The Armed Citizen® Feb. 28, 2025

Armed Citizen® Today

A 24-year-old resident of Juneau, Alaska, shot and killed a teen in self-defense in a road-rage incident during which the teen pulled out what appeared to be a rifle and threatened the 24-year-old with it.

Police say that the situation started when the older driver called police after being followed by a driver in a 2001 Volkswagen Jetta. The two drivers then circled a roundabout before stopping alongside each other. An argument broke out between the two men, and the 24-year-old driver noticed what he thought was a rifle in the hands of the younger driver. The teen then pointed the rifle at the 24-year-old driver, prompting him to draw and fire in self-defense.

The older driver waited at the scene for responding officers, who pronounced the teen driver dead on the scene. An investigation found that the teen driver had actually been armed with a C0₂-powered pellet/BB gun.

"It looked very realistic, very much like a firearm,” Juneau Police Chief Derek Bos told KTUU News. “Responding officers also held the initial belief that it was an actual firearm. It was determined much later in the investigation that it was not.” (KTUU News; Juneau, Alaska; 2/3/25)

From the Armed Citizen® Archives – January 1971

Mrs. Deloris Ehle of Ft. Wayne, Ind., was suspicious of two men who parked in her driveway. Consequently, she did not respond when they knocked first on her front door, then on her back door. But when they took a ladder from her garage and removed one of her window screens, she grabbed a shotgun. Upon seeing the armed homeowner, the two men fled. (Ft. Wayne, Ind., The News Sentinel)