The San Antonio Theater Shooting

Did a theater shooting occur in San Antonio days after the Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting, but was ignored by the media because an armed citizen disabled the gunman before he had a chance to do more damage?

The story is (mostly) true.

First, let’s take a look at the story being circulated online:

San Antonio Theater Shooting

On Sunday December 17, 2012, 2 days after the CT shooting, a man went to a restaurant in San Antonio to kill his X-girlfriend. After he shot her, most of the people in the restaurant fled next door to a theater. The gunman followed them and entered the theater so he could shoot more people. He started shooting and people in the theater started running and screaming. It’s like the Aurora, CO theater story plus a restaurant!

Now aren’t you wondering why this isn’t a lead story in the national media along with the school shooting?

There was an off duty county deputy at the theater. SHE pulled out her gun and shot the man 4 times before he had a chance to kill anyone. So since this story makes the point that the best thing to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun, the media is treating it like it never happened.

Only the local media covered it. The city is giving her a medal next week.

Just thought you’d like to know.

Aside from the part about killing his ex-girlfriend, this above account is relayed from a story reported in December by mysanantonio.com. Here we read that Jesus Manuel Garcia, age 19, began shooting at a restaurant, and then chased an employee into a nearby theater:

Garcia went inside, chased people out the back door, and followed one employee as he ran toward the theater, apparently because he was the easiest target, Pollard said.
“He was chasing him, shooting in the air and at other cars,” Pollard said.

He said that when a San Antonio police officer heard the gunshots and pulled into the theater’s parking lot, Garcia shot out his patrol car’s windshield.

Garcia then pursued the employee into the theater, firing more shots when he reached the lobby, Pollard said.

One of the shots struck a patron in the back, but the bullet did not strike any vital organs and the man was released from San Antonio Military Medical Center later Sunday night.

Bexar County sheriff’s Sgt. Lisa Castellano, who was working off-duty as a security guard at the Mayan Palace, chased the gunman toward the back of the theater. The 13-year department veteran cornered him after he ran into a men’s restroom, shooting him several times and taking his gun, Pollard said.

The story itself has been used to contrast media coverage of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which occurred only a few days earlier, and the Aurora Colorado theater shooting earlier in 2012. While both of those were high profile cases with significant loss of life, the San Antonio shooting went largely unnoticed, primarily because the gunman was stopped by an armed guard and the situation was quickly diffused.

Implications
In the wake of very heated gun control debate, there are several implications of the San Antonio case by those promoting this story:

• Had an armed guard been at either Aurora or Sandy Hook, the loss of life may have been reduced.
• Without the armed guard at the San Antonio theater, it could have easily been another mass shooting.
• The fact that the Aurora and Sandy Hook shootings received so much press, while the San Antonio story did not, angers many who are against gun control. The two mass shooting are being cited by gun control advocates, thus gun control opponents would like to use the San Antonio case as an example in their favor.

Your Opinion
Do you think the San Antonio case has been purposely ignored by the national media? Or did the quick end by a security guard simply make the story less newsworthy?