Man Arrested for Threatening to Shoot iPhone

by Terrence O'Brien on October 2, 2009 at 02:16 PM

We grumble about our iPhones as much as the next guy. It takes forever to open a text message, boots up slower than our '90s era Pentium-powered Gateway, and requires us to use the bloated, buggy, and just plain awful iTunes [Editor's Note: Terrence is particularly known for his iPhone irritations]. But as big of a headache as it is, we draw the line at putting a bullet in it -- at least publicly.

Donald Goodrich stopped just short of plugging his iPhone full of lead in a busy Apple store in Cincinnati. The frustrated customer took his iPhone in because it wasn't working properly and, according to WCPO, told an employee he was "so mad, I could pop a 9mm at it." Goodrich then revealed an actual 9mm handgun. The understandably scared employee assured the mustachioed man they would fix the phone immediately, and set him up with an Apple Genius. The employee then told a manager, who called police.

Goodrich was arrested and charged with aggravated menacing, and faces charges over his concealed weapon, which, despite having a license to carry, he failed to inform the arresting officer was in his possession.

We don't think there's anything wrong with taking out frustrations on gadgets. We once gave a cell phone a severe stomping on a bus full of people over poor AT&T service. But if your preferred method of destruction involves firearms, perhaps you should take it to a firing range, and not a crowded mall. [From: Mashable and WCPO]

Tags: apple, frustration, gun, top

Comments

MarkOct 3rd 2009 1:51AM

Neutral

Section 2903.21 (Aggravated Menacing) of the Ohio Revised Code says that:
(A) No person shall knowingly cause another to believe that the offender will cause serious physical harm to the person or property of such other person, such other person's unborn, or a member of the other person's immediate family.

(B) Whoever violates this section is guilty of aggravated menacing, a misdmeanor of the first degree.

If you are reporting the whole story, then this charge should be thrown out and the cop investigated. If all he did was express frustration, however extreme, with his iphone and then threaten to destroy it, and then back up his threat to destroy his OWN property by merely showing the tool of destruction (in a nonthreatening way) then he's not guilty of anything other than the failure to disclose his concealed weapon.

Which, btw, those laws need revising anyway.

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krjemOct 3rd 2009 7:00AM

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I think if I was working in a mall store and a customer revealed a handgun.........I would feel threatened. A person who is so aggrevated by a cell phone that they are tempted to shoot it with a gun, which they have with them, might be unbalanced and probably shouldn't be walking around a mall full of people with a handgun. Suppose the kid in the food court aggrevates him more than the phone did.

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grizzlyOct 5th 2009 2:23PM

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"when you give up your freedom for security,,you have neither"...Ben Franklin.......... here where i live,if you have a concealed weapon permit,you can get in trouble for accidently allowing someone to see your firearm,conceled means concealed. i think the man with the firearm had poor judgement in allowing the kid to see his firearm,i think the kid and the manager both had poor judgement in shiting their pants,i am however inclined to cut the latter some slack,as those two will brobably never develop the abiltiy to think for themselves.

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Someone with a brainOct 8th 2009 11:42AM

Neutral

You two can't be serious.

Mark, showing a weapon in public, especially after claiming one has no problem shooting, is a threatening action. He didn't just say he was going to shoot the phone. He actually showed a gun. That is a threatening action. There is no loophole that would allow someone to pull out or flash a weapon and claim to only want to shoot one's own device. Any reasonable person would have immediately bent over backward to appease the person instead due to the threat imposed. If this person had no intention of threatening anyone, he could have said he was going to shoot his phone, not flashed his weapon as to not pose any threat to the employees, gone home, and followed through.

Grizzly, the manager and employee showed proper action. They were dealing with an irate customer who not only threatened to discharge a firearm, but proved he had one on him. Apple employees have been shot. The last time was only three months ago in Virginia. My fiance works at an Apple store where, just a few days ago, a customer had to be removed by security due to the physical threat he was posing to the employees in his anger. When someone is so angry they not only threaten to shoot an electronic but flash the weapon to do it, it is responsible to alert police.

Also, before you talk about others not learning to think for themselves, you need to go back to elementary school and learn such basics as capitalization, punctuation, spelling, etc.. You have at least six errors in your first line alone. One more error could potentially be debated. But perhaps you consider this to be "the ability to think for" yourself.

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