AMHERST — Would-be Good Samaritan Donald Gregg waved off the orders of an Amherst police officer before grabbing a gun from a man who was holding it on a woman.

Then he ran toward the officer with the gun, and the officer fired at him.

The officer, Devin Small, fired at him because he was in fear for his life, Amherst police Lt. Joseph Kucirek said during a press conference Tuesday when a video of the incident taken from a police cruiser’s dashboard was released.

The video shows Gregg, a

29-year-old Vermilion man, ignoring police orders, while emphatically pointing to the officers surrounding the man whose gun he had taken.

It was Gregg who first alerted police to a volatile domestic situation involving a gun, but then he attempted to diffuse the situation himself.

When he chose to grab the gun and run toward police, Kucirek said, the officer had a split-second to defend himself.

“(The video) is a clear picture for us that even had the officer struck the citizen, he would’ve been cleared,” Kucirek said.

The officer, Kucirek said, “acted reasonably and within policy and procedure.”

The bullet that missed Gregg struck a street sign. No one was hurt in the incident.

Robert Gonzalez, 50, of Lorain, the man accused of holding a gun on his wife, has been charged with kidnapping, carrying a concealed weapon in a liquor establishment, aggravated menacing and domestic violence. He was being held in the Lorain County Jail on Tuesday night.

Gregg, who was detained and later handed over to sheriff’s deputies in Erie County for an unrelated charge of skipping out on bond, will not be charged in the Amherst incident.

Contact Stephen Szucs at 329-7129 or sszucs@chroniclet.com.

 

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