MAGNUM MAGNUM - Jeffersonian

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Continued from page 32
The fact remains the on-safe pistol
was a proven life-saver in these situations.
For many years, the thousands of
Los Angeles County deputies who constitute
the largest sheriff’s department
in the nation were mandated to carry
their pistols (mostly issue Berettas) onsafe,
and instructors there told me they
lost count of the number of incidents
in which disarmed deputies were saved
by the inconspicuous little lever, but
found no cases where a deputy was hurt
or injured by forgetting their safety or
being too slow to thumb it off when
they needed to reactively draw and fire
in self-defense.
North Carolina Highway Patrol
firearms instructors likewise told me
they had lost count of troopers saved in
struggles over their duty pistols, which
were on-safe Berettas from the early
1980s until well into the 21 st Century.
This does not, however, mean onsafe
carry is an impenetrable shield
against being shot with one’s own
weapon. In early August of 2010, a
gun-wise member of the New Mexico
criminal justice system alerted me to the
case of Sgt. Carol Oleksak.
The Oleksak Incident
On the evening of July 7, 2003,
Sgt. Oleksak, an Albuquerque Police
Department veteran of 14 years, dismounted
her patrol car to interact with
an emotionally disturbed Vietnamese
man named Duc Minh Pham. When
Pham violently resisted arrest, Oleksak
struggled with him and almost had him
under control when the southpaw suspect
blindsided her with a powerful left
hook to the head that instantly knocked
her unconscious.
She was unable to defend the cocked
and locked Colt Government Model
.45 automatic holstered on her duty
belt. The perp jerked so violently on
the gun that he pulled her unconscious
body upright, and at last, he managed
to tear the leather Level I thumb-break
rig apart, ripping the loaded Colt out
through the torn stitching. At this
moment, his attachment point to the
officer severed, her body collapsed to
the sidewalk, and it appeared to that
one horrified witness as if she had been
fighting the whole time and only fallen
when the pistol magically appeared in
the hands of the madman.
Once the gun came free, witnesses
saw him looking at it and fumbling with
it for a moment as he held it in his left
hand. Then he fired a shot into the air
as if to check if it worked. And then,
he lowered the weapon and fired three
shots at the unconscious sergeant from
point-blank range.
One bullet missed. One hit Oleksak in
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