Cooler heads did not prevail last night when a security guard shot a woman near Mercy Drive, proving to everyone why some assholes aren’t responsible enough to be actual police officers.
It started as many such incidents do, with a public argument between two friends. Aimee Guillory was having a heated verbal spar with her friend Vince Johnson in the parking lot of Palm Grove Apartments in Northwest Orlando. She attempted to storm off toward Mercy Drive in her 2007 Audi before making a U-Turn and heading back to her apartment, at which time Johnson jumped in front of her vehicle, perhaps to get her to stop and and continue “talking.”
According to police, she bumped him at a low rate of speed, causing no injuries, before pulling into the parking lot again. Johnson followed.
That’s when security guard Johnathan Andrew Coleman, 35, apparently ensnared in a fit of the fake-cop-blues, rode up and ordered Guillory to step out of her vehicle.
After she complied, Johnson, obviously not too sore over the car-bump, told her several times to ignore Coleman’s orders and leave since he wasn’t a real law enforcement officer.
One can speculate that Coleman’s ego was bruised. As Guillory got back into her car, Coleman moved toward the driver’s seat to remove her by force. She steered her car right, and according to several witnesses, Coleman hung onto the window as the vehicle proceeded forward. The security guard let go, drew his 9mm Glock 17 pistol and fired three to five shots at the driver-side door. One bullet struck Guillory’s wrist, and the other pierced her arm.
Another security officer, Vincent Kinlan, later told police that he heard Coleman say three times in a radio transmission that “shots had been fired and that he was down.”
A police report indicates that Coleman did suffer an abrasion to his calf and a foot injury, probably from latching onto Guillory’s window, but that didn’t garner enough sympathy to keep real cops from slapping him in cuffs and charging him with aggravated battery with a firearm.
From the outside, it seems obvious that an attempted murder charge could be warranted in this incident. Sgt. Jim Young, spokesman for the Orlando Police Department, said that the state attorney’s office can alter charges in any case, but added that “at the time of this arrest, the facts in the case resulted in the appropriate charge.”
This episode is strikingly similar to another Police Beat in early April, when a security guard trying to break up a fight blindly fired random gunshots before reading a detained woman her Miranda Rights. That guy was charged with a load of felonies, too, leading us to conclude that guard cards are now being issued with complimentary copies of the movie Lethal Weapon.
