Police in New Hartford report being alerted to a fight involving a knife and a handgun at the restaurant at 6:42 p.m. on Saturday. Arriving officers found that the suspect, 28-year-old Esteban F. Padron of Utica, had been asked to leave due to an earlier incident in which employees described him as being disorderly.
The staff, after recognizing Padron and requesting that he leave, then attempted to escort him out of the establishment.
The New Hartford Police Department posted on Facebook that “while escorting Padron out, he began attacking an Applebee’s staff member.” The suspect then allegedly ran behind the bar and grabbed a steak knife. At that point police said he continued fighting with several employees.
One worker was reportedly slashed across the face. Another Applebee’s employee suffered what is described as a non-life-threatening injury.
It was then that the armed good guy sprang into action. A police spokesperson said “this citizen intervened by drawing his handgun and giving Padron commands to stay on the ground and let go of the knife.
Given the alternatives, Padron complied. He was reportedly still on the ground when New Hartford police arrived and took him into custody.
Padron faces charges of attempted assault in the second degree, which is a felony, along with two counts of assault in the third degree and one count of criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree. The other three charges are misdemeanors.
The Good Samaritan was not charged.
The suspect was transported to St. Luke’s hospital nearby for an evaluation after what investigators say they learned after the incident. Police report more charges may be pending, and they are still interviewing witnesses.
Upstate New York’s Oneida County tallied the highest number of violent felonies in 2021, 282, recorded since 2012. It equaled the total from 2017.
Whatever the mental state of the suspect was, his alleged actions show that he was both armed and a clear and present danger to the restaurant’s staff and patrons. It was only through the brave intervention of a legally armed diner that the incident did not end much worse than it did.
The patron in all aspects acted responsibly, ordering the suspect to the ground as he was disarmed and then holding him for the police to take over.
There are far too many instances where armed good guys are not there to intervene, and criminals have grown accustomed to going unchallenged while they cause havoc in law-abiding citizens’ day-to-day lives. This was not one of those instances.
A Saturday evening diner enjoying his meal was prepared. If nothing out of the ordinary had transpired, he would have finished his dinner and left unnoticed. Instead, a violent criminal attacked employees with a knife, and the customer did what he knew was right.
There were two injuries, one of a more serious nature, and thankfully no more. The suspect clearly did not value the lives of the workers that night, and he may have hurt several more if it were not for the act of an armed good guy.
The Second Amendment clearly affords law-abiding Americans the right to keep and bear arms, and courts have consistently ruled that the right to be armed extends away from the home. In this instance and many more like it, it was the free exercise of that right that prevented further violence, injuries, and possibly even death.
