Teen charged with inducing panic with realistic-looking paintball gun
Matt Wilcoxon, owner of Johnson’s Real Ice Cream Shop, was tending to his customers when he was alerted to a man with an assault rifle in his parking lot.
He immediately alerted authorities, and when he went to investigate, he found that there really was a man with a rifle. He lunged towards the man’s weapon, wrestled it away from him, and tossed it away.
Little did he know, it was a paintball gun.
However, the rifle has no orange markings, or any other indicators that it is not real.
Bexley police understood the mistake, and Chief Larry Rinehart even said the rifle looks real to him.
He was thankful Wilcoxon saw the man first, saying that if the man had pointed the gun at police, things could have been “very, very ugly.”
Chief Rinehart expressed disbelief that someone would lack the common sense to bring such a realistic-looking imitation of a weapon to a public place.
19-year-old Malcolm Walker was charged with inducing panic. Walker told police he bought a new part for his gun, and was trying to put it on when Wilcoxon saw him.
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