Say What Now? Florida Man Accidentally Shoots Himself While Showing Off Gun at Bar

Published 5 years ago

A customer at the O’Riley’s Uptown Tavern on Creighton Road appears to have accidentally shot himself while showing his gun to fellow patrons Thursday night, according to surveillance video from the bar.

via Pensacola News Journal:

Pensacola police initially released information Friday morning that said a shooting took place inside the bar while officers were responding to a report of a fight outside.

Pensacola Police Department spokesman Greg Gordon retracted that information later in the day, saying it was based on reports submitted by various patrol units and was partly inaccurate.

Gordon said Friday afternoon that the first officer to respond to the scene Thursday night was on routine patrol on Creighton Road when he was flagged down by a patron who ran out of the bar immediately after the gun was fired at about 11 p.m.

While officers were inside the bar investigating, Gordon said a fight broke out between patrons just outside the bar’s main building. He said officers walked outside to help de-escalate that fight. The fight was not related to the shooting????, according to Gordon.

Warren Sonnen, a manager at O’Riley’s Uptown Tavern, allowed the News Journal to view security footage from Thursday night, which shows the incident occurred at 11:01 p.m.

In the video, a man can be seen sitting at the bar engaged in conversation with a woman and another man at 11 p.m. At 11:01 p.m., the man uses his right hand to pull out a handgun and shows it to the two people for a couple of seconds.

He then makes a quick motion as if he were putting the gun into an invisible holster beneath his left shoulder and discharges the weapon, shooting himself in the upper torso.

“I don’t know if he was pretending to be a badass or something,” Sonnen said. “But from what I can tell, it was completely by accident.”

The man left the bar moments after discharging the weapon.

Police made contact with the man they suspect fired the gun after he checked himself into a hospital shortly after the incident. As of 3 p.m. Friday, authorities were still determining whether he would face charges.

We need better gun control — ASAP.

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