Man Pulls Gun On Off-Duty Police Officer Over Parking Spot
NASHUA, N.H. (CBS) - A stranger, upset over where an off-duty police officer parked his car, ended up pulling a gun on him.
The officer, Sgt. Scott Childs, used his years of training to calm the man down.
Sgt. Childs has been a police officer for a long time. He's had his share of scary situations, but an argument in a Nashua parking lot hit a new level.
WBZ-TV's Lauren Leamanczyk reports
"He had a loaded 38 revolver pointed at my chest and was shaking and that crazed look about him," says Childs. "I thought he certainly had potential to pull the trigger at any point."
It all started over a parking spot outside a grocery store.
When Sgt. Childs pulled into the lot, the spots were all taken. So he made his own space and that's what set this guy off.
When Childs got back to the car, Joshua Webb was waiting for him.
Childs says, "I started to open my door, he pushes his body against the trunk of my car and says you'll have to run me over because you're not going anywhere."
Childs informed Webb that he is a police officer. He went for his badge. And when he turned around, Childs says he was over the hood of the car pointing the gun at his chest.
Obviously this could have escalated and been much worse than it was.
Childs is a UMass Lowell police officer now. But it was his 28 years with Nashua PD that really came into play.
He was a crisis negotiator.
Childs was able to take away Webb's gun and hold him there until police arrived. He's glad he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"I'm very thankful actually that it wasn't someone else in that position that could have said or done the wrong thing that would have potentially forced this individual to have shot that gun."
