‘Boneheads’ shoot each other with Tasers in fight over wheel clamp
Harvey Epstein, a restaurateur, and Casey Dane, a security supervisor, gave each other a simultaneous 50,000-volt jolt after an argument over the clamping of Epstein’s van spiralled out of control.
Colorado state police said neither man needed medical attention, but Epstein was arrested on suspicion of menacing and using a stun gun.
The incident happened on Saturday night outside Mamacita’s Restaurant in Boulder, Colorado after a van parked behind Epstein’s restaurant was clamped by a guard working for a security firm of which Dane is a supervisor.
Dane said Epstein, whose mother was with him, had tried to remove the clamp with bolt cutters and threatened a guard that he would “kick his ass” while holding a pair of bolt cutters above the guard’s head.
The 36-year-old restaurateur denied this, saying it all started when Dane put his hand on a holstered pistol and threatened to shoot him.
He claimed to have only drawn his Taser and fired after Dane aimed his own Taser at his mother’s face.
“(The guard) pointed a stun gun at my mother’s face and I immediately responded with my personal Taser,” Epstein told his local paper, the Camera, on Sunday evening within an hour of being released from Boulder county jail. “We shot each other at the same moment.”
Dane told police he reached for his Taser after Epstein refused to drop the bolt cutters, and only pointed the Taser at the woman after she picked up her son’s stun gun, which still had its probes buried in his skin.
Pat Wyton, a Boulder police sergeant, told the paper: “It was just kind of a bonehead deal. They shot each other.
“The security guard was in the right – he felt threatened.”