"F you and your high powered rifle!" The Gary Fadden incident - The Ayoob files
American Handgunner, March-April, 2004 by Massad Ayoob
Situation: A road-rage incident escalates into a deadly pursuit.
Lesson: Keep communications as handy as your gun. Bad guys fear resolutely armed people, not weapons. Remember that full auto can stop a fight--but start an indictment.
It's amazing how often a criminal will say something unbelievably stupid just before he forces a decent citizen to kill him. For many years I've been piecing together a book subtitled "Famous Last Words of Scumbags." The working title will come from the most memorable such incident: "F*** You and Your Automatic Rifle!"
The shooter was Gary Fadden. The incident took place some 20 years ago. Only now is Gary comfortable speaking of it, in hopes that others may learn from lessons that cost him very deeply.
The Incident
Sunday, February 24, 1984, approximately 2 PM. Gary Fadden, 26, and his lovely 22 year old fiancee are driving from a birthday party in Martinsburg, WV, into Virginia to look at some property for what they hope will be their starter home after their marriage. It's a bitterly cold day, and with the winter coats in the back of a new '84 Ford F-250 supercab 4WD diesel pickup, the Pendleton-clad Fadden looks from a distance like a harmless Yuppie. That means he and the pretty brunette look like prey to another kind of person.
Heading east on Rt. 50, they are passed by a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with two people astride, the operator cutting in front of him so sharply that he has to brake suddenly. Gary comments to his fiancee how cold they must be riding a bike on a low 30s day, and that driving as carelessly as he is, the cyclist needs to worry about sudden patches of ice.
A few minutes later, he spots a Chevy pickup in his rearview mirrors. It contains three people. One passenger is gesturing to him to pull over. Gary doesn't know what these scruffy guys want and he ignores them. But then he sees the passenger waving a knife, and the driver bringing up a revolver.
Gary says to his fiancee, in what will probably be the understatement of his life, "We've got a bit of a problem here."...
The full story can be found at
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BTT/is_168_28/ai_112685749
Note:
Untill a year ago I lived right near where this happened and drove the same roads as described. It's pretty much in the middle of nowhere and aside from a rarely ever manned State Police weigh station there rarely ever are any police around aside from within Middleburg proper which on a Sunday morning is going to be just one or two cars toward what is a wide area. Had this gentleman not just happened to have legal defensive weapons on him as well as ability to think quick he and his GF would have most likely been toast.
Shit happens everywhere even in the otherwise quiet country where this occured.
- Janq
