Texas cops show up and shoot the hero who disarmed a potential church shooter

A man who helped foil a potential church shooting was shot by police in Amarillo, Texas.

According to Chron.com, on the morning of February 14, 35-year-old Joshua Len Jones burst into a building at Faith City Mission and pulled a gun, taking about 100 congregants and church staff hostage.

But as police were en route, churchgoers took matters into their own hands and wrestled Jones to the ground, one of them grabbing his gun. When police arrived, they stumbled upon the churchgoer holding the gun and opened fire. The man, identified as Tony Garces, was hospitalized in stable condition and later released.

Speaking to ABC 7 Amarillo, Garces said he doesn’t consider himself a hero.

“There were other people there. I just took the gun away from him. I got shot. I got the bad part. It’s life.”

When asked if he would do it again, Garces said he’d do it “in a heartbeat.”

From ABC 7:

Garces said he was at Faith City Mission after four years in prison to turn his life around with the drug rehab program. Disarming the gun man gave him the opportunity to prove to himself he had changed.

“If it would have been the old me, I wouldn’t have done what I did,” he said. “It would have been completely different.”

Now, he faces challenges to his recovery.

For doing the right thing, he now has got a huge medical bill, probably a lot of long term physical problems and it needs to be taken care of,” said Jeff Blackburn, Garces’ attorney. “The only reason he’s got those problems is because they shot him.”

When the story began to circulate on social media, many thought it was a good example of how arming teachers to protect students from rampaging gunmen is a bad idea. In sum, if good guy who disarmed a shooter can get shot by police, then the risk of an armed teacher making the same mistake is even greater.

In addition to taking care of his medical bills, Garces told ABC 7 that he hopes the city will invest in training officers better.

“Train them better, man,” he said. “That guy didn’t know what he was doing.”

“I thought it was over. but the cops shot me. The good guys shot me.”

Watch ABC 7’s report on the story below:

Featured image via screen grab