Hostages Fight Back After Suspect Barricades Himself Inside Convenience Store

Cameras caught a suspected killer getting a beatdown from the people he was holding hostage in Phoenix. 

Footage of the incident is just coming to surface now. It began as a normal day at a Circle K convenience store in Phoenix on May 9, 2018, but then 53-year-old Joel McClean Carson allegedly walked in waving a gun and ordered the clerk to lock the door. Carson then barricaded it. 

Authorities said Carson immediately shot and killed Efran Hernandez.

The staff and customers were then ordered to a corner of the store. But as the suspect wandered the store, a hero customer lunged at him and the other hostages joined in on the attack.

Security expert Pat Brosnan spoke to Inside Edition about whether the hostages did the right thing by fighting back.

“They did everything right, it really is a textbook example where you really must bumrush the bad guy,” he said. “In this case, Carson had already murdered Hernandez in cold blood, he demonstrated that he was extremely violent, and he promised them it wasn’t a robbery and ‘I am here to kill.’”

The hero even managed to grab the gun and then the other hostages were able to run for safety.

“I am not surprised by the courage of the ordinary person when they are faced with a loaded weapon and they are faced with an obvious cold -blooded killer,” Brosnan said. 

The suspect was later apprehended and faces murder, kidnapping and illegal possession of a weapon charges.

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