The Houston Grand Jury That Cleared Taqueria Hero Knows Good Guys With Guns Stop Crime
The good Samaritan who used his concealed weapon to stop a robbery at a Houston taqueria last January will face no charges for his heroic act after a grand jury cleared him this week.
Video surveillance in Rachito #4 Taqueria shows a robber in a black ski mask pointing what was later identified as a fake gun at customers. As the robber demanded wallets at gunpoint, one unnamed 46-year-old patron in a nearby booth used his concealed handgun to fire nine times into the criminal’s back. He returned the wallets the robber collected before exiting the restaurant.
“In fear of his life and his friend’s life, my client acted to protect everyone in the restaurant,” the self-defense shooter’s lawyer said in a statement. He noted that the incident was “very traumatic” and that the death of the robber would “burden” his client “for the rest of his life.”
Despite his good intention of protecting the restaurant goers, the good Samaritan was smeared by corporate media as a “vigilante” who took a few too many shots in his quest to defend his fellow customers and their property.
Racial activists even tried to hijack the narrative surrounding the incident. But their attempts to assign blame to the story’s gun-toting hero, instead of the convicted criminal who held up the restaurant, clearly failed.
The 12 Harris County residents who sat on the grand jury in this case were not swayed. After days of deliberation, the grand jury determined probable cause to charge the man did not exist. The “no-bill” verdict means Houston’s George Soros-backed district attorney can’t pursue prosecution.
The decision did not surprise the man’s lawyer, who expressed confidence mere days after the incident that “a Grand Jury will conclude that the shooting was justified under Texas Law.”
But things might result differently for a similarly situated citizen in any of the states that are hostile toward self-defense and strictly limit concealed carry. Blue states are particularly known for punishing their citizens for justified self-defense.
In New York in 2022, bodega clerk Jose Alba was charged with second-degree murder and jailed for stabbing a belligerent customer who attacked him behind the counter. Because of the Manhattan district attorney’s hostility towards self-defense and apparent affinity for encouraging crime, Alba endured several nights in the clink and saw a GoFundMe page for his defense deleted.
Despite surveillance video indicating the worker was simply defending himself against the man and his girlfriend, who appeared to slash Alba with a knife during the tussle, it took more than two weeks and a national pressure campaign for the prosecutors to drop the charges.
Texas, on the other hand, explicitly protects those who defend themselves or other people, as well as their possessions and property, from harm. The use of deadly force in the Lone Star State is often permitted when it is considered a “reasonable” reaction to the attempted commission of a crime such as robbery, murder, or sexual assault.
Because of its strong self-defense laws, Texas has a pro-gun carry culture that is proven to thwart crime and save lives. That fact wasn’t lost on the grand jury or their fellow Houstonians, who are increasingly more concerned about their crime-filled city.
Texas is an easy target for corporate media complaints about the Second Amendment. There’s no doubt, however, that the Lone Star State’s commitment to securing its citizens’ constitutional right to bear arms for self-defense led the Houston grand jury to clear the taqueria shooter.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
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