An employee in Virginia’s Arlington Smoke Shop is in jail and being held without bond after using a gun to fend off three alleged robbers Sunday around 4:30 a.m.
Fox News reports the owner of the store says his employee, 33-year-old Hamzeh Abushariah, “was sleeping in the store in order to practice social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic.”
Around 4:30 a.m. three individuals allegedly broke in while wearing masks. The store owner said, “The neighbor upstairs said when they broke the window it sounded like a car smashing into the store. The employee said it sounded like a shotgun.”
Abushariah grabbed a gun and fired, wounding one of the suspects and causing the other two to flee.
WJLA reports Abushariah used a gun which the store owner had purchased in order to keep the premises safe during the coronavirus crisis.
Arlington County Police charged Abushariah for “malicious wounding, reckless handling of a firearm, and violation of a protective order” and he is being held without bail.
The store owner responded to the arrest and lockup of his employee, saying, “This is very sad. I was born in Arlington, I pay taxes. The gun is registered and everything is perfect. But I can’t believe as American citizens, we are being treated like this. And this gets the criminals out there [thinking] ‘We can go rob stuff, kill people and hurt people and guess what, people have to run out the back door’. This is mind-boggling.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.