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Fort Worth shoot out.

shadowcat

Atlanta suburb

After bouncers kicked him out of the Fort Worth strip club, the man with the red ballcap walked to his car and grabbed a shotgun.

He ended up in a hospital, shot at least twice in a brief shootout with a security guard in the parking lot.

Fort Worth police said the gunman had caused a disturbance inside Bucks Cabaret in the 2300 block of Meacham Boulevard around 11:45 p.m. Friday. They didn’t provide his name.

The security guard is a 36-year-old former Army soldier from Fort Worth named Clinton Beam who has been on the job for four months. He said the man was drunk and had been arguing with his girlfriend inside the club. When the man tried to shove a bouncer, Beam said, he was put in handcuffs and taken outside to cool down.

After a manager took off the cuffs, Beam said, the man walked to his white Chrysler sedan, opened the trunk, pulled out a single-action pump shotgun and fired two shots into the air.

Beam said he pulled his own sidearm, a .40 Beretta.

He said that he doesn’t remember shouting “get down” but that everyone else standing outside told him later that he did.

The man with the ballcap fired at the front of the building, Beam said. He returned fire.

The two men shot at each other between rows of cars in the parking lot, Beam said, shattering windshields and littering the ground with spent shells.

Beam’s gun jammed as he hid behind a car, he said. He saw the man get in the driver’s seat of the white Chrysler. He said he reloaded and made his way toward the Chrysler.

He said that he shouted “get out” three times as he approached the car but that the man didn’t respond.

Beam said he fired three rounds into the driver’s side door.

“Let me see your hands,” Beam said he shouted as he moved around to the front of the car. No response. Another five rounds into the windshield.

Someone called police. Beam said he and a club manager pulled the man out of the car. He’d been hit at least twice — once in the ribs and once in the armpit, Beam said. Beam said he and the manager applied pressure to the man’s wounds until paramedics arrived.

An ambulance took the man to a nearby hospital in stable condition, police said. His condition is unknown. No charges have been filed, but police say the investigation is ongoing.

Later, Beam said, someone called him a hero. He said police told him if he hadn’t been there, the man may have gone inside the club with the shotgun.

“People are lucky it wasn’t worse that night,” Beam said Saturday. “You just never know how it might go.”

Past midnight, officers were collecting evidence and had strung up police tape around the man’s car, spent shotgun shells and his red ballcap still on the ground. All the while, club music continued to thump from inside the building.