Mark A. Garsteck helped to constrain an armed assailant, Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, June 1, 2010. Garsteck, 55, sales representative, was at home when he heard gunfire and screaming. Investigating, he found that a neighbor had shot and wounded his wife and teenaged daughter and was pursuing them in their backyard. Garsteck immediately responded to the yard, where he talked to the assailant in an attempt to calm him. Meanwhile, the assailant’s wife escaped from the yard and his daughter fled to the house next door. The man who lived there set out in his truck to get help, but the assailant intercepted him and shot at him twice, missing him. The assailant then centered his attention on Garsteck, chasing him around a parked car and firing at him before running after his wife. Garsteck returned to his home, where he obtained a handgun. Seeing two minor boys in the assailant’s backyard, Garsteck returned there and ushered them to safety. With the assailant at large, he returned to the scene again, to look for others who might have needed assistance. As he did so, the assailant’s wife, bloodied, ran onto the highway on the other side of the property and flagged down an approaching car. The driver stopped for her and allowed her to enter through the passenger door. The assailant then walked up to the driver’s door, opened it, and shot the driver, mortally wounding her, as his wife fled the vehicle to safety. The assailant returned to his house. Seeing that the driver had been shot, Garsteck and the other neighbor, who had returned by then, responded to the car to tend to the driver, but the assailant fired at them. They sought refuge in the neighbor’s yard while maintaining verbal contact with the assailant, helping to keep him at his property. Police arrived shortly and arrested him. The assailant’s wife and daughter required hospital treatment for their wounds, and they recovered.
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