Oklahoma pharmacist kills armed robber, saves the lives of his staff

May 24, 6:32 AMNorfolk Crime ExaminerDave Gibson

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Taurus Judge

A little before 6:00 p.m., last Tuesday, two armed men rushed into the Reliable Discount Pharmacy in Oklahoma City, and demanded money and drugs. The store had been robbed two years earlier, a robbery in which the store’s employees had been forced into a back room and severely beaten.

However, this time the store had a security system with doors armed with magnetic locks, which could only be opened from the inside. The masked-men apparently knew this and waited for someone to exit, at which time they pushed a board in front of the closing door and rushed into the pharmacy.

Once inside, they demanded all of the cash and narcotics, two female technicians ran into the back room. But the pharmacist, Jerome Ersland who wears a large back brace, and is still recovering from recent surgery, could not run. But he could defend himself.

The robbers began shooting at him, with one bullet grazing him on the arm, he said he heard another round whiz past his ear.

Ersland recalled: "All of a sudden, they started shooting. They were attempting to kill me, but they didn’t know I had a gun. They said, ‘You’re gonna die.’ That’s when one of them shot at me, and that’s when he got my hand.”

Ersland grabbed the semi-automatic Kel-Tec .380 in his pocket.

"And that’s when I started defending myself,” he said. "The first shot got him in the head, and that slowed him down so I could get my other gun.”

Ersland also kept a much larger pistol in a nearby drawer, which he was able to retrieve, a Taurus Judge revolver. At that point, the second robber took off. However, the other robber was now getting up off of the floor, despite the head wound.

Ersland emptied his clip into the chest of the wounded robber, who turned out to be 16-year-old Antwun Parker.

"I went after the other guy, but he was real fast and I’m crippled,” said Ersland. Once outside, he saw a third black male sitting in a car with what appeared to be a shotgun.

Ersland said: "I pulled out my ‘Judge’ and pointed it right between his eyes and he floored it.”

Police arrested the man in the car which turned out to be stolen, after he crashed it a few blocks away. The other robber is still at large, he is described as a black male in his 20s, 5 feet, 7 inches tall, and weighing 175 pounds. The suspect was last seen wearing a red shirt and dark pants.

Ersland went back into the store and found his two technicians safe but shaken.

Ersland said: "I asked if the girls were all right, and they were in the back crying. I was glad to know they were alive. We were lucky and I’m glad I defended us, because I feel that a person has a right to defend themselves at their home or at their work. People deserve to be safe and not be afraid of people that want to take money when they don’t work for it.”

As if the attempted robbery was not enough, an angry black mob gathered outside the pharmacy later that night, shouting and accusing Ersland of being a racist because he had killed the teenaged thug, who was black.

"I just regret anybody would get killed. But if I wouldn’t have been here, there would have been three people killed — the other pharmacist and the two techs.”

"I was able to return fire and protect the girls’ lives. God was helping me.”

Here are a few facts about armed Americans:

-Armed citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as the police do every year in this country (1,527 to 606).

-A 1996 University of Chicago study concluded that states which passed concealed carry laws reduced their murder rates by 8.5 percent, rapes by 5 percent, aggravated assaults by 7 percent, and robbery by 3 percent.

-According to the National Safety Council, with guns being used 2.5 million times a year in self defense against criminals, firearms are actually used more than 80 times more often to protect lives, rather than to take lives.

-A 1979 Justice Department study concluded that of more than 32,000 attempted rapes, 32 percent were actually committed. But when a woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3 percent of the attempted rapes were actually committed.

-Another Justice Department study found that 57 percent of felons agreed that “criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running the police.”