Video released of bounty hunter shootout at car dealership

Shots rang out at the Nissan of Greenville, Texas Tuesday evening. Two bounty hunters had tracked down a fugitive and confronted him inside the business, completely indifferent to the safety of employees and other customers. The three traded over two dozen rounds. In the end, all three died of their injuries. Thankfully, no bystanders were injured.

A cellphone video shows the moment the bounty hunters confronted their prey. Of course, Mr. Fugitive really didn’t want to go back to jail. In the video below, you can see the suspect shoot over his shoulder, directly into the chest of one of the men at nearly point-blank range. Shots continued for several more seconds.

Plenty of people have expressed concern about the two “fugitive recovery specialists” and how they handled themselves. They reportedly identified themselves as federal agents to the dealership’s staff, and then confronted a violent felon in the store with all manner of innocent people nearby.

From Fox4News

Rick Ford, the owner of the dealership, said the bounty hunters came into the showroom and identified themselves as federal agents. He said they waited there for several hours for Hutchinson to show up.

Ford said he and his employees didn’t give the men permission to be in the showroom but never asked them to leave or to show their badges…

Bounty Hunters in Texas

In Texas, there is really no license for a ‘bounty hunter.’ They are licensed private investigators and have to have prior law enforcement experience or investigative experience, take numerous classes, go through an FBI background check and pass a state exam.

But even with that kind of experience, multiple private investigators said the bounty hunters in this shooting may have made some poor decisions.

 

You don’t say. Any number of bystanders could have been wounded or killed during the melee.

If there’s a lesson to take away from this video, it’s if you find yourself in the same public location as “bounty hunters”, that’s probably a good time to find another place to be post haste, not to get your cell phone out and film the proceedings.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

106 COMMENTS

  1. Unfortunately, these guys will probably be used as indicators of the rest of the bounty hunters in the country. I’m sure these actions don’t represent the tactics used by most bounty hunters.

    However, it’s pretty clear that a lot of bounty hunters have watched way too much “Dog”. Wearing badges all over, trying their hardest to look like SWAT or US Marshals. Give me a break.

    If you’re going to do this stuff, at least study up on it and figure your stuff out so you avoid dying over a $10,000 bounty

    • My first 2 thoughts…inadequate to no training with the bounty hunters. And…I hope and pray that I never have cause to enter Texas, its just one thing after another with those people.

      • And where do you live that’s just sssooo sophisticated and upstanding that it’s safe from violence?

        • …or New York, or California, or New Jersey, or… basically half of the country that isn’t Texas.

      • Madcrapp, speaking as a Texan, we welcome you to just stay the fuck out of the state.

        As I have posted in the past in reply to you, “Madcapp’s house sure is full to the rafters with a-holes.”

    • This stupidity sadly *is* representative of way too many undertrained, overly eager bounty hunters. Several years ago our town had some ‘bail recovery agents’ who kicked in the door to the wrong house, terrorized and pistol-whipped the innocent homeowners (while demanding to know the whereabouts of the perp who skipped bail), and got 20+ years in prison for their efforts.

  2. Whether or not the bounty hunters (who are actually bail jumper apprehension agents – real bounty hunters no longer exist) misrepresented themselves, the entire incident needs complete and thorough deconstruction to study the many preposterous errors committed. Let’s see….drawn guns in a public, but enclosed place, drawn guns facing a person with as dropped gun who was able to put his gun into action anyway, two people who apparently “got the drop” on the bad guy then forgot what they were doing, reluctance to engage once the bad guy grabbed his gun in the first place, inability of two bounty hunters to end a bad guy before the bad guy ended them (shot placement?). Any more?

    • Pointing their guns at two innocent bystanders — a car salesman, who can be seen running out of the line of fire just before gunshots start, and the girlfriend of the guy they were trying to catch. It’s amazing that nobody else got hurt.

      Those two dangerous idiots got the stupid prize they deserved.

  3. ah reckon things doan always work out like in the movies, now do they?

    • If guy #2 had been covering the bad guy through the glass instead of moving into the fatal funnel with his partner it would have been felons 1/bounty hunters 1. Not a great outcome either way, but better than what happened. When you get in close like that things can go from bad to worse quick.

  5. Ok, now I am officially scared witless. If two professionals cannot win against a criminal, how do I do it alone?

    • Just because you are labeled ‘Professional’ in no way means you will *act* as one…

      • Just because you are labeled ‘Professional’ in no way means you will *act* as one…

        But still. Reading about a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun sets you up for believing you can survive a one-on-one. Now we have a two-on-one where the good guys didn’t survive.

        • Hearing about a good guy with a gun successfully defending himself shouldn’t make you feel like it’s a guarantee. It should make you realize that there are things that you can do to empower yourself in such a way that you have a fighting chance if you find yourself in a life or death situation.

          Rule #1: Don’t be a f*cking idiot.

          These “good guys” broke Rule #1 and as a result got themselves killed and risked the lives of innocent people.

        • Plus, I don’t think these two deceased fellows necessarily qualified as good guys. They’re the ones that created a deadly situation in the first place. Dangerous dolts at best, legally authorized criminals at worst.

        • BIG difference between offense and defense. If all you’re trying to do is save your life (or your loved ones) and get the f*** out of there, that’s a WHOLE different story from going in hot, essentially attacking the armed criminal.

          • Getting away would be my first choice, which probably keeps me from making a hard decision here. But what if I can’t get away? I “see” and answer, but I don’t “have” an answer. One of my coworkers said that if someone can’t see themselves taking a human life in self-defense, a gun will not be much help. I think I am beyond that, but something still makes me reluctant.

      • “professionals” ??? Surely you jest. May I assume you’re being facetious?

        No. I had the impression these guys had to be trained for law enforcement or armed security duty.

    • AnyMouse,

      Firearms are not magic talismans … they do not guarantee that you will always prevail over your attacker/s. Sometimes, it is your time.

      At any rate, if a criminal scumbag is determined to punch your ticket, you can at least make sure that you take him/her with you and ensure that he/she never harms anyone else.

    • Actually, some guy almost sucessfully defended himself with a gun against two “professionals” who ambushed him…

      • No kidding; I kind of want to know exactly what this guy did that warranted two drawn guns in a public ambush, but didn’t warrant police involvement. Skipped bail on a DUI, or something? Morons wildly swinging a sledge hammer to kill a fly in a public space isn’t “good guys with a gun.” Far closer to the opposite, actually.

        • From what I’ve read, he skipped bail on several charges, the most serious of which was assault of a law enforcement officer.

    • Being armed doesn’t mean you go home but it means the other guys have to consider he may not go home….

  6. Sounds like a flurry of gunfire in the first one or two seconds, and then a string of gunfire at a steady pace, sounding like it is being fired rapidly by the same individual. I’ll be curious to read the forensics on this regarding who shot whom and how many times.

  7. Dumbassery at it’s best.

    When they are that dangerous it’s a SWAT or US Marshals job.

    ALL those innocent lives at stake. Great location to pull stupid shit like that.

  8. Bounty hunters are lucky that 6 of them didn’t tackle that guy in a confined space. What frigging idiots.

  9. These so called bounty hunters displayed a callous indifference for the lives of all in that dealership. It is evident the intelligence threshold to be a bounty hunter is near zero.

      • While it is never good when someone dies, the death of the two yahoo ‘s means these yahoo ‘s can never endanger anyone again.

      • I think he’s referring to the obvious shills who suddenly showed up in the comments to use this incident to push anti-gun sentiment.

          • AnyMouse, anyone?

            Is someone who is unsure about having proper skill and mindset to become an official POTG a shill, or troll? I mostly just read stuff here, trying to learn. I have a revolver in a drawer at home, just not ready to carry it on me. Which is why I am now more fearful. Until this story, I was becoming confident that I could train to a point where I could match an attacker, with high probability I would succeed in saving myself. Now, I am one person. Seeing two people with guns lose to one guy is scary. Would I be better off just not even thinking I could survive, and not having a gun to give me false assurance? How long does it take to become able to be confident I can use a gun properly?

            Is what I am asking make me anti-gun?

        • AnyMouse. Reading your comments you come across as antigun(Oh my, how can I be expected to survive if 2 bad pro’s couldn’t) is usually followed by some sort of “If they can’t it would just mean the rest of us are a danger to those around us and maybe guns shouldn’t be carried. You know, blood in the streets”.

          Or the kind of person that gets the ptsd from firing an ar15.

          I could be wrong. I thought I was once. Turns out I was mistaken.

          • usually followed by some sort of “If they can’t it would just mean the rest of us are a danger to those around us and maybe guns shouldn’t be carried

            I am not concerned that someone might be a danger to others because that someone is not sure of the ability to win. I am concerned that my thinking is not helpful to me, and that I, me, myself, might be better off not to carry a gun if it would make me feel too assured and leave me thinking I could win when it would be better to run.

            I was leaning toward becoming an armed citizen when this terrible situation broke. So, yes, I am thinking that if two people who feel more confident than I cannot defeat a criminal, one person such as myself, with not so much confidence just might not have what it takes. It is all about me, not you. I don’t think I ever wrote anything that indicated other people should not own or carry guns. I have never faced a conversation where asking questions indicated blatant opposition information. This concept takes some adjustment.

        • Anymouse,
          Confidence can often be a detriment, and I think this incident is clearly a case of it. These 2 “good guys” were clearly over confident and made many poor choices. They were also the aggressors. In a dgu you are not the aggressor, you are the defender. With that perspective, the defender in this story (bad guy though he may be) shows that it is possible to defend 2v1 even though he also perished.
          One last thing to remember: millions of people successfully defend themselves with firearms every year. Unless your self-esteem is so low you think all of those people are more competent than you, you should be fine carrying.

          • One last thing to remember: millions of people successfully defend themselves with firearms every year.

            Thank you. I know I am on the verge of total analysis paralysis about this. Spent some time today looking at bullet resistant clothing and gear. I don’t like the idea of hauling a gun around all day and night, because it is cumbersome, inconvenient, and requires full time awareness. Guess I want very lightweight, but very powerful self-defense that doesn’t take much talent to operate. And I see a huge financial commitment in becoming trained up to a level that makes me a safe gun operator.

            Life was just so much simpler when I didn’t think about self-defense.

        • requires full time awareness
          Full time awareness is what you should be practicing whether you carry or not. Awareness can help you avoid danger long before its on top of you. Getting caught or surprised means there should already have been several things gone sideways long before you pull your revolver…which should be your last line of defense and just not your reminder to be on the lookout.

          • I confess that before subscribing to this blog, I was (still?) pretty unaware of what is going on around me. Should I assume there is a bad guy about to attack everywhere I look? How does one not become suspicious of everyone to the point of wanting to stay indoors? Where can I go to learn how to be aware, but not afraid of every step? Gun range? Other blogs?

        • Mouse Not a (Wo)Man,
          “Guess I want very lightweight, but very powerful self-defense that doesn’t take much talent to operate.”
          A gun’s the closest there is (a five seven “cop killer” pistol, actually), which is why police and others serious about defense carry guns instead of other means. If all those people can use them effectively without hardly trying, so can you. It doesn’t matter how much “talent” it takes operate, it only matters how much you are willing to practice to determine how much skill *you* need to be satisfied. This involves actual practice and experience handling a weapon before carrying it, and ideally training & other education. If the goal is to carry without any skill, you’re doing it wrong (as if the goal isn’t to illicit a negative response from these comments)

          • The truth is I want the benefits, without the effort. Yes. I admit it. Making the change toward self-defense is not so easy as I imagined. I look around to see if I can detect a gun carrier, thinking they would have that “something” that says “Mess with me, and you die.” Didn’t see either a concealed carrier or someone you totally don’t want to mess with. Would it even be a good thing for people to know someone has a concealed gun?

        • Mouse,

          I spent six years in the Army as an infantryman and the past five and a half as police, including as a firearms instructor. Shooting is the only thing I have been naturally good at and I have had lots, and lots, and lots of training. I wear body armor to work every day and have my own personal stuff at home. I carry everywhere I go. But I can still be killed by some dude with a .22 revolver and zero training if the circumstances find themselves in his favor. It happens. It happens to good people, well trained people, untrained people, and those making tactical blunders like those in the video. Whether you do everything right or everything wrong, its a gun fight. You still can lose. But having a firearm on you gives you an infinitely better chance of coming out on top rather than just laying down and hoping for the best.

          The point I am trying to make is do not let fear of losing prevent you from carrying. I would rather at least have an opportunity to defend myself/family/innocents than to do nothing.

          • Yeah, I am expecting too much. There is still the notion (from TV and movies?) that the good guy should always win, even if wounded a little bit. Being harsh, I know I really want to not even have to think about this, but this is not the world I thought I grew up in. Probably better to return to the back bench and listen and learn some more.

        • AnyMouse, someone above pointed out that over a million people a year successfully defend themselves with gun. The thing to remember about that number is that a vanishingly small number of them (something like .03% or so) ever pull the trigger. Usually, the mere sight of the gun ends the attack.

          • Usually, the mere sight of the gun ends the attack.

            Good thought. but I gotta be ready to actually use it, right? Maybe it is time to go to one of those desert training schools and learn if this is really for me.

  11. I have seen and known a few of them. Glorified car repossessors, all of them.
    One wanted to use my 15 yo daughter to lure out a high ranking Colombian cocaine cartel woman, who happenned to be lesbian and was fond of her type. He wanted to give her $100 and a motel room shared with his daughter for the night. His take would have been well over 100k. This guy had shot many people, some who were not relatives on a mistaken identy case.

    Sorry, these are loose cannons and are maybe milimeter higher on the sleeze scale above the people they track. We pay police to do this, they should do thier job and bounty hunters should either point the police towards them or flip burgers.

  12. I just thought it was funny that the owner of a Nissan dealership is named ‘Ford’.

  13. “never asked them to leave or to show their badges”. Jeez, if anyone should recognize bullshit it should be a car salesman. Professional courtesy I guess.

  14. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.

    Darwin Award winners right there…

    I hope that the dealership and/or employees sue the feces out of their bond company for reckless endangerment.

  15. The guy who taught my conceal carry class also spends some time doing bounty hunting. He likes to distract the “bad guy” with a polite conversation while his team casually moves in behind to apprehend. No threats, no warnings, no need to draw guns, no tipping the guy off until he’s already cuffed. Then the warrant comes out. Relative stroll in the park. What I don’t understand about this instance… Why don’t “Bail Jumper Apprehension Agents” study what works before trying to… apprehend criminals? Folks with a criminal history (I would guess) are more likely to be armed and less likely to calmly do what they’re told. A bad combination for untrained idiots.

    • Can “bond agents” even draw guns preemptively as seen here? I don’t see how they legally could.

  16. These asswipe bounty hunters were a lot more dangerous to the numerous bystanders than the criminal who was minding his own business at the moment. Run like hell was the only option for any armed bystanders.

  17. This was a significant shootout in a public place and yet the only people hit were those involved in the gunfight. Doesn’t this go against the “innocent bystanders will be mowed down” narrative used by the grabbers?

    • This will fall precisely into the laps of gun grabbers. Proof of what “might have happened” if the bounty hunters had been everyday people with guns.

      I can see it now.

  18. Had this whole event unfolded with LEOs in place of the “bounty hunters”, while tragic, would have been TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE! Two idiots trying to take down a person who is willing to die defending himself. All the while the safety of those surrounding are disregarded. LEOs have protocols in place to assure public safety is priority over the capture such as in car chase. I expect that there will be new/additional laws or regulations in place to “curtail” this from happening again. Scenario such as this will hurt those 2A and CCW proponents such as myself. Anti-gun boobs will frame this event and use it against us for eternity.

    • There’s a gulf between the concept of carrying a firearm for self-defense against an attack and actively trying to take down known fugitive criminals. Defense, offense. Not the same.

  19. Many bounty hunters think they are Wyatt Earp and pull dangerous stuff to get the cash. These two are prime examples and they even misrepresented themselves as Federal agents.
    Time we did away with this “profession” for wannabes and let law enforcement do their work

    • I’m thinking the bail bondsmen hire whoever is willing. I am not certain, however.

  21. The guy with the camera almost got shot by one of the agents. It looks like when he got shot by the fugitive he fired a round even though his gun was not pointing at the criminal.

    Kind of a no win situation they put themselves in: A small room with innocent people that’s next to another room with innocent people, a bunch of other innocent people are standing outside the room watching, two big agents with guns drawn on a criminal who pulled out his gun, then a tussle over a gun with a violent criminal.

    Even if they decided to shoot the criminal as he pulled out his gun or before he could recover from fumbling his gun, they could have shot one of the innocent people standing around. I guess the only thing that could have changed the outcome is if one of the agents had a Taser drawn.

  23. I wonder what training those two had, if any. We’re they working on their own or for a legitimate outfit.

    While the excitement and income could be substantial, my religion prohibits me from accepting bail jumper apprehension employment ( Church of Devout Cowardice).

    • According to KIII TV, they were commissioned security officers, not licensed private investigators. The level III private security license requires a 40-hour course, plus the 6-hour course for the level II (unarmed security) license.

  24. All because some assholes in suits in Washington DC decided that people peacefully owning, ingesting or selling certain plants or powders should be kidnapped and thrown in cages…

    • Indeed. The war on drugs is truely a war on people and their liberty. The very fact of it belies the supposed liberty we have.

  25. If the first rule of a gunfight is to have a gun, then the second rule might be something like leave four decades worth of Big Macs back at the drive-through and get in shape for this kind of work.

  26. As a former deputy sheriff I would say that in my experience 20% of bounty hunters are professional (the ones with LE background or the ones who have done this line of work for many years) but the other 80% are wannabes and unprofessional jerk offs who think that they are living in a real life action movie but they could not make it through one week of a police academy. I hope these idiots get charged.

  27. A long time ago (10-20 years) some bail recovery agents were involved in a very public mess in Lansing Michigan.
    A young woman and her fugitive boyfriend (wanted by police but not by bail bondsmen) were laying low in a motel room.

    A couple of bail recovery idiots knocked on the door, then tried to climb in through the window. Yes, should have been a defensive gun use. I realize they have the authority to enter an occupied structure to recover their prey from it, but if you climb in through my window with guns, you’re not going to be alive when you hit the floor.

    The bounty hunters claim they had reliable information that the woman they were pursuing was in that room (she wasn’t, just Bonnie and Clyde were there, it was only a coincidence that there was a woman and a fugitive in the room they broke into). The boyfriend in the motel room chased the would-be Dawg the Bounty Hunters away with his handgun.

    The BHs still wanted to get ‘their woman’ out of the motel room, and they decided to have the cops do it for them. So they called 9-1-1 and reported that there was a black man with a gun holding a white woman hostage in the motel room.
    S.T.A.R.T (we’re too cool to call ourselves S*W*A*T) shows up en mass and starts yelling at the ‘kidnapper’ to surrender. Various silly reasons are given as to why they didn’t come out with their hands up or communicate with the police, including a claim they didn’t think the dozens of guys with guns were cops, and a claim that the battery in their cell phone was dead and they couldn’t call 9-1-1, but Bonnie and Clyde decided to hide in the bathroom with their gun.

    After a couple of hours, Clyde has a ND playing with his gun in the bathroom, S.T.A.R.T storms the motel room, shots are exchanged, and Clyde lies bleeding in the bathroom. At first, Bonnie went with the ‘kidnapping victim’ angle, because she thought Clyde was dead. When she found out he’d been transported to the hospital, suddenly she was all ‘he is my boyfriend and you shot him for no reason’.

    The moral to the story? Fugitives and the people who mate with them are idiots, and bail recovery agents are no better.

  28. Jesus, I’d have had them leave or trespassed them.

    Morbid obesity doesn’t exactly scream intelligence + tactical proficiency.

    Fed creds when you make that claim or GTFO big boy.

    • Speaking of which, we need to know what ammo the perp was using, since penetration was apparently ample.

  29. come on the doofus and the morbidly obese guy are federal agents? That would have been a show me your papers or get out situation. Needless to say it sucks they died but they obviously were not trained enough nor at the proper physical fitness level to do the job.

  30. First. This is what happens when you delegate law enforcement to the private sector.

    Second. I’ve dealt with fbi and us marshals a time or three. They show credentials. Everytime. Except when they’re kicking in a door and then they are marked very well.

    And I’ve never seen a fed that fat. I would have been all up in their ID.

    Had a repo team come to a gated community I worked security in. One of the members of the team “flashed” his id at the gate man, declared himself a cop and went thru the gate to get a limo.

    I caught up with them at the country club and blocked them in. Mr. Cop blustered and threatened to arrest me. I asked for his credentials. He got more blustery. But no creds.

    Turns out he was a meter maid for another city working a side job. In the state of CA it’s a criminal offence to represent yourself as a cop. He got jugged and lost his job.

    Folks that live in gated communities are master deadbeats. I was forever blocking repo men and process servers.

    • “And I’ve never seen a fed that fat. I would have been all up in their ID.”

      Exactly, most federal agencies have an armed division… which has PFT standards that there’s no way in hell that guy could meet. I would have told these guy show me creds or get the hell out. If they refused I’d have called actual police to remove them or verify who the hell they actually were.

      Basically what I said above: Claim fed, show creds or GTFO. Continue to lie to me and depending on the circumstances you might just find your fat ass being held at gun point for actual police because you’re armed, lying to me about your LE status and refusing to leave my property which means your committing at least one crime and acting shady (by claiming federal LE status) to do it. If, at that point, you wanna fuck around I’ll probably put some lead in you.

      Homeboy should have stuck to what he was good at: sucking down fast food and large sodas. Thank God no innocent people were harmed by this nearly unimaginable level of tomfuckery.

  31. I’m going to wait for the autopsy reports before I pass judgment. It looks to me like even odds that the bounty hunters just finally lost their battle with heart disease and diabetes, rather than the fugitive guy shooting them.

    I’m just sayin’, maybe lay off the donuts and Dr Pepper if you’re gonna wrassle with violent fugitives.

  32. The state should at least pay for the bounty hunter’s funerals.
    They have saved the cost of trial and incarceration.

  33. These were obviously two operators operating operationally in an operational environment to operationally apprehend a dangerous felon using operational principles applied operationally. Too bad they didn’t use their hours of hanging-around-the-dealership time to workout some type of operational operation that might’ve resulted in a non-lethal operation. ….. but are ‘operators’ really interested in non-lethal outcomes?

    • “but are ‘operators’ really interested in non-lethal outcomes?”

      I guess that depends on the operation.

  34. Explain this the need to play cameraman by everybody? I do not get this cell phone culture thing.

    • It’s the whole 15 mins thing. This is a prime example. Joe Cameraman takes this video, hopes to catch something good and post it on Youtube/Instagram/Facebook and get lots of likes. In really good cases, like this, they get played on the news and passed around. Suddenly, your 15 mins are here.

  35. 100% shitshow.

    They definitely should have known better than to get in a gunfight in a glass closet with a dozen bystanders nearby. It sounds like they weren’t even licensed to make arrests.

  36. Does the bail bondsman get his money back if he drags a dead suspect in for his court appearance, or does the court get to keep the bail money?

  38. Kentucky got it right by banning bail bonding for profit and “bounty hunting”. Pay your 10% cash bond to the jail after your bail has been set and get it back if you are not guilty.

    Out of state bounty hunters are required to get a Kentucky warrant, signed by a Kentucky judge and have it served by a Kentucky police agency.

  39. Of course I am critical of this. It’s terrible camerawork. Can we get people trained up a little better so we can see what’s going on? 🙂

Comments are closed.