Gunfight Stories: Jared Reston

January 26, 2008 started like any other shift for Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Detective Jared Reston. He was working an off-duty security detail at Regency Square Mall when loss prevention called over the radio — two shoplifters were being stopped near the south entrance. Routine stuff. The kind of call officers handle a hundred times a year. One suspect was taken into custody without a fight. The other ran.

What followed in the next few minutes would become one of the most studied gunfights in modern law enforcement training — and one of the most important stories any armed citizen can hear.

Reston and his partner, Chris Brown, took off after the fleeing suspect. The man sprinted across a six-lane highway dodging traffic, then slowed down on the other side trying to blend in with pedestrians. Reston wasn't fooled. He closed the gap. Near the 9400 block of Atlantic Boulevard, Reston drew his TASER and cornered the suspect near a dry retention pond. The man raised his hands — appeared to comply — then backed away and took off running again. The TASER malfunctioned when Reston tried to deploy it. He reholstered and kept going.

Tired and out of options, the suspect stopped at the top of an embankment above the retention pond. Reston grabbed him by the back of his hoodie. The man spun, broke the grip, and they went face to face. Reston pulled him in close and started delivering knee strikes to bring him down. Then he felt what he thought was an incredibly hard punch to the face. When he came to rest he realized it was more than a punch — his teeth were laying flat in his mouth and his jaw had collapsed upon itself. He'd been shot through the face with a .45.

Reston went down the embankment. The suspect moved in to finish it. That's when things got simple — Reston fired back. The attacker fired 12 rounds total, and seven connected, hitting Reston in the jaw, elbow, hip, thigh, and landing three rounds across his body armor. Reston fired 14 rounds, fighting uphill the entire time. When it was over, the threat was down and Reston was alive. It took 14 surgeries to rebuild his jaw and face.

He was back on full duty in six months.

So what does a shoplifting call in Jacksonville have to do with you? More than you might think. The first lesson is that situations can go from nothing to lethal in seconds — Reston himself has said it can go from a shoplifting foot chase to fighting for your life just like that. Your defensive encounter probably won't announce itself either. The second is that tools fail. The TASER malfunctioned at the worst possible moment, and Reston had to default to his fundamentals. What's your plan when your first option doesn't work? Third — and this one bears repeating — pistol rounds are not death rays. Reston took a .45 through the jaw and kept fighting. Your attacker may not go down on the first shot, or the second. You work until the threat stops.

But the biggest lesson Reston teaches is mindset. He's said that he had already mentally rehearsed being shot long before that night — how he'd respond, how he'd react, what he'd do. He didn't figure that out on the ground at the bottom of that embankment. He'd already been there a thousand times in his head. That's why he doesn't use the word survivor. He uses the word winner. To him, survival is what you do if you crash your car in the woods and drink your pee and eat berries. A gunfight is a high-stakes game, and games have winners.

That mindset — the refusal to quit, the mental rehearsal, the decision made long before the shooting starts that you are going home — is what we work to build in every student who trains with us. The gun is a tool. The person behind it is what wins.

Look up Reston's full account if you haven't already. It's 36 minutes that could change how you think about carrying a firearm.

Be safe, be well.