Shopping Cart Vigilante Justice

The story as Chip related it went a little like this: For whatever reason (I didn't ask), at three in the morning on Sunday, Chip was getting out of his car at the local supermarket. He lives down by 38th and Sherman, so I can only guess which supermarket it may have been. I'm not sure what compelled him to go grocery shopping at three in the morning, but it is enough for the story that he was there.

As far as marks go, maybe Chip was simply in the wrong place for two guys desperate enough to rush him, but he is no small man. Perhaps he's not quite so tall, but he is a stocky sort and his glasses and long hair possibly made him seem more of a sensitive man than he really is. From personal experience, Chip has a few scars from bullet holes as a result of an interesting up-bringing, so what may seem unassuming on the surface is really someone who has had, in the past, the need to defend himself in extreme circumstances.

Exiting his car, Chip turned to lock his door. When his back was turned, a man shoved into him from behind, pinning him to his driver's side door. A foreign hand reached into his coat pocket and snarled Chip's cell phone. The thief attempted to wrench the item free, but in doing so had grabbed the interior of the coat pocket and was now trying to pull back on the entire coat.

Chip slid free of the coat sleeves and turned on his attacker. Apparently his next move is called a "slide kick" or something similar, but it just sounds nasty. Chip planted his foot into the groin of the attacker and then struck a similar blow to the knee, sending the thief sprawling on the pavement.

The assailant's partner came from behind Chip and grabbed his long hair, pulling it back. As Chip put it, "I'm a father of two – I've had 40 pounds of small child swinging from my hair at any given time. This really didn't bother me. At the time, I thought, 'You've got to be joking!'"

Braced from his kick, Chip was able to leverage himself and throw all of his weight back on the second attacker (did I mention that Chip was stocky? He's stocky in the way an H2 is large when compared to a normal SUV). With a great amount of force, the two slammed in an adjacent truck. Evidently this was enough. The second man slid to the ground and didn't get up.

It's interesting to note the thought process here, because Chip then began to look for a weapon. It was in his enraged frame of mind that he grabbed the handle of a nearby shopping cart, thinking that he would wrench the handle free and pummel the first attacker with the handle. Well, kids, things just don't work out that way and those shopping cart handles are really attached to the carts they serve. Up came the entire cart.

And then down came the entire cart onto the first attacker.

When the police arrived, they had to make Chip stop continually ramming the cart into the first attacker as he lay on the ground. Chip was in a bit of a blind rage, but he said that the searchlight in his eyes and being asked, "Is this your car?" made him stop and say, "What kind of question is that?"

The nice part of the story is that the manager of the grocery store was watching the entire thing on the security camera, mostly because the truck parked next to where the attack took place was his. This really helped Chip's case when the first attacker tried to pin the blame on Chip by saying that Chip had pulled the cart out of nowhere and just began beating him with it for no apparent reason.

So IPD sent the muggers off to wherever it is that they send muggers who have been attacked by a shopping cart. They let Chip go and pretty much said "Don't worry about it." I told Chip that he should have asked for a copy of the security camera footage as a souvenir.

Hmmm... this reminds me of the time that my friend Sean beat someone up with a table.