Back in January 2015, several days after the attempted robbery and shootout at the She’s a Pistol gun store in Shawnee, I wrote a post — not for this blog but someone else’s — asserting that everyone would have been better off if Jon Bieker, co-owner of the gun store, had not come out of his back office firing away.
Bieker ended up getting shot to death by one of four robbers — ironically a robber who lay paralyzed by a bullet but kept firing as he lay on the floor near the front door.
Now that the video of that horrifying incident has been made public — and other new information has come to light — it’s clear I was completely wrong. I should have resisted the urge to draw conclusions without knowing more about how things evolved.
If you haven’t seen this video, be sure to watch it; it is mesmerizing, as well as terribly frightening.
We, the viewers, see one of the robbers jumps onto the counter and strikes Becky Bieker, Jon’s wife, in the head, breaking her nose. She goes down and loses consciousness temporarily.
Becky and Jon Bieker
Within a second or two, Jon Bieker emerges from the back office, holding a handgun in his outstretched, right hand, apparently firing rounds…A key thing I learned from The Star’s story yesterday is that Bieker had a video monitor on his desk and apparently saw on the monitor what was unfolding out front. When he saw his wife being attacked, he sprang into action.
Bieker apparently wounded three of the four in the melee. Two of the wounded men and one not wounded got out the front door. But the fourth man, De’Anthony Wiley, whom Bieker had also wounded, lies out of camera view near the front door. In a dramatic sequence, we see Bieker start to circle around one display stand and then double back and go around another one, which offered a better angle to fire directly at Wiley. Unfortunately, it also gave Wiley a better angle to shoot at Bieker.
The last thing we see in the sequence where Bieker is firing is him falling forward and hitting the floor.
Jon Bieker was very brave, indeed. He wasted no time coming to his wife’s defense, and he almost managed to resolve the situation without getting shot himself. The Star speculated, from the video, that Bieker might have been trying to clear a jam in his weapon when he got shot.
Besides the 21-year-old Wiley, Hakeem Malik, 20, and Londro Patterson and Nicquan Midgyett, both 21, are charged with first-degree murder. All four are scheduled to appear at a hearing tomorrow in Johnson County District Court.
…Jon Bieker would have been alive today had he decided to wait it out in the back office. Instead, he bolted to his wife’s defense. It’s a damn shame his heroism cost him his life.
**
Here’s the kind of situation that pops up when a paper like The Star is making the transition to younger reporters.
In an online story about the Westport shootings the other day, reporter Katy Bergen, apparently in trying to tie in other shootings in the Westport area, mistakenly alluded to a previous shooting that had taken place in the 8700 block of East 63rd Street.
That allusion puzzled a couple of commenters, who noted that the East 63rd Street location was several miles away from Westport.
“One of the commenters, Jess Buck, wrote: “The reporter either does not know this city or is trying to scare people away from a good part of town with misleading information.”
Bergen was monitoring the comments and came back with this:
“Hi, Jess. As a new reporter, I’m certainly guilty of the former (not knowing the city). I was working with a data set that plotted the East 63rd Street address on a map close to Westport, and did not immediately realize the mistake. Thanks for pointing it out.”
The exchange wound up on a friendly note, with Jess Buck saying, “Katy Bergen, thanks for owning it and making the corrections.”
…A simple acknowledgment of error often goes a long way toward restoring credibility. I second Jess Buck’s hat tip to Katy Bergen. She handled that perfectly.
The episode also serves as a reminder to all other Star reporters that it pays to listen to your readers.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
And thank YOU, Jim, for owning up to your mistake. I always knew that was exactly what Jon should have done. I would hope any husband would. I know mine would.
Thanks, Gayle.
Bieker knew what he was doing. They taught classes in self-defense, and it is clear from the video that he moved out from behind the counter and exposed himself to draw the fire away from Becky. He was indeed a hero. Not only did he save his wife, but he thwarted a robbery that would have put several guns into the hands of criminals.
Thankfully today a JOCO judge rejected the thieves self-defense argument.
Robbing a gun store…just doesn’t seem very smart.
Call me a self-righteous jerk but if you do not know the layout of the city, then you shouldn’t be a cop reporter at The Star. I know that the Kansas City area is a huge land mass, but linking the Westport area in proximity with the Brywood shopping center is the kind of gaffe that further erodes what little credibility The Star has left in this community. I have lived in Kansas City my entire 52 years on this planet. I learned the lay of the land long before I came to work at The Star in 1988 and it served me well as a reporter. Yet, the people who ran The Star’s newsroom seemed to value outsiders much more than lifelong residents like myself. Way it goes, I guess. Still, I think it would be beneficial to any new hires at The Star to get Mark Zieman to buy them a Gallup map book of Kansas City (fat chance he’ll open the McClatchy wallet for anyone but himself) and consider it their bible. DON’T RELY ON ELECTRONICS. Then ask an editor or a veteran reporter to take a few hours to drive them around the metro area _ have that person show them the city as well as Johnson County, KCK, eastern Jackson County and the Northland. I know it will take away time normally used to feed the click-bait beast. But in the end, it will help a reporter do a better job.
Is there no longer a city desk with editors who know how far Westport is from the 8700 block of East Sixty-third street? If not, who is the honest Katy Bergen to learn from?
You get what you pay for. Where was the copy desk?
Exactly. I should have raised that question in my post above.
“Who is the honest Katy Bergen to learn from?” (Love that line.)
She’s flying solo, it would appear…
That’s grim.
The loss in institutional memory at The Star is devastating to the community. At least with TV news when they’re out there reporting they have some idea of where they’re at. If The Star’s strategy is to compete digitally with the TV folks they’re failing miserably.
I will say this, this is not as big a gaffe as the article written in the Cap-Journal by a newbie over there who did a story on 8 people (she counted them) who were protesting the Chamber’s endorsements without mentioning that the Chamber hadn’t made any endorsements yet.
Oh, and speaking of copy editors, there was the headline in The Star the other day denouncing Republicans for squashing “decent” when they apparently canned a woman who opposed some policy of theirs. Almost as bad as the copy editor here who lets some of my blunders go through.
If commenter and former KC Star copy desk slot man Les Weatherford read your 11:15 a.m. comment, John, I’m sure he’s wincing at the line ending with “…they have some idea of where they’re at.”
Sometimes it’s difficult to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition, but you never want to say “where they’re at” or “where he’s at,” etc.
(I only make you the object of this grammar lesson because I know your skin is thick enough to absorb it!)
Did you notice I didn’t jump on your head for correcting my grammar, above? (I’m growing.)
On the subject of journalistic gaffes, how about the newscaster (not here) who opened with a report on Hillary’s death. He meant health, but never corrected himself.
I actually got a giggle out of it. My grammar is horrible and my favorite people at The Star were the copy editors with whom I worked. (Is that good?)
I’m at that point in life where I’m comfortable with my flaws and since the essence of communication is understanding, if not agreement, I don’t get too many complaints that folks haven’t understood what I was saying.
Gayle — Good to see you’re finally starting to ease up on minor word changes that our vast editing team chooses to make occasionally. I think we only changed one word in your comment (the first in this thread), removing a redundant “that” in your second sentence.
The double “that” is another thing everyone should avoid; it just sounds clunky.
(Gotta say that despite your slight loosening of the reins, I wouldn’t want to be assigned to edit a story you submitted for publication. Reaching agreement on phraseology would take all day and all night.)
I knew it sounded clunky when I wrote it, I just couldn’t figure out why.
Re your last paragraph: are you saying I’m difficult??
Never.
“I should have resisted the urge to draw conclusions without knowing more about how things evolved.”
If only we all could do so.