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Local store owners thwart
attempted armed robbery
Originally published here
on March 3, 2001
By HOLLY
HUFFMAN
Eagle Staff Writer
When a masked man walked into a small Bryan
grocery store wielding a handgun and demanding money, Lisa Klintworth’s
adrenaline started pumping.
First she was afraid.
Then she got angry, thinking how hard she and her husband work for their money
as the owners of Martin Luther King Grocery.
“I wasn’t going to give it to anybody,” Klintworth said.
And she didn’t. By the time their encounter with the would-be robber was over,
Gordon Klintworth had leveled a rifle at the man, Lisa Klintworth had tried to
rip the mask off his face and chased him down the street, and police had a
suspect in custody.
The Klintworths have owned their store in the 600 block of E. Martin Luther King
Jr. Street for seven years, but the store has been a staple in Bryan for the
last 68 years, Lisa Klintworth said. Under the couple’s ownership, the store
has been robbed only once, and that was during their first month as owners, she
said.
At first, Gordon Klintworth thought the man who entered his store Friday morning
and pointed a semiautomatic handgun was playing a joke. Klintworth’s friends
often come in and play practical jokes on him.
But he quickly grasped the seriousness of the situation.
“He knew what he wanted to say — he didn’t stutter,” Klintworth said.
“He just didn’t think he was going to meet his opposition.”
Klintworth told the man he didn’t have any money as he slowly made his way
down to the other end of the counter, where he keeps a 30-30 caliber rifle.
When the man refused to leave, Klintworth grabbed for his rifle and leveled it
at the would-be robber.
“When I met him gun to gun, that is when he fled,” he said.
But the Klintworths weren’t through with the man. Lisa Klintworth began
pulling on his bandana and jacket in an attempt to discover his identity.
“I wanted to pull that bandana off his face to see who he is,” Mrs.
Klintworth said. “Then I would be able to tell his mother, and around here if
you say I’m going to tell your mother, it’s bad news.”
She couldn’t remove his bandana, she said, but she did kick the door into his
chest as he was trying to run from the store.
Lisa Klintworth followed the man out the door and chased him down the street,
but she couldn’t keep up with him. Her husband followed, firing a warning shot
into the air, but the man continued to run.
Concerned neighbors began calling the police department after witnessing the
chase. At about the same time, Bryan police Lt. Freddie Komar happened to drive
by and saw Mrs. Klintworth anxiously searching for the man who had just been in
her store.
“He saw me pacing the road because I was looking for that guy back there,”
she said. “He said, ‘Are you OK?’ As soon as he said, ‘Are you OK?’ he
heard about an attempted robbery on his patrol scanner.”
Within minutes the area was swarming with police officers.
Police spokesman Sgt. Ernie Montoya said that in less than 15 minutes officers
had located and arrested a man matching the suspect’s description in the 700
block of Henderson. After searching him, they found a Llama 9 mm semiautomatic
handgun and several white rocks believed to be crack cocaine, Montoya said.
The man, Bryon Eugene Jones, is charged with unlawfully carrying a weapon and
possession of a controlled substance. He was being held without bail in the
Brazos County Jail Friday night, according to jail records.
Additional charges are pending, Montoya said.
NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, this material is distributed, without profit, for research or
educational purposes. We do our best, as well, to give credit to the original
news source who published these Guns Save Lives stories out of respect and
appreciation for their willingness to spread the word that Guns Save Lives. God
Bless the Americans that publish these stories - for assisting Americans in
hearing the truth.
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