
Cobb Theater, where a retired cop shot a guy for texting.
No matter where you go or what you’re doing, there’ll be someone there texting. It’s the distraction of our age. People text walking down the street, people text while driving (and holding babies), and these days people are more likely to text than write. Before every movie in every movie theater, there are warnings, reminding people not to text during the movie. At Cinemark theaters, there’s actually an app you can download that bribes you to put your phone in cinema mode so it won’t go off. However, one man in Florida paid the ultimate price for refusing to stop his texting. A retired police officer shot and killed a man for texting in a movie theater.
At a theater in Wesley Chapel, Florida, 71-year-old Curtis Reeves Jr. got into an argument with Chad Oulson after the 43-year-old Oulson refused to stop texting during a showing of the movie Lone Survivor. Oulson refused to stop texting, so Reeves got theater staff. That’s when the event escalated even more and Reeves pulled out a gun and shot Oulson; Oulson’s wife Nicole was also injured in the shooting as she had her hand between the gun and her husband. An off-duty officer restrained Reeves, who retired from the Tampa Bay Police Department in 1993, until law enforcement arrived on the scene. Reeves is facing a charge of second-degree homicide.
Pasco County detectives are currently weighing whether or not the shooting falls under Florida’s stand your grown law.
Tags: movie theater shooting, man shot in movie theater, man shot in movie theater over texting, texter shot in movie theater, wesley chapel, florida, pasco county, lone survivor, Curtis Reeves Jr., Chad Oulson