Wednesday morning feel good stories

Chief Tango sends us our feel good stories for this morning. The first is from Pittsburgh;

Police who responded at about 2:20 a.m. to the apartment on Merritt Avenue found a man lying face down on the front steps of the apartment building with a gunshot wound to the abdomen, Sonya Toler said. There was a handgun nearby, Toler said.

She identified him as Christopher A. Thomas, 27, of Marshall-Shadeland, and said he will face charges. He was taken to UPMC Mercy in critical condition.

Police found the body of another man inside the apartment, she said. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office identified him as David Calhoun, 31, of Carrick.

The resident of the apartment, who Toler would not identify, said one of the two men fired a shot into the door of his first-floor apartment and pushed their way in, she said. They shoved the 19-year-old man, who lives there with his 17-year-old girlfriend, into the bedroom, and asked him for “his stuff,” Toler said.

The tenant pulled out a shotgun and fired three times, hitting both men, Toler said.

The next story is from Delaware, where Nigel Sykes is suing Season’s Pizza that he tried to rob four years ago, but he was assaulted by his intended victims and then by the police, so he figures he could make himself a quarter million bucks for his trouble;

In his self-written complaint, Sykes admits, “I committed a robbery at Seasons Pizza” on Maryland Ave. on Nov. 30, 2010, just before 8 p.m. He admits he “displayed” a handgun and that an employee —a delivery driver and one of the named defendants — “handed me $140.”

He says he then started to make his way forward in the store when a different employee grabbed him from behind and other employees wrestled the gun from him, with at least one shot being fired during the struggle.

“That is when the assault began,” according to Sykes’ suit. “All of the Season’s Pizza employees participated in punching, kicking and pouring hot soup over my body. I was unarmed and defenseless and had to suffer a brutal beating by all of the employees of Seasons Pizza,” he wrote, adding the beating knocked him unconscious.

In Sykes’ first 2011 complaint, which is significantly different than the most recent one, he claimed an unknown person robbed him at gunpoint “and then forced me, after giving me a gun, to (rob) a nearby Seasons Pizza.”

“I complied with his commands and proceeded to rob the establishment.” he wrote in 2011, adding he informed employees that he was being forced into the hold-up by someone outside.

The next story come from Georgia;

Channel 2 Action News reported that when the four boys tried to rob a man at the Laurel Park Apartments near Riverdale around 3 a.m. Tuesday, the man shot one of the teens in the stomach.

The man called police, and the teens were found in another part of the complex after they called for medical help, according to Channel 2.

The last story comes from Alabama where 63-year-old Phyllis Law was forced to defend herself in her own home;

“We heard this crackling… Like wood popping and stuff. I said oh my god. He trying to come in. So I backed up to my room and got my gun and got my extra clip,” Law said.

She was hoping the suspect would go away. Instead, Law said he came closer.

“Next thing I know, he hit the lights and put all the lights on and I’m saying to myself, ‘This person been here before to know where all my lights at,’” she said. “This is ridiculous. He just comes strolling walking around. By the time…He was right here I saw the blue jogging basketball pants he was wearing. And when he got there I jumped up and just start shooting. I have no idea where I hit him. He fell right there on the floor there. “

Law’s granddaughter hid in a closet while she moved closer to the living room and got down on the ground.

Prichard police say she shot the suspect in the head.

Category: Feel Good Stories