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On Sunday, November 2, 22-year-old Carlesha Freeland-Gaither was abducted by Delvin Barnes in Philadelphia, PA.  Barnes has an outstanding warrant for attempted capital murder, assault and malicious injury with acid, explosives, or fire in Charles City County, Virginia, and police did not provide any details as to why he was free at the time of the abduction. Earlier this week, CNN ran a story with a video captured by a nearby camera that shows the whole abduction taking place . . .

It’s worth watching as a textbook example of why citizens (particularly women) should carry a gun. From the time Barnes pulls his car over and exits the vehicle headed for Freeland-Gaither to the time he finally gets her stuffed in his car, there was more than one opportunity for her to have been able to deploy a firearm in self defense.

I wonder what the brain trust at MDA would have to say about this one. Surely, they can’t reasonably argue that Freeland-Gaither would have been less at risk had she been armed.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending.  Barnes was not exactly a Rhodes Scholar and left more than enough clues to enable the FBI (which generally gets involved in kidnapping cases) to find and apprehend him before he had the chance to add actual murder to his ever growing rap sheet.

49 COMMENTS

  1. Will Mr Barnes please report to the incinerator?

    Seriously, who let this guy out, and why was he not buried UNDER the prison after he tried to murder somebody with acid? The guy’s a freaking supervillain, just give him a ride on ol sparky before he tries to take over Gotham.

    • You judgemental neanderthal you! How dare you suggest a murderous victim of circumstances cant turn his life around ? Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me citizens dont need police to defend themselves./sarc

    • If his outstanding warrants were for all that then he was never physically taken into custody at the time of the crimes, he probably jetted before the police got there, the police came to the crime scene figured out who comitted the acts and took their probable cause to the magistrates office where arrest warrants were issued so if any officer across the nation happens to pull him over and run his information he’ll pop up showing wanted

  2. The best part was that a car pulled up during the abduction, saw what was happening, stopped, watched for a second, then backed up and left.

    • ” Investigators also praised the actions of Dwayne Fletcher, a good Samaritan who called police twice with key tips after the recent abduction. Fletcher was identified by police as the man who reportedly witnessed the kidnapping and called police and picked up the phone that Freeland-Gaither threw out of the car after punching out a window. “If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think we would’ve had the same outcome,” Philadelphia police Det. James Sloan said during a Thursday news conference.”

    • Yeah, that has unfortunately been the result of 60 years of the government and the media telling us to “call 911, don’t take the law into your own hands, let the professionals handle it”. You can follow the results of that advice back to the Kitty Genovese killing in NYC in 1964.

    • Leaving her to her fate was an EVIL and criminal act. Whoever was in that car should be prosecuted as well.

  3. Well, all she needed was one of those whistles around her neck, right? Or maybe an ink pen? Just ask those Colorado Dems that know so much more than the rest of us.

  4. Glad she’s OK. Of course MDA will disagree. The story neglected to add he had GPS attached to his car. The girl.sure put up a fight. Get a gun.

  5. Some people, scratch that I wont call them people, some oxygen thieves are only alive because its illegal to kill them. I just read a story about a Utah man waking up to seeing someone carrying his 5yo daughter out of their house at 4:30am, some acts just boggle the mind. Those people in that car who watched it happen and slowly backed up arent much damn better, but thats pretty much the America we live in at this point.

    I imagine MDA would argue she would have just given the attacker her firearm as they operate under the idea that all women are helpless, incapable cute little bunnies(a term my wife uses jokingly when shes told she is unfit to do something) who can solely be protected by legislation and the state.

    • Yep, they would have said the gun would have turned a situation that ended fine into a situation that could have gotten her killed. That’s a funny kind of “logic”, but there you go.

    • I don’t know what I find more disgusting, seeing the low life abducting the woman or the person or persons in the car that saw it happened and chose to run away.

      • The people in the car that left must have been Progressives who were going to discuss their feelings about the abduction with their therapist.

      • If the police aren’t required to protect a victim from an attack in progress, why should anyone expect an unknown citizen without state sanctioned immunity to step up?

        • I dont think anyone should expect anything, especially at this point in the downfall of our society. However, certain moral proclivities encourage me to action rather than thinking about what I could have done, potentially the rest of my days on this Earth. Im not speaking of hypotheticals, I currently have demons of this exact nature I toil with daily, however they are not of the saving a 3rd person from a predator, but saving someone from themselves.

        • Pick your place of residence/refuge VERY carefully. (Hint, that is NOT a city all full of “diversity”).

      • If I’m in a car with my child and I see something like that going down I’m doing the exact same thing, followed by calling 911. Why should they risk themselves and their loved ones in the car to do more protecting that woman than she herself did?

        • Hannibal,

          I had a very similar situation. Last Winter my child saw two dogs wandering on our street. I knew who owned the dogs so my child and I walked the dogs back to their home. I knocked on their side (primary) door but no one answered. So I thought I would try their front door. As I approached the front door I observed that it was propped wide open on a very cold day. Obviously, something was very wrong. I immediately told my child to move 75 yards away from the home (toward other neighbors’ homes) and I spent about 30 seconds observing the home and assessing the situation. I decided that I would get within 5 feet of the door to look and yell inside. I didn’t see anything and no one answered. What next?

          The obvious answer to “What next?” was to pull back because my child was with me and I didn’t have any backup. I was not going to gamble my child’s life for my neighbors. I returned home as fast as possible to find the neighbor’s phone number, secure my child at home, and if necessary call the Sheriff. Only then did I return to assist my neighbor.

          If anyone is interested, I called the neighbor who was not at home and certainly did not leave the front door wide open so I called the Sheriff. A deputy began checking the home and was finishing up as the homeowners arrived. Nothing was missing and no one had any explanation for the front door being wide open and the dogs being out on the loose. It was and is an unsolved mystery.

      • Pretty harsh assessment. Let me ask you, how would you characterize someone who makes such a harsh assessment, on the basis of only a very short video and an even shorter article, but turns out to be completely incorrect in said hasty, harsh assessment?

        ” Investigators also praised the actions of Dwayne Fletcher, a good Samaritan who called police twice with key tips after the recent abduction. Fletcher was identified by police as the man who reportedly witnessed the kidnapping and called police and picked up the phone that Freeland-Gaither threw out of the car after punching out a window. “If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think we would’ve had the same outcome,” Philadelphia police Det. James Sloan said during a Thursday news conference.”

        • Is that Dwayne Fletcher in the car that stops and then leaves? Or is Mr Fletcher not even seen in the video? Details are a bit lacking.

        • Funny how CNN didnt choose to include any mention of him in that article and even though the CNN article was written on Nov 3, it wasnt in an ABC article written yesterday I read either. I had to actually google the text you provided to find it in ANOTHER ABC article. Im curious if this was the guy on the far end of the street in the video or one of the occupants of the car or someone out of the view of the video entirely. Either way, thanks for the info and its nice to see some silver lining in this that she is physically unharmed and someone actually called.

          Kind of odd that they would say “”If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think we would’ve had the same outcome,” Philadelphia police Detective James Sloan said during a news conference today.” and then not include that in other articles about the same incident.

        • Taylor, I think I just got lucky on timing. I’m about a day behind on TTAG posting this week, so more info was probably out by the time I got to the story.

    • “some oxygen thieves are only alive because its illegal to kill them.”

      Lol, I actually bought a t-shirt that says “Some people are alive only because it is against the law to kill them.” Funny thing is, I haven’t worn it yet and I’ve had it for quite awhile. I guess I must have been in a mood when I bought it and now I’m not sure how people might react to that kind of statement. The way I see it, it could either be viewed as a cynical observation (and I can be pretty cynical) or a defense of the rule of law (as opposed to an anarchist system where rules are made up as we go along). Or maybe it’s just a damn t-shirt and I’m overthinking this ; )

  6. For those who wonder why the perp was free in Philadelphia with an outstanding VA felony warrant, the answer is simple. Most jurisdictions want nothing more than to see the perp flee the jurisdiction. Prosecution, and especially imprisoning, cost money. A quick google will show you, for example, that even if Camden, NJ, arrests someone fleeing a Philadelphia violent felony warrant, Philadelphia will often be unwilling to extradite and transport said felon. Money. An overload of violent perps who have not yet fled. Money.

    http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/investigations/2014/03/17/2097248/

    http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2014/03/11/fugitives-next-door/6262719/

    • If he was wanted for those violent felonies, I would bet the farm that they had full extradition on him

    • A large part of North Philadelphia is in full collapse….but it has been for more than fifty years. It’s the crime version of an Infinity Pool. South-West Philadelphia? Same thing.

      Large parts of the city running East-West from the Delaware through to the end of the Penn campus are pleasant enough. A tourist is well-advised to know where they’re going. Wrong turns can have consequences.

      • Yep. I have long refused to work in most of that end of the state, or as us bitter clingers call it, the Corridor of Crime. The Poconos are nice, and I will go south from I 80 a bit, I just won’t work in the area from Harrisburg east to the Delaware/NJ line.

    • If your definition of “society in full collapse” is this kind of stuff going on, then society never existed in the first place.

    • Societal collapse indeed. After the girl was rescued and returned to her mom, …wait, where was her father? Not present in the interview on TV. Abducted apparently at her doorstep, and there was no man to help her.

      Disarmed urban population … high degree of dystopian lawlessness … broken family, no husband/father/protector present. What a scenario.

  7. ummmmmm, I don’t know why anyone here is even wondering what MDA or Shannon Watts would say. Hello. Young Black Female. not a dead kid with a bloody shirt to wave around. Ergo, SHANNON WATTS DOESN’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THIS VICTIM!!! Hell, Shannon probably sees her an annoyance that she is alive now to speak out on being a real victim. Yes, I said it. SHANNON WATTS IS A RACIST

  8. First of all, our judicial system is broken by the fact that so many of these creeps are let out in the first place. Happens all the time. Fix the justice system and divvy out the appropriate punishment and some of this would stop. Maybe it’s time to focus our attention on judges and get serious about removing the bad ones.

    • Agreed. It starts with a renewed discussion of the death penalty. A society which has no “resoluteness” to put away monsters with finality is in really deep trouble.

  9. Gang? The problem with this is in Philthydelphia had she used a firearm, or knife, or club, or pepper spray to defend herself SHE would be arrested and the kidnapper would be proclaimed the victim of HER heinous assault. Don’t doubt me! Same sh*t happens over here in the west end of the state, defend yourself from criminals in Pittsburgh/Allegheny County or up in Newcastle area you will be charged. Charges most likely dropped, after you pay lawyers and fees, all the same you are considered a criminal in those 100% Democrat controlled cesspools.

    Out in the real world, beyond the magical lines on maps, self defense is a good thing, praised by LEOs and elected officials. Inside those special places, not so much. Allegheny County is an especially bad place to fight against an attacker, they REALLY hate for you to resist.

  10. How is this a “disarmed society” article when Pennsylvania is a shall-issue concealed carry state? I understand that for PA residents, the applications are handled by their county sheriff’s office, with the exception of Philadelphia, where they are handled by the Gun Permits & Tracking Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department.

    The actual application process itself is very simple and consists of acquiring an application, and a passport-sized photo, filling it out, paying the fee (which can vary from county to county) and submitting it. In some counties (such as Philadelphia) the application must be submitted in person and they may do a quick and basic interview. Once the application is received the entity responsible for handling it will do a background check on you and generally verify who you are. They may contact the references you have provided on the application although many times it will not be necessary. If Philly is oh so bad, then just move across the county line. Sheesh. Philadelphia mother of two Shaneen managed to get her license to carry, after all.

    I think it’s all B.S., of course, and permits shouldn’t even exist as any kind of a barrier. Still, it’s a helluva lot better than you’ll get in most other parts of the world, or in many parts of the U.S., for that matter. What evidence is there that she even applied for a permit? If she’s not even going to attempt to defend herself, then how can we rightfully blame the state for disarming her?

    • I agree that PA has very sane gun laws compared to most U.S. states. North and South-West Philadelphia do present their residents with a difficulty though: The density of gang/criminal presence is so high that armed self-defense and willingness to testify for the prosecution both leave a resident surrounded by vengeful thugs who do seek retribution. This is a problem we do not have in Montgomery County, next door.

      Overcoming the situation described requires a mass change in ghetto attitudes, a widespread willingness to look out for each other to protect witnesses and lawful defenders. The residents seem incompetent to realize or enact that change. Such is life. The problem is obvious. They know it. But ….nada. A million excuses.

    • Because the Commonwealth Of Pennsylvania refuses to force Philthydelphia to obey the Constitution. THAT is how the “state” disarmed her.

  11. Would have been nice to have someone that witnessed it be carrying. The person in the car could’ve helped her. In PA:
    § 506. Use of force for the protection of other persons.
    (a) General rule.–The use of force upon or toward the person of another is justifiable to protect a third person when:
    (1) the actor would be justified under section 505 (relating to use of force in self-protection) in using such force to protect himself against the injury he believes to be threatened to the person whom he seeks to protect;
    (2) under the circumstances as the actor believes them to be, the person whom he seeks to protect would be justified in using such protective force; and
    (3) the actor believes that his intervention is necessary for the protection of such other person.

    EDIT: FYI Kidnapping is an acceptable reason for use of force pertaining to section 505

    • And yet, in Philthydelphia, Pittsburgh, Newcastle, Erie, etc etc, people who defend themselves from criminals get charged as criminals. Funny how Democrats like to do that, isn’t it?

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