Posted on 12/13/2025 12:15:27 AM PST by Morgana
An IHOP cook has been charged after allegedly shooting two teenage porch pirates outside his home as they ran away with packages.
Rakim Bradford, 34, opened fire after he came to the door to collect a delivery outside his townhouse in Atlanta and saw three youths he believed were trying steal it.
He called a co-worker after the shooting and told them he was cleaning his gun when he got a notification that the delivery had arrived, according to the arrest warrant.
The colleague told police that Bradford said he went to get the package holding his gun, and it 'went off'. He believed he hit one of the teens in the back as they ran.
Bradford fled his house after the shooting and wasn't there when police arrived about 3.30pm on Wednesday, but later turned himself in to a police station.
'We believe a property crime was occurring, that some packages were being taken off of a front porch,' Atlanta Police Chief Darren Sherbaum said.
'The homeowner did discharge his weapon to stop that theft of the packages.'
Whether Bradford, the head chef at a local IHOP who studied at the Culinary Institute of America, owned the two-storey townhouse or was renting it is unclear.
Bradford was on Friday charged with two counts of aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
Police found one shell casing at the scene when they searched the Villages of Cascades gated community in Atlanta's western suburbs.
How many shots were fired is unclear.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I disagree. Most pistols have a loud report, the bigger the caliber the louder the report.
If I'm a thief and someone shoots a 9mm at my feet, it will get my attention. If after firing a warning shot, a thief attempts to attack or threaten in any way, then the stand your ground rule takes over. I.e., shoot the aggressor until the threat ends.
There is a recent case of a guy who got shot in the ear, but that is not where the shooter was aiming, because the guy turned at the last minute after the shot was fired.
The police are not going to protect you from thieves.
The courts are not going to protect you from thieves.
The "criminal justice system" will punish you if you resist thieves.
Well, I already have. It worked.
I watched it. Never should have happened. Every rooftop in the vicinity that could be used for a shot should have been secured.
And very possibly you can press a charge of "aggravated assault", particularly if you are Black and the victim is White.
Sounds insane? It has happened, and more than a few times.
Warning shots are a bad idea for both legal and practical reasons.
If you are not willing to shoot and kill, then it is usually best not to even draw a firearm. That choice may be the right one.
The State does not want you to resist predators with any degree of force, regardless of what the laws of self-defense might say. You have to make a choice and deal with the consequences afterwards.
My sentiments exactly. Today in many states if you shoot an intruder or thief that is unarmed you are the one that gets screwed.
That is a remarkably lame excuse from the shooter in this case and should automatically disqualify him from possessing a firearm.
Lame excuses should be grounds for an additional misdemeanor charge.
First the headline is so wrong, no one that cooks at IHop is a chef, secondly the ‘Oh my, the gun went off all by itself’ . Wh9 , cleaning your gun or not just takes it with h them when going to the door to pick up a package? You were cleaning your gun, not just about to, so why is there a round in he chamber? If the gun just went off, why wasn’t there an impact on the porch or lawn close to the guy.
No, he lost it and took a shot at the kids, then he called his buddy to get help making up a otally unbelievable story.
I tell you something else, this guy is going to be civilly sud for everything he owns and more. Just because we fantasize about doing something like this to thieves, we wouldn’t actually do it…..at least not without making sure the shooting was justified, and shooting a fleeing package thieves is never justified, unless they sre shooting at you, then it’s open season.
I know he took out the trash, but the police should have given him a ticket for littering.
You are a stupid ass
I Rakim, you break ‘em. A person just can’t shoot enough “porch pirates.”
Check
I’ve listened to nearly every video Massad Ayoob has posted.
Any armed person would benefit by doing the same.
Porch piracy has become so common in California, it’s almost a sport for these criminals. They follow behind Amazon delivery trucks and FedEx vans.
They’re caught on Ring cameras but nothing else is done.
My daughter just put in a lock box for deliveries, as are many other people.
Meanwhile the thieves.........
I rule this to be a negligent discharge by a weapon given to going off by itself. Now for the Sentencing Phase:
The Gun: Send it and lots of ammo to me for training until it learns its lesson.
The Chef: 30 hours of community service cooking at a Salvation Army soup kitchen.
The Porch Pirate Teens: 30 years in state prison.
Yes, it would.
Used to live in Houston. County sheriff issued a statement (in newspapers, even) that if someone tried to enter your house it was OK to shoot to kill. But, BUT, to avoid questions you should drag the corpse back across the doorway. Deputies would just nod and remove the body.
Once they are on the run, tho, you would be facing criminal charges. The issue is not that you protected your property. Rather, shooting across your front lawn endangers the neighbors.
As noted, he’s set off all the “I’m lying about what happened” alarm bells with his “I was cleaning the firearm” BS.
Never mind safe procedure (ammunition in a separate room/far away) there’s no way to clean a firearm with a round in the chamber :D
So the problem then is if he’s lying about what he was doing prior to the event, it makes the rest of the story suspect.
From over here his story really reads like “I heard something outside, so I loaded my firearm and waited until I could catch them in the act; but as soon as I emerged they ran and I shot anyway” — and if that’s how it happened he’s going to jail.
By the by for the people talking about ‘warning shot’ - the answer is NO. You are responsible for everything that comes out of your firearm; the “shot to the ground” might hit concrete, the shot in the air comes down someplace.
Meanwhile tactically you’ve given the initiative to the other guy who now could very easily claim self-defense since You Shot First.
If you have time and space to be warning anyone let the warning come out of your mouth — and since you’re responsible for what comes out there too, make sure it includes key things like ‘stop,’ some words so that everyone in three blocks knows you were in danger, and that you are armed. If they stop or leave that’s that.
All that goes triple for people like ‘chef’ who live in a Dem-infested hole with Soros DAs that want to make you an example.
No.6, you are giving legal advice, which you are not qualified to give.
If you were, you would know not to do it, and you would know in which states your statements here are untrue.
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