just because he's completed a training program.

Let the employee's action slide, this time, because the outcome was positive? In that case, they're effectively changing the policy. When they get sued because next year, some driver gets in an argument with a customer and ends up shooting him, it will certainly come up in court that an employee was allowed to use a weapon, and wasn't fired.

I personally believe that pizza delivery employees should be allowed to go armed, if they're legally qualified to do so. But this just isn't a practical policy in our legal climate. Juries love to bleed corporations.

As for the employee in the story, I think he probably did the right thing. He may have preserved his life. He really can't have any regrets about what he did. But he doesn't get to keep his job. It sucks. It's not fair. But it's the only possible outcome.

If you're looking for a bad guy in this story, pick the robber.

[JLRodgers]

Thins story just reminded me of a police officer in my town that had a second job (not police related). While other than the owner of the place not trusting him with a key to open (funniest thing ever, since his police duties involved checking the stores in the area)....

Anyway.... if pizza delivery starts getting too bad, they'll have to recruit police officers, fully loaded with all weapons and a partner. Or at the least a partner for non-policeman delivery people that stays in the car with an open-walkie-talkie thing (that's always on so the partner hears what's going on).

Sad when to make it safe, either the drivers would be paying you to work for them, or delivery charges would be as much as the pizza.

[Misanthropical]

If a member of my family ever decided to deliever pizza I will help them pick out the gun to defend themselves with. If it comes down to who walks away alive, I would rather have it be my family member than some gang banger wanna be.

[Andara Bledin]

The thing is, if someone wants to shoot you, the fact that you also have a gun is nearly meaningless.

People who want to shoot people, don't usually give them much chance to do something about it. In most such cases, the victim carrying a gun only means that the thugs will get a new gun to go with the cash the take after they kill the guy.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, a Pizza Hut delivery driver was killed in my apartment complex. It's large enough that it has streets coming in from the main street. The killers didn't give a rat's ass about the guy. They walked up, shot him while he was still in his car, took his cash and bailed. His having a gun would have changed nothing.

^-.-^