Have you ever been threatened at gunpoint? I know, it’s a pretty extreme question and you probably answered no.
You can never plan for something like that and if you could, you’d probably also be planning for the aliens to land while sitting in your backyard bomb shelter waiting for Kim Jong Un to finally let those long range missiles fly.
My point is, these kinds of things can never really occupy our minds in any real way because they are so uncommon they don’t even seem real. You can see movies or read books where this kind of thing happens quite frequently but, in everyday life? Are you kidding me?
I couldn’t find any actual odds on this sort of thing happening here in Winnipeg but here are some others.
- Odds of dying from an asteroid or comet: between 1 in 3,000 and 1 in 250,000
- Odds of being injured by a toilet: 1 in 10,000 (I would have thought that’d be higher….what kind of injury could a toilet inflict?)
Here’s the closest thing I could find.
- Odds of dying in a firearm assault: 1 in 358 (Keep in mind that number comes from the National Safety Council in the United States. Here in Canada the prevalence of gun related crime is much lower. Yes, even in Winnipeg it’s much much lower.)
So guess what happened at Gizzys Restaurant and Bar on Ness way out in St. James Tuesday night? Yup, an attempted armed robbery. I can’t even imagine being at the wrong place at the wrong time for something like that.
READ MORE: Patrons wrestle shotgun from suspect after robbery at St. James restaurant: Winnipeg police
Global News spoke with a few of the folks who were there including Alesha Dyck who works at Gizzys as a bartender.
There was a pool tournament going on in the back, a crowd of usual customers was there and while she was serving one of them a drink she hears somebody quietly say, “This is a stick up.” She looks over and there’s a guy in a black ski mask holding a sawed off shotgun at her.
Then, she says, the guy goes running into the back where the pool tournament is going on.
Gary Anderson was one of the guys playing pool. He said “All of a sudden a guy runs in full out in black…says ‘this is a stick up.”
What would you think if something like that happened in your neighborhood watering hole? I’d be thinking…prank. It’s gotta be a joke. Who’s the loser with the mask?
READ MORE: Customers share experience of fighting off suspected armed robbery suspects at Winnipeg restaurant
Anderson said that’s what he was thinking too until this dude pointed his sawed off shotgun at the ceiling and fired. It wasn’t funny anymore.
Everybody in there dropped to the floor. You can see it in the surveillance video right here. I’ve watched it and it…well, it just doesn’t seem real.
But it is. It happened.
WATCH: Surveillance video from Gizzys Restaurant and Bar shows patrons and staff tackle an armed suspect
That’s not all. Instead of letting these three guys (there were three of them all wearing disguises) get away with it, some patrons and staff decided to take matters into their own hands. They attacked the gunman. Anderson goes on to say “We had a hero on our team, Rick, who came in after fighting another guy apparently out front, wrestled a crow bar from him, came and struck another guy.”
The incident ended with one of the patrons going to the hospital to be treated for minor injuries. He was released later the same night.
As for the three stooges, they got away amazingly. Police searched the area, even using the chopper to track these guys down. Nothing.
I have no doubt they’ll be arrested very soon if they haven’t been already.
As for the people that got caught up in the madness at Gizzys Tuesday night? I’m certain they feel relief right now knowing they’re unharmed. And let’s face it, they’ve all got a great story to tell.
They beat the odds.
If it were me I’d be going to buy a lottery ticket for Friday night’s draw. Maybe your luck is still runnin’!
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