An armed bystander used his firearm to stop a “brutal” attack against a pregnant woman near a Publix supermarket in Florida on Saturday, Florida deputies said.
According to an arrest affidavit reviewed by the Miami Herald, the pregnant victim told Pinellas County deputies that her boyfriend attacked her just after 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 22, in the Largo grocery store’s parking lot.
The woman said her boyfriend, identified as 27-year-old Cole Danisment, became enraged and punched her multiple times in the face. She then fell to the ground, at which point Danisment allegedly stomped on her head and upper body.
The victim said her boyfriend knew she was 14 weeks pregnant with his child when he attacked her. An armed civilian witnessed the attack and, fearing for the woman’s life, stepped in to help.
Authorities said Danisment only stopped beating the woman after the bystander pulled out his gun. The pregnant victim was “covered in large amounts of blood” and may have suffered a broken nose.
At the time of the attack, Danisment was under a no contact order from a previous domestic battery charge, deputies said, but the order wasn’t enough to stop his “pattern of violence.”
Danisment acknowledged that he attacked his pregnant girlfriend, but insisted he couldn’t remember what happened because he “saw red” and “black[ed] out.”
The attacker was charged with aggravated domestic battery and held at Pinellas County Jail.
Earlier this year, a woman legally carrying a pistol fatally shot a man who opened fire in a crowd of people attending a graduation party in Charleston, West Virginia, police said.
“This lady was carrying a lawful firearm … a law abiding citizen who stopped the threat of probably 20 to 30 people being killed. She engaged the threat and stopped it. She didn’t run from the threat. She engaged it, preventing a mass casualty here in Charleston,” Charleston Police Department Chief of Detectives Tony Hazelett said at the time.
