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Target Sues 4 Heroes Who Stopped a Knife Attack in Their Store
Two years ago, a homeless man randomly stabbed Jobe Wright in the shoulder and ran off. Wright and three of his friends went looking for the attacker on the streets of Pittsburgh and learned he had fled into a nearby Target store. They went in after him in order to hold him until the police arrived.
That’s when things got even uglier. One of the victim’s friends, Michael Turner, described what happened when they found the attacker, 41-year-old Leon Walls.
“I entered Target, I run up the escalator, I make a right, that’s when I encountered Walls in the store,” said Turner. The two exchanged words as Turner held a baseball bat he had brought in for protection.
“He grabbed a little girl,” Turner continued, speaking of 16-year-old Allison Meadows. “He didn’t stab her at that point, he was talking, saying… he was trying to get out the store and Jobe told him, ‘You’re not going nowhere ’til the police come.’” At that point, Walls said, “Y’all think I’m playing. Y’all think I’m playing. I’m not playing.” and he stabbed Meadows two times.
The teenage girl has made a full recovery and Walls was recently tried and found guilty, but mentally ill.
Meadows’s family is suing Target for not keeping her safe. But now Target is suing Michael Turner and his friends for following Walls into the store, and thus provoking the stabbing.
The attorney for Allison Meadows thinks that Target is up to no good: “Suing Michael Turner is just Target’s way of trying to blame someone else for what happened under their own roof. The family certainly doesn’t blame Mr. Turner and they are thankful he was there that day.”
Like he did on that day two years ago, Turner is fighting back. He has stood outside the Target store holding a sign saying, “Target sues stabbing victim hero.”
Turner and his friends behaved exactly how I would hope to respond in a similar situation. A dangerous, violent man was on the loose and they sought to stop him from hurting anyone else. Target apparently believes carrying a bat was somehow provocative, but as the Second Amendment allows us to carry a firearm it most certainly is okay with a Louisville Slugger.
Does the multinational retail chain have a case against these men or is it just a smokescreen?
Published in Culture, Law
Meadows’ family started it.
With our legal system today, who knows.
I hope at that point Mr. Turner beat Walls unconscious with the bat.
I suppose it depends on the situation. It could be that if Turner hadn’t been there, the girl would have died. It could be that if Turner had been more aware of the surroundings he wouldn’t have confronted Walls where he could so easily grab a hostage. Even then I wouldn’t blame Turner, in that situation, for not foreseeing every possible outcome. But then, wouldn’t that also apply to Target, in the other lawsuit?
Who knew that Target is a Sanctuary Store.
Big personal injury attorneys have little personal injury attorneys upon their backs to bite ’em . . .
Jury selection will be interesting if a Target is dumb enough to move forward on this.
Geez, I’m running out of big box’s to shop. First Walmart, now Target. Poor management (and legal) choices force me to go elsewhere.
What’s even worse here is that some jury filled with bleeding heart liberals will agree with Target that it was all Turner’s fault for trying to capture Walls and with Meadow’s that Target failed to protect her even though it’s no one’s fault other than Walls.
I will never be on a jury because I have common sense and can see through the bull.
well… yeah, that sounds stupid. But keep in mind they are being sued for something that could not possibly be in their control. I think the Meadows family, here, is the bad actor, possibly looking at deep pockets (and likely motivated by an ambulance-chaser-type personal injury attorney). If they’re trying to deflect, it does seem to be out of self-defense more than anything.
Frankly, while I support Turner and his actions, I also support Target in their defense against what appears to be an attempt at a windfall. The family should be suing the aggressor, but obviously he has nothing with which to pay. Falling back on the deep pockets seems particularly despicable.
Why exactly is the Meadows family suing? Why should they succeed here over a piece of unpreventable bad luck?
Target’s lawyers are just being lawyerly scum and destroying some folks’ lives in order to win the other case. Makes me happy that I regularly shoplift from them.
The name “Target” needs a trigger warning.
Only in Arizona… oh, wait.
(see, because that’s where John is writing from, and the whole Giffords thing, get it?)
I don’t see how either the stabbing victim or Target has any case at all. Target has an obligation to warn or make safe dangers it should have known about, not all dangers. And Target doesn’t have much of a case against the guys who accosted the stabber. How is that an injury to Target? I could see that if Target loses the case brought against it by the family it could try to sue the guys for indemnification, but that case, as weak as it is, is not timely at this time.
We need a “stuff happens” law. When stuff happens nobody can sue nobody.
Why do I suspect that some details of the story have been omitted?
The Target stabbing was in Pittsburgh, PA, not Arizona. Don’t blame us!
Personally, I think that Target may have a point in assigning some blame to Michael Turner and his friends. If I owned a store, I wouldn’t want a quartet of vigilantes, armed with a baseball bat, chasing a criminal into my store.
The Meadows family lawsuit against Target appears to be for failure to provide adequate security. It is a legitimate claim in theory, and I can’t determine how viable it might be in these particular circumstances without more information. I’m an Arizona attorney, so I can’t speak to how Pennsylvania law would handle the case.
In Arizona, it would be unusual for the store (Target in this case) to “sue” the third-parties involved (Michael Turner and his friends). Under Arizona law, once the Meadows family sued Target, Target could identify Turner and his friends as “nonparties at fault,” and the jury would have the option to assign some fault to them. Often the plaintiff will add the “nonparties at fault” to the suit as additional defendants.
I recommend withholding judgment on the whole situation, given the limited information involved. We’re not living in a Batman comic strip, and pursuit of an armed felon may be a bad idea. The facts could range anywhere from “local good guys apprehend dangerous armed felon” to “street gang seeking revenge chases mentally disturbed homeless man into a store.”
Don’t blame the lawyers (ducking . . . .)
Whatever insurance company that will be on the hook for a judgment against Target is simply insisting the causation chain be followed, to see if the so-called heroes bear any legal responsibility. Theory: their actions were an intervening cause or a contributing cause, having exacerbated a bad situation, thus increasing the harm, and therefore, as third-party defendants, being partly responsible for the monetary damages.
I was thinking, also, that it would generally be wiser to avoid confronting an armed and unpredictably violent felon while he’s in near proximity to a vulnerable third party — unless there is reason to believe that he is already endangering that third party. We don’t know yet.
Normally, I’m against holding businesses accountable for the safety of their customers. However, I make exceptions in the case of gun-free zones.
So you want Target to be like the neighbors of Kitty Genovese (as originally reported)?
ok… so the joke about Arizona was in reference to “target” being a trigger word, you know, because of the Gabby Giffords thing, and how Sarah Palin caused it with her target-map. It was a subtle and quite un-funny joke, I know, but still.
Target will win.
I am surprised that Turner and friends did not get charged with something. The law is “stand your ground” not chase them down.
Once Turner’s gang started chasing they became the aggressors and Walls the victim.
I was going to quote this and say “You are kidding me, right?” Then I read that you were an attorney, so I knew you weren’t.
From the story, I read the attacker was random, not known to the first victim. It’s implied that Turner or his friends called the police. Turner’s intent was to have Walls arrested and told him so, not beat him with a bat. Ususally if someone has a knife, you take a gun, so I guess the bat was a bad idea.
Both were emotional at this point, Walls in flight mode and Turner in fight mode. The fact Turner may have enraged Walls shouldn’t have made him responsible for Walls actions anymore than he would be for Walls’ initial stabbing of Turner’s friend. Meadows was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It is interesting that it sounds like the location of Walls in Target was known on the street before Target knew or acted. Turner ran in, up to the second floor without being stopped or questioned. I wonder if it is normal that people run into the Target store, or if staff is so short, no one was around in the store to see what happened. It sounds like this Target is a pretty large store, I’m surprised they didn’t have any security or management witnesses.
I agree with Casey. Both suits should be dropped. The only people who win are the lawyers. but that is what happens when you have 5% of the world’s population but 50% of the world’s lawyers.
What a remarkably sane idea. And from a cat. With a baseball bat.
It speaks poorly for Target. Walls, the stabber, was responsible for both stabbings, neither Wright or Target was responsible for those.
One suspects that if Target wins, they won’t A) get any monetary satisfaction, or B) be able to use this in an ad campaign without managing to antagonize some portion of their patrons. They should have let it go, albeit taking depositions that would keep them out of the line of fire with regard to Meadows. I could understand that they might be a bit leery about any responsibility with regard to their (potential) customer, as a rejoinder above about trial lawyers is well observed.
This is the Target I shop at. It is a large store.
It sits in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood. East Liberty was the once bustling shopping district destroyed by urban planning and in recent years revived. The neighborhood itself is rough but it sits smack in the middle of a lot of buying power. Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and the like fill the district now. Google calls the area home as well. So you have colliding worlds here.
You can enter from the street or from the covered parking lot behind. Once inside you must take an escalator or elevator to the main shopping floor. At the top you have the normal Target looking entrance. A Starbucks, carts, and a security station. Always a guard there.
This isn’t a frequent occurrence here. A safe place to shop. And I’m sure this whole event lasted 3 minutes. So everyone involved was caught off guard, reacted or froze, and stuff happened.
Nothing good happened here but only Mr Stabby is to blame for anything.
If Pennsylvania has a good samaritan law, it should protect Mr. Turner and the 3 of others. It’s not as though they chased him into the store. He had already assaulted someone before entering the store, so a reasonable person could expect that he would present a danger to others.
As for the lawsuit against Target, I would like to think that it wouldn’t be held responsible for the entry of Mr. Walls into the store.
This is the area of law I practice (note: I don’t know PA law specifically, so I’ll be analyzing with NJ law, which I concede could be different):
The level of security in the store the law requires will be tied to the crime rate in the neighborhood.
If this Target is in a high crime area, there will be an expert to testify at trial that they should have more security on hand than say, a Target on Rodeo Drive with likely a small crime rate.
Also, some of Target’s liability may turn on the facts here as to “notice.” For instance, when I’ve had assault cases against taverns, if I’m dealing with a straight up sucker punch – it’s hard to prove that the bouncers could have prevented it. No one knew the punch was coming. However when there is a lengthy argument, pushing and shoving, and the bouncers kick both parties out into the parking lot and one severely beats the other, then the tavern security had plenty of time to take control and protect both parties, drunk and angry as they may be. The issue is notice and time to react.
Here I would want to know how much time and opportunity there was for Target’s security to recognize this problem, react, and take over from Turner and his baseball bat. Keep in mind they would have no idea who the good guy and the bad guy was at that point. Turner and his bat would appear to be as much of a threat as the man with the knife. Like it or not, they have an obligation to protect the guy with the knife from the guy with the bat, too.
As to Turner’s liability, much is going to depend upon PA’s law regarding citizens arrest, Samaritan laws if they have them, the right to protect others from harm including Meadows, etc. But most importantly, it’s a negligence case.
Would a reasonable man chase a bad guy into a store, grab a bat and try to apprehend? Or is that unreasonable – perhaps he should have left it to store security and police if he had the opportunity to do so. Did Turner create the situation as much as the guy with the knife? Even more so?
These are the issues – I’m not suggesting the solution.