Friday, October 23, 2009

Your Pepsi or Your Life

The Detroit News reports:
A 77-year-old Flint man refused to give in to a would-be robber, instead fending off his assailant with a two-liter bottle of Pepsi before suffering a gunshot wound to the groin.

The Flint Journal reports Pat Gillespie is recovering at home after the shooting Thursday afternoon.

Gillespie says he was unloading groceries outside his home when one of two men pointed a gun and told him to empty his pockets. Gillespie tells the newspaper he "didn't want to give them nothing" and hit the gunman with a bag containing the Pepsi bottle. The men ran off, but shot Gillespie once.

Read the full story here.

And for the original Flint Journal story, that has a lot more detail, go here. This all happened in the Mott Park neighborhood.



5 comments:

  1. If it's the same Pat Gillespie I knew when I was growing up, they picked the wrong guy to mess with. I hope he recovers quickly. unclebuck

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  2. Anyone else want to take the Pepsi challenge?

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  3. Coke? Let 'em have it. Pepsi? That's another story.

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  4. Yeah, I've met this dude, as I too live in Mott Park. Really nice guy, but I don't think I'd mess with him either. I'm glad he got a hit in first, since from what I've gathered, the shooter lives at the house that is the root of all problems in Mott Park. Hooray for you, Mr. Gillespie.

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  5. One of the things that really frosts me about the Detroit media is that they act like Flint is just a small place like an intersection, like they might say an incident happened at Woodward and Grand Blvd. if it was Detroit. They never tell you WHERE something happened in Flint.

    In one sense, that's good, because they won't find the victim to retaliate against him for fighting back. Too bad the perpetrator didn't get more messed up. Maybe he would give up his life of crime.

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.