Man who held down Giffords shooting suspect carried gun

'Everybody has a mother who's going to cry tonight'

Posted Jan 10, 2011

Dylan Smith
TucsonSentinel.com

Zamudio

Joe Zamudio, one of four people who held down Jared Lee Loughner, who is accused of shooting 20 at a Northwest Side grocery store Saturday, carries a gun and ran outside to help when he heard shots, he said in a television interview.

Zamudio didn't fire his gun because Loughner was already being controlled by others, he told Fox News' Geraldo Rivera.

"I was carrying a gun and I would have shot him. I almost did," Zamudio said.

"They already had ahold of him, and there was a lot of people around him, and I wasn't going to cause any more collateral damage or scare anybody any further than they needed to be scared," he said. "I felt like I could hold him down and wait for police, and it wasn't my responsibility to end his life."

"It was a horrible event," Zamudio said. "I don't believe anyone has the right to even think about something like this."

"Six families lost somebody and another 14 families have to deal with the trauma of this event. Not to mention Jared's family, who has to deal with losing their son," he said.

"Everybody has a mother who's going to cry tonight."