Chicken-Fried News: Fleeing bullets

One could say that Walmart is dangerous enough, and so is Del City. Put those two together and it’s already dicey, but toss a pandemic into the mix and odds are firmly against you returning completely unscathed. Add a trigger-happy off-duty police officer working a security gig into the mix and that weekend shopping trip turns into a spinning roulette wheel in a game that might be played in Putin’s neighborhood.

In a moment caught on cell phone video, a reported Langston police officer got into a scuffle with an alleged shoplifter, who broke free and drove away. Even though the reversing vehicle cleared the officer without endangering him, he decided to pull his pistol and — turning it sideways as he must always have done in his fantasies — emptied the entire clip at the fleeing driver in the crowded parking lot.

The driver, who was wounded, was later arrested on a shoplifting complaint. Meanwhile, the police must still be “waiting for all the facts to come in” to determine whether it’s a criminal act to endanger citizens by firing a dozen rounds into the distance while your own life isn’t imperiled.

The case will most likely land on Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater’s desk for a decision, but he might be too busy prosecuting vandals as terrorists these days to bother with an actual threat to public safety.