I'm going to try and make this as clear and precise as possible. Please help me to learn from my mistakes.
Thursday night- 10pm
My sister calls crying. She says that my nephew has had a fight with my cousin and that he needs to come home. Oh yeah, my nephew had gone to the rodeo in Houston with my cousin. My sister lives at least 5-6 hours away so she called me because I live in Huntsville and can make it to the Rodeo at that time of night in a little over an hour.
So...
I get dressed, grab my carry pistol, an extra mag and my streamlight stinger and head out the door. When I am in my pickup I carry my pistol stuck in between the drivers seat and the middle. The holster wedges in pretty firmly.
Ok, so on the way down my road, (rural road, no street lights, all houses on at least 1 acre) I'm thinking about the fastest way to the astrodome area...it is dark, obviously! and slightly foggy as I drop down into an area where a creek passes under the road. This is a section of road where there are fewer houses, but I know many of my neighbors. The closest house is probably 75-100 yards away directly perpendicular to the road and where my vehicle is.
At this point I notice a man laying face down in the ditch on my left. My first thought is that he has been hit by a car or is otherwise hurt.
I stop my pickup and quickly back up until I am directly next to him. I grab my streamlight, light him up and say "Hey! Are you OK?"
He jumps up, runs away from me but crosses the road from right to left. I follow him with my light and as I am panning across the road I notice two more men attempting to hide behind a tree in the ditch to my right.
Feeling funny, I reach back into my pickup and draw my pistol and walk out from around my pickup (dumb) and say in a loud voice, "Who are you and what are you doing!" I kept my pistol by my right side and kept the light on the two behind the tree. The third guy (the one in the ditch) has run off down the road.
They came out from behind the tree with their hands plainly visible, they began talking then and said that they lived on my road and they were just playing around. I recognized them at this point. I don't know them personally but I have seen them in their yard and knew which house the lived at.
Now I was just angry at the stupidity in what they were doing and how it could be misconstrued. I told them they were stupid for playing around in the dark like that and that they needed to go home. I would estimate their age at approximately 16-18. They were not little kids. Apparently the one laying in the ditch was the brother of one of the two hiding behind the tree. When he heard us talking, he came back but the brother I was talking to told him to shut up and stop where he was.
I think that the brother in the ditch was drunk, and the boy I was talking to saw my pistol and knew the situation was shaky.
After me asking them to go home, I got in my pickup and left. I didn't call the police, mainly because I was in an awful hurry to make it to Houston to pick up my nephew.
So...
Mistakes:
1)lost track of man running away from me when I saw the two men behind the tree.
2)stepping in front of my pickup to be lit up from my headlights
3)the headlights made my pistol very visible
4)no cover from my pickup
I don't feel wrong for unholstering my pistol but I'm concerned now thinking back. If I were concerned enough to draw a pistol, why would I not have it at least in the ready postion? Why would I lose track of the man running away, and then blind myself to his return by stepping into the light of my headlights? (he ran away from my pickup)
Should I have called the police to report the situation? I called my wife afterward to let her know that the cops may be showing up on a report of a man with a gun and to let them know what happened and why I left.
Oh boy, it's never easy in real life is it?