A Lewisburg man
kicked out of a nightclub at the Woodlands Inn & Resort for
fighting early Saturday morning promised to return.
Minutes later,
police said Ian Bradley Corbin shot and pistol-whipped Robert O.
Roberts Jr. in the parking lot before Roberts and his friend,
Stephen Hurst, were able to get the gun away from him during a
struggle.
“I was in the
fight for my life,” Roberts, 30, said from his home in Kingston.
“I was riding on pure adrenaline after I was shot. There was no
thought process. I wasn’t worried about my arm. My only concern
was that I had to get the gun away from him.”
Roberts, a
volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician in
Edwardsville and Plains Township, was shot in his right
shoulder. He was treated and released from Community Medical
Center in Scranton.
Corbin, 23, fired
six shots from a .9-mm Taurus pistol, police said, endangering
other people in the parking lot before he was subdued by Roberts
and Hurst.
According to
Roberts and the criminal complaint filed by officer Paul Cole:
Corbin was
escorted out of the Woodlands for fighting with another man near
the entrance to Club Evolution. He told security staff that he
would return.
Roberts said he
was with friends in another part of the nightclub, and went to
retrieve their coats when Corbin was being thrown out.
“I never saw the
guy,” Roberts said. “The only time I saw the man was when he was
getting thrown out.”
Roberts, Hurst
and his other friend, Desiree Antonitis, were leaving the
Woodlands and walking toward Roberts’ vehicle when, according to
the criminal complaint, Corbin approached them saying, “What’s
up now, man?”
“He came up from
behind us, yelled something and by the time I turned around, he
fired two shots. The third shot hit me in the shoulder,” Roberts
said.
Roberts pushed
Antonitis into his vehicle and lunged at Corbin with Corbin
firing more shots, emptying the clip to the gun.
Roberts said
Corbin kept pulling the trigger but the magazine emptied.
“I couldn’t say
if he aimed the gun at me when he was pulling the trigger. It
stopped going, ‘bang, bang, bang,’ and starting going, ‘click,
click, click,’” Roberts said.
Corbin began
pistol-whipping Roberts as the two men struggled on the ground,
according to the criminal complaint. Roberts grabbed Corbin’s
hand that was holding the gun and slammed it against the
pavement.
Hurst managed to
get the gun from Corbin’s hand, and helped Roberts detain him
until security staff arrived.
Corbin was
charged with six counts each of aggravated assault, simple
assault, recklessly endangering another person, and a single
count of firearms not to be carried without a license. He was
arraigned by District Judge Fred Pierantoni in Pittston and
jailed at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility for lack of
$200,000 bail.
