About 4:30 a.m. yesterday, an Arizona State Trooper was shot while investigating a rollover accident. The officer was then further attacked. The accident occurred on a remote section of I-10 about 50 miles west of Phoenix. The officer was being beaten when another driver stopped to help.

From ktar.com:

A good Samaritan driving an isolated stretch of Interstate 10 near Phoenix probably saved the life of an Arizona state trooper who was being attacked early Thursday morning. …

The driver, whose name has not been released, was in the car with his family. He pulled over after seeing the fight. He asked the officer if he needed help and when the officer said yes, ran back to his car and retrieved a weapon.

The family man drew his weapon and demanded the attacker stop. When that didn’t happen, he fired and hit the man multiple times. The stranger used the police car radio to call for help.

 

The samaritan likely saved the officer’s life.

The officer was identified as Edward Andersson, a 27-year veteran. He is hospitalized in serious but stable condition after being shot in the right shoulder and chest.

Anderson had been investigating a rollover accident just before shots were fired at him around 4:30 a.m., he told fellow officers.

“I don’t know that my trooper would be alive without his assistance,” Department of Public Safety Director Col. Frank Milstead said of driver’s intervention.

The area where the incident happened is remote, but there’s often considerable traffic as I-10 is a major artery between Phoenix and Los Angeles.

“I would just say thank you,” Milstead said of the intervention.

Arizona has a “defense of third person” law that allows someone to use deadly force against another who is threatening or injuring a third person. It was not unusual that the passing driver was armed in this gun-friendly state with loose regulations.

The attacker died from his wounds, as did a woman who was in the vehicle during the rollover.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.

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56 COMMENTS

  4. Good on that dude–although I would like to suggest he carry on body next time! Why on earth would you approach that scene without your pistol!?

    I’d like to think id do the same— but with my family in the car it gets dicey. I guess a ” honey get behind the wheel and lock the doors would go a long way”

    • The passer-by was headed into California, and so probably had his handgun in a locked container so he would not be arrested if stopped by California’s law enforcement.

      If the passer-by had done this good deed only 20 miles to the west, he’d probably be locked up right about now.

      • Yep. Just did that myself on a trip to Calif last week. Sure, you can bring your pistol to Calif, now here are the rules you have to follow…

        Getting to that pistol in the trunk, in a locked case takes a few.

        • …Depending on the pistol. S&W Governors, Taurus Judges, and T/C with .410 barrels are illegal as CA classified them as short barrel shotguns.

        • They’re still legal if you’re traveling through California. I drove through CA from Reno to Oregon when I moved from Phoenix to Seattle. I had dozens of full capacity magazines, several semi-auto rifles with detachable magazines, pistol grips, and shoulder thingies that went up, and more than a dozen handguns. They were all locked up in cases in the trunk, so as long as I didn’t stop for too long, it was legal under federal law.

        • Well, if it were me, the gun would not go into that lockbox until it had to, maybe it wasn’t there yet. I can’t imagine the feeling of fumbling with retrieving and loading a firearm while a wounded person is being beaten to death in front of me.

    • I’ve at least given the scenario some thought, and the version that plays out in my head is:

      “Hunny, get behind the wheel, get the hell out of here, and call 911 on the way.”

  5. Nice job,

    Kind of a funny image- Officer is obviously in a bad way, apparently in the middle of being attacked…”Do you need help?”

    “Why yes, citizen, thank you.”

    • This Good Samaritan certainly checked all the boxes…asked for consent, shot well, saved the trooper, saved the taxpayers $, and maintained anonymity. Nice.

    • Don’t inject yourself into a law enforcement situation without asking first. At the very least, you can be charged with “interfering.”

    • Or they decided that was what they were going to say afterwords as a CYA measure for both the cop and the citizen.

      And, if so, good for them.

  8. Awesome story – in the same vein as the Florida Good Samaritan. Need to shout these stories from the rooftop.
    I’d be interested to see how many other states have similar “defense of a third person” laws. I know that arena is risky, loaded with land mines, but sometimes you just gotta do right.

    • This story has gotten a lot more traction than the Fort Myers Florida Good Samaritan intervention. I’m not sure why other than in that case it was a Black Good Samaritan saving a white cop and that goes against the media’s current narrative of blacks against white cops and vise versa.

    • Just like the pressure cooker bomber the cops in Massachusetts killed, every body you can add to the ‘gun violence’ body count is a good body…

        • Well, it was cops who shot him, and some progtards were claiming him as a gun violence victim…

          From Wiki:
          His death certificate gives cause of death as gunshot wounds to the torso and extremities, as well as blunt trauma to the head and torso. It is confirmed that he was struck and dragged by a vehicle, in addition to being shot.

          An eyewitness says that he was struck by a police SUV before he was shot multiple times.

          According to police, Tsarnaev’s younger brother ran him over with an SUV and dragged him with the vehicle for 20 feet (6 m), which is substantiated by the federal indictment.

  11. this was all over the local news here in PHX but I highly doubt it will be on national propaganda channel…

  12. Great job by the GGWAG. This story leaves me filled with questions: why was the bad guy attacking the cop, who was there for a rollover? Was the BG in the rolled over vehicle, or did he cause it? If neither, did he come upon the scene & just decide to up his “street cred by capping a five-oh?” Now that he has assumed ambient temperature we can’t ask him what his motivations were, and that’s okay. Most likely he was a career criminal, and the GGWAG probably prevent a whole host of future crimes from happening. But damn, I am curious!

    • Rollover crash + seemingly irrational, violent behavior toward responding law enforcement probably indicates drugs and/or alcohol were a factor…

    • We may never know.
      We may have some further evidence after checking out the other victim’s identity and background, as well as the shooting victim’s same.

      • There were reports that someone was “shooting at cars”. So the perp may have caused the rollover in the first place.

        Of course, early reports are often wrong.

  13. “It was not unusual that the passing driver was armed in this gun-friendly state with loose regulations.”

    Thank you for using the phrases “gun-friendly” and even “loose regulations” in a news article that clearly demonstrates the benefits to society of those “loose regulations”.

    • It was the “loose regulations” bit that made me wince. They just *had* to get in that dig, didn’t they?

    • So far, we don’t know who the Good Samaritan is, or where he’s from, whether he’s a prohibited person…
      Maybe we don’t want to know; maybe it’s just as well he remains an anonymous Good Samaritan.

  16. What a completely fabulous story! Thank you for sharing. As many of your readers said, “You won’t see this on mainstream media.” Sharing!

  18. Saw this on the news last night.

    Anti-gun libturds like to wail about “If only one life could be saved by passing this-and-such a gun ban, it’s worth it”.

    Incidents like this SHOULD get people saying, “If only one life can be saved by allowing ordinary citizens to carry handguns, it’s worth it”. But never try to confuse a window-licking, mouth-breathing, Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama-voting libturd with facts and common sense…

  19. “with loose regulations.”

    And that reporter can kiss my ass.
    Clearly a gun hater who’s wishes would have prevented the driver from helping the cop.

  20. We still don’t know who the good Samaritan was but it’s a safe bet he’ll never get another speeding ticket in AZ!

  21. While it doesn’t much matter given the actions of the attacker, I can’t help but think that I hope he wasn’t a normal person with a severe concussion.

    Just saw such a thing on Sunday night. A girl getting off work slips on ice in a parking lot and whacks her head on the pavement. She seems a little dazed but OK. She’s sitting up and talking to her friends. Then she passes out for about 30 seconds, wakes up and has no idea who anyone is, where she is or who she is. That unmistakable look a absolute terror takes over her face. She gets up and runs around the parking lot talking nonsense for a couple minutes then passes out again. This time we can’t wake her up. Her pupils are even and responsive to light though. EMTs show up with fire and police and try to wake her up. Nothing. So they pick her up and put her on a gurney. As they’re strapping her down she wakes up, fights them, punches and EMT and tries to flip out of the gurney she’s strapped into. Two EMTs, two firefighters, a cop, two of her co-workers and myself had a hard time pinning this girl down.

    A severe concussion, the ensuing confusion and adrenaline turned her into a banshee.

    Like I said, the reason doesn’t much matter in this case, but… Well that would suck.

  22. I would give him a award for his intrusion, and a Amen, good job bud, keep it up. We are right behind you!!!

  23. Kudos to the cops for keeping him anonymous. Let him reveal his identity if he wants to. If he wants to stay anonymous, then by God, he should be able to.

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