A 36-year-old man faces one count of felony assault with a firearm for intervening in a robbery outside of his liquor shop located in Oakland’s Chinatown earlier this week, KTVU reports.
The man fired four rounds after witnessing the perpetrator attempting to rob a woman of her camera. None of the gunshots injured anybody.
When the police arrived on scene, the robbery suspect had escaped by car, according to SFGate. The police then arrested the man who had intervened.
“When weapons are fired in our community, there could be unintended victims,” LeRonne Armstrong, the Deputy Chief of Police of the Oakland Police Department, said in a news conference. “We don’t want our business owners or others to begin to arm themselves. We would really prefer them to be good witnesses.”
Video taken from Oakland Police Department Facebook
The store owner spent the night in jail before posting a $60,000 bail.
This attempted robbery is among the latest of a series of incidents in the Bay Area that have targeted Asian Americans. As the Oakland Police Department implements new plans to combat the recent uptick in AAPI hate crimes including designating a liaison for the AAPI community, residents have begun forming volunteer crews to escort AAPI seniors and patrol the streets.
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