Seriously, get a carry license

At the Spring Valley DART station today, taking the train to the fair.

Wife and I were walking up the stairs when a aggressive/freaky/huge looking dude stops dead in the middle of the stairway facing us and stares at us. We had to rearrange to go around him. I said "good morning" as we passed. He didn't answer and I didn't hear him move behind us. My heartrate was a little elevated because this dude did not seem right. He had that "I am a sociopath and would just as soon kill you" vibe.

A few minutes later we were up on the platform. He walked upstairs again and came right over to us. Oh boy. Here we go.

Him: Hey man, do you have $2?
Me: No, I don't.
Him: I didn't mean to be rude when you talked to me down there.
Me: No problem. It's all right.
Him: [suddenly agitated] Why did you talk to me?
Me: [boggling, WTF?] What?
Him: [more agitated, seemingly unhinged] Why did you talk to me, with all these other people here? Why the hell you wanna...
Me: I said "good morning". [At this point I pulled my elbow in a bit so I could be sure of the positioning of the subcompact 9mm in the holster on my hip.]
Him: [he continues ranting]
Me: "We're done here", and I shepherded the wife away.

Moved to the north end of the platform and he followed within a minute or so.
We moved to the south end and he followed after a bit. Crap. This isn't a coincidence.
Moved to the north end again and placed a call to RPD.

I identified him in pieces, as he kept getting close enough to hear and we had to relocate several times: Black male, 30+ yrs old, 6' 1" or 6' 2" (he was taller than me), 200#, black knit cap, dark sunglasses, long desert-style camo parka shell, brown pants.

Within a couple of minutes two officers (244 and 264) showed up and walked the platform. They walked south-to-north like they were scoping then went downstairs. I couldn't see where they were, if they had left, or what. My guess at that time was that they had ID'ed the guy from my description (he was obvious) and was waiting for the train to clear the crowd before moving in. At this point I was still on the phone with dispatch and we agreed to drop the call since two LEOs were on scene.

After the cops had been (downstairs? gone?) for about two minutes the fellow got agitated again and started asking a group of commuters "why the cops here? What they looking for? Those was Richardson po-lice, not DART po-lice."*, etc. We moved away again and so did not hear the rest.

Interesting that he was so clued in to the difference between the affilliation of the officers, and that he saw both of them although they were moving seperately in different areas and in a low-key fashion through the crowd. I knew they were on-scene somewhere and still barely spotted them until they were quite near. I suspect his questions indicated he understood the LEOs were not there on a random patrol, and he wanted to know who called the police. Frak.

Train came shortly thereafter, wife and I boarded, and our pet psycho stayed on the platform.


I came home and listened to the scanner traffic. Call came in at 9:28am, and my description was reduced to "BM, 6 foot, camo, panhandling and behaving strangely". Both cars were on-scene by 9:33am, then nothing more until one of the officers announced he was clear at 10:23am. Normally if they had stopped someone they would have run a background check on the NCIC channel, but that was not on the recording. I bet a dollar that psycho had an active warrant somewhere. I suspect no contact was made.
Lesson learned: next time I will request officer contact so I can ensure contact gets made with the suspect. I did not request contact w/me as we were waiting on a train and didn't know when it would arrive.

I guarantee you that an encounter like this with a potentially dangerous pursuer is much different when you are armed. Instead of being in trapped animal mode, you are aware of the options in the scenario. There is no huge power disparity, there is just a human acting strangely and aggressively which you have to deal with safely.
Here's another pointer to a decent unofficial overview of how to get started with your concealed carry license.


* I was conflicted about whether or not to transcribe this outburst into standard English. Tried it both ways and it seemed more artificial to put words in his mouth. So those are direct quotes. If you have a problem with this word choice or syntax, feel free to take it up with him.