An employee at a restaurant in Georgia fatally shot an armed intruder in self-defense after the masked assailant pistol-whipped the worker during an attempted robbery, authorities say.
Warner Robins Police Department Sgt. Justin Clark told Fox News in an interview on Tuesday that the intruder, identified as Joshua Hickey, entered an American Philly & Wings restaurant on Dec. 5 and demanded money.
“Hickey … had a stolen pistol,” Clark told the network, explaining that he entered the restaurant and demanded money from the manager, which led to a struggle with the employee.
The worker, who was not identified, suffered a head injury after being pistol-whipped and knocked to the ground, Clark said. After managing to get back on his feet, the employee pulled his own legally owned pistol and fired three shots at Hickey, striking him twice, according to police.
“Once Mr. Hickey was shot, he fled from the restaurant but only made it about 75 yards before collapsing on the street,” the official said. Authorities transported him to the hospital, but he died of his wounds.
When Clark was asked in the interview how the worker was doing mentally after experiencing the fatal encounter, he told the anchor the worker “took it pretty hard.”
“Of course, nobody wants to be in that situation and … he was doing his best to come out of it okay,” the police sergeant said.
In recent years, the United States has seen overall crime increase after enjoying decades of generally declining crime. In particular, robberies, carjacking, burglaries, and theft, have increased over the past year or so.
Clark told Fox News that Warner Robins, a city in Houston and Peach counties located in the central part of Georgia, has not necessarily seen an increase in crime, although the area did report “a fair share of crime,” including violent crime and theft.
When asked to react to major cities reporting an increase in robberies and homicides in recent years, Clark blamed it on staff shortages, adding that it is hard for law enforcement to do their jobs efficiently nowadays.
“It’s terrible, a lot of it has to do with, you know, officer shortages,” he told the network. “Everybody, including us, is dealing with this. Unfortunately, it is hard to get people to do the job nowadays.”