Woman Helps Stop Beer Theft With New Gun

Jody Spears’ husband now calls her “my little gunslinger.”

Spears earned her nickname Monday night when she dropped a bag of milk and cookie dough and whipped a .38-caliber pistol out of her purse to break up a theft attempt at a north Spokane convenience store.

“I watch all those (Sylvester Stallone) movies, but I’m not out there slinging my gun around at everyone,” said Spears, a 30-year-old mother of two.

In fact, Spears says she just learned to shoot the gun last weekend. Until Monday, she had never pointed the licensed weapon at anything other than a target.

That didn’t stop her when she dropped by the Nevada Food Shop, 5438 N. Nevada, at 8 p.m. to pick up chocolate chip cookie dough and a half-gallon of milk for her two sons.

She was walking out of the store when she passed three young men - whose ages she estimated at 19 or 20 - making a beeline to the beer cooler.

They each grabbed a 12-pack of beer and two of them ran from the store. The third, identified by police as 20-year-old Charles Brus of Deer Park, was tackled by a store clerk before he could get out the door.

The two wrestled on the ground until Spears pulled out her gun, pointed it at Brus and ordered him to “chill out.”

“I said, ‘Look, I’ve got a .38 pointed at you,”’ Spears said. “First he said, ‘So.’ He didn’t believe me. Then he looked up and said, ‘Oh.”’

Spears held the suspect at gun-point for about 10 minutes until police arrived. In the meantime, two women walked into the store and said they almost hit two young men sprinting across the parking lot carrying half-cases of Keystone beer.

“It wasn’t even good beer,” said Spears.

Police arrived and took Brus into custody.

Officers have information about the other two suspects, said police spokesman Dick Cottam, but have not made any other arrests.

“So I put my gun back in my purse and went home and made cookies with my kids,” said Spears.

, DataTimes