Let’s take this outside.” It’s an age-old trope: A fight (or the potential thereof) starts inside a bar. The bouncers (whose concern for law and order stops at the doorway) urge the participants to settle their dispute elsewhere, so they all meander to the parking lot. The practice is so old that, many times, a bouncer doesn’t even need to be involved. The participants may just decide to head outside on their own. It probably happens hundreds of times every night in social venues across the U.S. For some folks in Jamestown, North Dakota, though, a recent foray into the proverbial parking lot turned out a bit differently.

At 1:17 a.m. on December 3, the Stutsman County Communications Center received a call about a man with a gun and knife standing in the parking lot outside Freds Den (which we may safely assume is a drinking and social establishment). He’d apparently been involved in an altercation inside the bar and “had been removed,” according to WDAY News. Some other people involved in the fight had not been removed, but went outside anyway (of course they did). 

At some point, the man began shooting, striking buildings and vehicles. Bystanders were pinned down in the parking lot, forced to take shelter behind a nearby car. Members of the Jamestown Police Department responded to the scene. Sergeant Cory Beckman arrived first, having been only a few blocks away when the call came in, and had to engage the shooter alone while waiting for help to arrive. It seems that one of the downsides to being an officer in North Dakota is that your backup may be coming on a road with more snow than a
Hallmark Christmas special. Despite this, Beckman confronted the shooter, which “definitely saved some lives,” according to Jamestown Police Chief Scott Edinger. He said that Beckman, a five-year veteran of the force, “exercised an incredible amount of restraint initially” and was actually able to engage the suspect verbally for a time even as the man continued shooting. However, Beckman was ultimately forced to shoot him when he refused to surrender and jeopardized the officer’s safety. 

The suspect, 27-year-old Devin Quinn Fontenot, received first aid from the responding officers and was transported to Jamestown Regional Medical Center, where he died from his injuries.