Story is in the Salt Lake Tribune, January 5, 2012,
“Rescuer says shooting out car window was only option to save children.”
Story Lead:
"Chris Willden wants to be perfectly clear — if he’d had any other choice, he wouldn’t have fired a bullet into the window of the partially submerged vehicle with three children trapped inside.
The car doors wouldn’t budge and he knew time was against him.
“I didn’t have a spring-loaded window breaker and a tire iron wasn’t available,” Willden said Wednesday. “If I had another option, I would’ve done it.”
Willden instead believed the best course of action to free the kids — two 9-year-old girls and an unconscious 4-year-old boy — was to carefully line up his .40-caliber Glock 23 handgun under the water at the edge of the window and shoot a single round to shatter the glass."
Real life MacGiver/Jason Bourne stuff–with no other option in play–or lucky bad judgment?
I suppose I would have done the same. I mean, shit, you got kids about to die, and you got a gun that you know is going to break the window - as opposed to trying to go Conan on it whacking it with your elbow or something.
Who knows, maybe there was nice big rock nearby that he could have used, but in a panic (not panic, but you know, an emergency situation like that), it’s hard to criticize.
On the other hand, if one of the kids in the car caught a bullet, then we’d have another story to kick around.
The pictures with the article don’t show the situation the car was in when Wilden shot out the window. An earlier article describes the situation more clearly: the car was actually upside down, with the windows fully submerged. It seems very unlikely that he could have managed a sufficiently solid hit with the pistol butt (or even with a tire iron, if he had had one) to break the window. A spring-loaded punch would have done the job, but he didn’t have one. Given all that, I don’t see any other way he could have broken the window, and it sounds like he took every precaution he reasonably could under the circumstances.
The only question, I suppose, is whether or not it was necessary to break the window while it was submerged. The article says that other rescuers helped to flip the car over and extract the children; they might have been able to flip the car, then break the window. Even so, Wilden had no way to know that would be possible, and time was critical–one of the children wasn’t breathing when they got him out of the water as it was.
I’m a big believer in not second guessing people in crisis situations. Especially when the outcome works out. He was there, made a call and took action to save lives.
Actually, my understanding is that breaking a car window is really easy IF 1) you have a sharply pointed object, and 2) you know what you’re doing. Very few people outside of firefighters and the like are going to have much experience breaking windows with randomly available pointed objects, however. Even emergency personnel are going to mostly have experience with tools explicitly designed for the job.
So all that said, I think anyone second-guessing this guy is being a jerk. He pretty clearly articulates that he knows perfectly well that using the gun wasn’t the preferred solution, what with a risk of random ricochets and such, but with time of the essence and no other tools at hand he went with what he had. Good enough for me.
ETA: just watched the video - dude is using the wrong side of the claw hammer and striking to close to the centre of the window. Hit near the corner with the claw and poof.
If the guy in question showed no signs of being aware of the risks he may have been running I’d be a lot more critical of him. As it is, he took what he felt was the quickest effective action he could think of in a time-critical situation. Was it ideal? No. Did it work? Yes.
“average people — even those with concealed weapons permits — should seek other means to extract trapped people from cars if possible”… NO, REALLY?
To anyone with any common sense, that’s so obvious it shouldn’t even have to be said.
I’m sure that most of us would use a less drastic method if possible, but in an emergency like this you sometimes need to do something drastic. Nothing wrong with what this guy did. Thank goodness he was quick thinking enough to help those kids.
As they say, common sense is less common than it should be. Perhaps such a warning will prevent someone from saying “Hey, it worked for that guy on the news” and opening fire when they shouldn’t.
I’m glad it worked out the way it did. I’ve heard that when a car falls into the water the pressure will often make it impossible to open the doors normally. In that case you’re supposed to stay calm as the car fills up with water until the pressure is less unbalanced, then take a deep breath and open the door. If one of the kids was already unconscious, it sounds like that wasn’t an option here.
I’ll add myself to the list of those agreeing with madmonk’s sentiments.
There was an emergency. The actions of those on the scene did not result in anyone being hurt, and did result in two kids who were in a life-threatening situation walking away unscathed. Given those facts, I would never dare question any actions taken at the scene.
I think he should have fired a warning shot first. Then, if the kids inside didn’t shape up and bust out the windows themselves, then he can shoot to wound the window.
