A Marine veteran who intervened in a potentially deadly assault received an unexpected reward for his heroism: handcuffs and a ride downtown.
Lloyd Muldrow traveled to Baltimore — I know, that was his first mistake — to visit a friend, Marshall Cullens, over the Independence Day weekend, Fox News reported. When he arrived at the Tequila Sunset Bar to meet Cullens, he found his friend scuffling with a man later identified as Wesley Henderson.
Henderson was allegedly holding a gun, and Cullens was bleeding. Seeing the blood, Muldrow reasonably suspected that his friend had been shot and did what decades of training had prepared him to do — he leaped to the defense of the unarmed man.
Police reported that Cullens had been pistol-whipped, according to Fox News, not shot. However, they were unable to locate the pistol that multiple witnesses had said Henderson had used to do the whipping.
Muldrow disarmed Henderson, and he and Cullens held Henderson while they waited for police to arrive — which took about 10 seconds, Muldrow later recalled during an interview with WLAC.
Both Cullens and the officer whose bodycam footage appears below credited Muldrow with saving Cullens’ life.
And yet police arrested Muldrow for a concealed weapons charge, despite the fact that Muldrow never used the weapon in question, had ample training to use it properly (which probably explains why he never pulled it in the first place) and has a concealed-carry permit from Virginia.
Yes, deep-blue Maryland doesn’t recognize permits from Virginia. Yes, Muldrow broke the law by carrying the firearm where and how he did. No, I don’t care. The letter of the law appears to have been carefully followed here; the spirit, not so much.
Should Maryland change its gun laws?
And don’t even get me started on Maryland’s ignorance of — or antipathy to — the Second Amendment.
Even the officer seems to acknowledge as much at the end of the edited video:
“Look, the laws are the way they are in Maryland for handguns, right? So talk to city council, talk to your congressman about open carry — especially for a veteran who’s got a valid carry [permit] in another state.”
That doesn’t sound like a police officer enthused about pursuing those charges. (The arrest report implied that the officer investigated Muldrow only reluctantly to begin with; Muldrow told WLAC that a lieutenant who arrived at the scene later was the one who decided to put him under arrest.) In fact, he sounds more like he might agree with Muldrow himself.
“With the amount of violence going on in Baltimore, Maryland, I’ve heard mayoral comments that ‘we are getting guns off the streets,’” Muldrow told Fox. “That’s what I’m thinking.
“However, the mitigating circumstances here are, you are taking the wrong gun off the street.”
Michael Stark, whom Fox described as Muldrow’s lawyer, set up a GiveSendGo campaign to raise money for the defense. By early Wednesday morning, it had raised over $33,000 — but that’s a fraction of the legal expenses Muldrow may incur if he has to appeal a guilty verdict.
“Lloyd Muldrow is an accomplished Marine, a self-defense instructor and a church-going mentor to young people,” Stark said in a statement on the fundraising page. “Now, because of Maryland’s outdated, and possibly unconstitutional gun laws, he faces jail as if he were every bit as criminally-minded as Mr. Henderson, rather than the selfless hero for his country and his friends that he proved himself to be.”
Watch the police bodycam footage here and form your own conclusion about how justice was carried out in this case. (Note: This footage was not edited by The Western Journal, so we cannot attest to anything that did or didn’t happen in the deleted footage.)
WARNING: The following video contains graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.
Muldrow now faces a possible year in prison, a $1,000 fine and the loss of his concealed-carry permit, which would result in the loss of his job, he told WLAC. All of which is due to an arrest that arguably violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms in the first place.
“Is it violating the Second Amendment? Of course,” Muldrow told Fox. “When you are talking about military veterans, we serve our country overseas against enemies foreign and domestic, and here we are facing a state-to-state carry law? I really feel it is an injustice to our Constitution. It’s a technicality from one state to another.”
Then there’s the simple injustice of the whole affair.
“I’ll tell you honestly, I’d rather be a POW in another country than a prisoner in my own country for saving lives. It was not only Mr. Marshal Collins’ life that I probably saved, it was hundreds of people in the club. It was also Mr. Wesley Henderson [who] could have gotten shot,” Muldrow told WLAC.
“The police showed up, and he had that gun, and who knows what would have happened? So not only Marshal Collins, Wesley Henderson — they got to look at it on both sides.”
Let’s hope they do. I, for one, don’t have a lot of faith in Baltimore’s prosecutors to know justice from jaundice.
And Lloyd Muldow deserves more of a reward for his heroism than he’s received so far.
UPDATE, Sept. 28, 2022: The Western Journal has updated this commentary to add a link to Lloyd Muldrow’s arrest report.
