In the wake of reporting that Lloyd Irvin, his family, Brandon Vera and others were robbed at gun point in Irvin’s home on October 4th, the story was doubted publicly and privately by random forum posters, readers of this site and even members of new and traditional media. In an effort to combat the notion that either this site or Irvin himself fabricated a story – a story that’s already been corroborated – Lloyd Irvin has decided to release the audio of the 911 call from the night of the incident as incontrovertible truth the incident occurred.
I encourage every to listen to the absolutely frightening call (linked again at the end of this post). It adds a color and dimension to the story that no verbal description can provide. To think that Irvin, his family and Vera were subjected to this sort of trauma followed by cruel mockery is literally insult to injury.
Exclusive to Bloody Elbow is now Lloyd Irvin in his own words explaining why he’s releasing the audio of the 911 call and why it’s important for you to help him. I encourage everyone to do so.
From Lloyd Irvin:
I’ve been personally attacked, my family has been attacked, my character has been attacked, my credibility has been attacked and I’m not talking about the two gunmen that broke into my house and took my family, Brandon Vera and my friend hostage on October 4, 2008 at 4:30am.
I’m talking about by members of my own martial arts community and by a particular writer from deadspin.com named Rick Chandler, whom I’ve never met, but when I first read his post about me, I was so angry that I sure wished he was in front of me at that very moment.
My friend Luke Thomas’ (Editor-in-Chief of Bloody Elbow) credibility was attacked, people thinking that he could be behind some ‘mad plot’ to increase my schools student base by faking a home invasion at my house and risking the credibility of his site and himself.
I’m always getting attacked by someone, it’s just a part of my success that I’m happy to deal with, except for this Rick Chandler guy.
My favorite quote is from the movie American Gangster
**********************************
Your success took a shot at you… What are you going to do now?
How are you gonna kill it?
You’re gonna become unsuccessful?
…you can be successful and have enemies; be unsuccessful too, and even have friends.
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*************** So while all of my enemies are out here talking crap about me and giving their opinion on whether I did the right thing by disarming one of the gunmen, or whether or not my home invasion even happened and wondering why I’m not coming to defend myself.
The fact of the matter is that I couldn’t care less what anyone thinks and I didn’t think that I needed to defend myself or feel the need to until this Rick Chandler from deadspin.com, decided to use one of the largest sports blogs in the country to basically call me a liar.
I mean there were people on all of the forums that thought my home invasion was fake, I made it all up, its shady etc…. and I didn’t care.
The only thing that I cared about was that my family, Brandon Vera and my buddy Thad were alive. But Rick’s article on deadspin.com has affected my business, if you Google my name “Lloyd Irvin”, you’ll see his article in the #9 position with the title “Did Lloyd Irvin Really Thwart A Home Invasion?”
Now I own too many businesses to name, but people search my name like crazy (people who want to do business with me), and after being in a situation where my entire family could’ve been murdered, some guy writes a post about me calling me a liar like this.
So now people could believe that I have no integrity and choose not to do business with me. Depending one what business it is, it could cost me millions of dollars in lost business.
What Rick has done to me is libel — I’m pretty sure. We shall find out soon enough.
Heck, Deadspin.com should be viewed as a credible media source. More importantly, writers and bloggers shouldn’t put people in bad light for no reason, writers and bloggers should never do anything to harm a person’s business or reputation for no reason, and they should at least they investigate or do research for facts before publishing something that would potentially ruin a person’s business.
Wouldn’t they?
Well because of Rick’s irresponsible writing, I’ve decided to give everyone what they’ve wanted… PROOF!
I’m going to let you hear the actual 911 call that my wife made the night of our home invasion. When my wife first heard the call, she immediately started crying again, when I first heard the call it made my heart drop since I didn’t experience that part of that horrific night, I was in full combat mode and never even knew that she called the police until late into the ordeal.
In exchange for letting you listen to this 911 call I have only one small request. Please write the editor AJ Daulerio at ajd@deadspin.com and please request that they remove the blog post from their site.
After you listen to the 911 call, if you could for one moment, imagine that if that was your family going though that, you’ll quickly become upset as I am about Rick Chandler’s actions.
Rick, if you listen to this call as a good reporter that has done to me what you’ve done, try to imagine this being your wife calling 911, you’ll quickly understand where my anger comes from.
If you guys want to let Rick know how irresponsible he was you can write him at rick@deadspin.com.
I already spoke to Rick last week asking him to take the blog post down, I told him that if he finds out that my story was fake to be my guest and ‘expose’ me, as the fraud that he’s already called me, he said that he would talk to his editor and he didn’t see a problem with taking it down and that he would get back to me.
Well I’ve heard nothing, and before I spend money to take legal action, I would ask you to please write them on my behalf.
You can thank Rick Chandler for getting me to share my family’s agony and pain with the world.
This has been one of the most traumatic experiences that I’ve ever had to deal with, and the only thing that I would like to worry about is trying to get my family’s life back to normal, which it is far from.
But this Rick Chandler has forced me to protect my business interest, my reputation and my integrity as a World Class Self Defense Expert.
But Rick Chandler calling me a liar and making fun of my situation, saying how he ‘if it really happened him and Steven Seagal salute me”, like what happened to me is some sort of game.
Then I find out that Rick has kids.
Let me share with you what my son does since the robbery:
For the first week or so he went back in time a couple of years and started to defecate and urinate on himself at night… he won’t sleep alone, he has to sleep in the bed with us… he wakes up in the middle of the night asking are the “bad guys” here, he asked are the bad guys going to shoot him and is he going to have to go to the hospital to die.
He’s been acting up in school; we are now taking him to a counselor to deal with his traumatic experience. But as angry as I am, and as uncompassionate as this reporter Rick Chandler has been in during my ordeal, I wouldn’t wish this even on Rick’s kids.
Just for one second, imagine this…
Imagine if you wake up in your own home lying on your living room couch at 4:30am with 2 gunmen standing over top of you with 9MM handguns in your own house.
Imagine if they told you that if you run or anyone does anything that they will kill everyone in the house.
Imagine laying there helpless thinking about how you’re going to die on this day, thinking about how you didn’t tell your mom or dad that you loved them enough, thinking about how bad the pain will be of getting shot, hoping that you don’t suffer to bad, hoping that your wife doesn’t get raped, hoping that they don’t kill your whole
family…wondering if it’s like in the movies when you get shot, laying there in your own blood gasping for air, until you take your last breath, will they kill my 3 year old son? (who was having a birthday party at my martial arts school that same day at 2pm)…
how my son wouldn’t even see the age of four, thinking about all of the kids I’m not going to be able to help with my program, thinking about who would come to your funeral, and all of the other stuff that goes through your mind in the face of potential death.
Now imagine these 2 gunmen taking you upstairs in your house to round up everyone that is in your house, both reminding you that they will kill everyone in the house if you try anything.
Now imagine the gunmen putting you into your master bedroom, your wife in a panic asking what’s going on (remember that this is in your own house at 4:30am – you’re the man of the house and your wife doesn’t know what’s going on)…
imagine your 3 year old son crying, shaking and is in your arms and says while shaking like he jumped into icewater,”daddy, what’s going on, why do they have guns? Where’s mommy? Are they going to shoot us?”
How would you feel?
Now imagine the gunmen putting your wife face down on the ground, then putting your friend who should be fighting in the UFC in 2 weeks face down on the ground…and you’re standing there with your son in your arms with him scared to death, and the gunmen telling you to put him down and get the f@ck on the ground.
To all my enemies…..
What would you do?
Do you get on the ground and pray that they don’t rape your wife in front of you and kill your son and everyone in the house?
Do you beg for your life?
Do you beg for your child’s life?
Do you start crying, telling them to please leave, and
you won’t say anything?Or maybe you simply pass out like a ……..!
What would you do?
Well this really happened to me. This was my reality and it haunts me to this day.
For me, an opportunity raised where I made a decision to attempt to disarm one of the gunmen that had me, my wife, my son and Brandon Vera in my bedroom, while the other gunman had left for a moment.
To make a long story short, my gun disarm worked.
During my disarm attempt, the gunman tried to push the gun towards me and he pulled the trigger and I was able to jam the gun…
I also was able to release the magazine during the disarm.
This caught a lot of crap talking; someone made a comment saying it reminded them of a “Jackie Chan movie.”
In reality it’s nothing special, on some guns all you have to do is press one button on the gun and the magazine will drop out.
It’s not rocket science; I’ve trained for a long time to try to push the button to release the magazine as well as switch the gun to safety if I can.
Some people wanted to know, “Why would I do that?”
Here’s a quick explanation.
In my gun disarming system the reality is that once you decide to disarm an attacker, one of three things are going to happen:
1. You’ll disarm the attacker and end up with the gun
2. You won’t disarm the attacker and they’ll end up with the gun (you’ll probably die now)
3. The gun will drop and now you both have to scramble for the gun that just hit the ground. (Now you or the attacker will gain control of the gun)
If you don’t end up with the gun and you were able to make the clip drop (which you are suppose to kick away when it hits the ground).
The fact is that if you lose the gun, with specific guns your attacker will only have one shot, and even if I had gotten shot and died, Brandon now would’ve had a chance to save my wife and son’s life.
Everything is about getting a chance…
That’s why I love sombo, even if some of the techniques look crazy or you would say, ‘that would never work’.
My question to you would be, “in ‘blank’ situation is “WHAT WOULD YOU DO?”
The answer is usually ‘I don’t know.’
Well we have something to do in practically every situation.
I’d rather have a chance than no chance at all.
People used to laugh when I always practiced my weapons disarms.
I can proudly say that in this situation my martial arts training saved my family and friends life.Now I’m not saying that what I did is what you should do if something like this ever happened to you, I pray that no one reading this ever has to go through anything like this…
But you have to make that decision for your family, if it did happen to you ever.
I’ve trained in and have been focused on self defense for a very long time; my #1 love is Self Defense and Weapon Disarms. When I opened my school in 1996 it was called USDC “Ultimate Self Defense Concepts.”
Most people only train for sport and the few that do some sort of self defense, a lot of what is being taught wouldn’t work in a real life situation.
Since my home invasion ordeal, I’ve removed 60% of all of the gun disarms that I know from my disarming system, because they would’ve gotten me killed in my real life situation, or they just wouldn’t have been practical to attempt when my life was really on the line.
My entire view on disarming has changed.
Truthfully, I honestly didn’t know if any of those disarms would’ve worked in real life since I never had to do it with my life really on the line.
Just like every instructor teaching self defense and weapons disarms has absolutely no idea if what they’re teaching would really work, if they’ve never had to use the techniques to save their life before.
I can proudly say I know for a fact what I’m teaching works on the technical side and the mental/emotional side.
The only thing that I know for a fact is that in this situation, my decision worked out for me, my family and my friends.
With all of the home invasions that end up with everyone getting murdered, women getting raped etc. I opted to shoot my shot at trying to save my own family’s life if the opportunity arrived, instead of hoping that two gunmen that have already told me multiple times how they would kill everyone in the house, won’t kill us once we get on the ground.
Now imagine that you went through what we had to deal with and some person that you don’t even know, a person that hasn’t contacted you to speak to you and hasn’t done any research whatsoever about your ordeal, a person that writes for probably the largest sports blog in the country, he writes an article making a mockery of you, an article that in all reality calls you a liar, makes light of your traumatic experience.
How would you feel?
I want to thank everyone that sent emails, cards and even called to show their support for me and my family. I truly appreciate it.
To all of the people that made fun of my situation, thought that it was fake and all of the other nonsense that went on… especially the instructors out there that are telling people that this was a publicity stunt (I know who you are)… I will pray that you and your family never have to go through something like this and if you do, you make the right decision for your family.
Any of us can be victims of a crime at any time, no matter where you live, how much money you have or what you do. You have to be prepared for the worst; you must understand that there are cold blooded killers out here that won’t think twice about killing you and your family.
This is a reality, if you were raised in an environment that you want to ask why someone would do that, you’re at a disadvantage already.
I got caught slipping, didn’t set my alarm that night (this was the first time I didn’t set my alarm in probably 2 years), I had a few other minor flaws in my home, it will never happen again. (At least I won’t get caught slipping inside of my house-they may get me outside of my house, buy never again inside)
I’ve upped my security majorly, I have security cameras that record 24 hours a day around my entire house, motion detectors and flood lights outside, security cameras inside my house, shatterguard.com on all of my windows on my house, I got security bars on all of my basement windows that they got through, got my entire front door structure taken out and replaced with a steel frame, and steel door.
I’ve made major changes and additions inside of my house that I won’t speak about except for the fact that I have a new addition to my family that will arrive on November 20, 2008, his name is Counteur, he’s “The Elite Family and Estate Security Dog” by CPI. I got him from www.protectiondogs.biz, the same company Shaquille O’Neal and a lot of athletes get their protection dogs from.
If you’ve never had someone to do a security evaluation at your home, I would highly recommend that you do it – you’ll be surprised at how vulnerable you could be.
Anyway, so here’s what you’ve been waiting for, the actual 911 call.
(Note: my address and private information has been toned out for our privacy).
A few notes, when you hear the dispatcher say “tell your dad” to stay in the room, it wasn’t my wife’s dad, she said “Thad,” and when you hear a deep voice blurt out something, that’s Brandon Vera telling Vicki to tell the dispatcher to tell the cops (“tell them to kick the front door in”) because there was a point that we didn’t know if the gunmen were in the house or not and the lady wanted me to put the gun down and open the door for the police, she said that they had the house surrounded.
When you hear my wife asking someone is he ok, she’s talking to my 3 year old son who she’s holding in the tub, while on the phone with the 911 dispatcher.
But if the gunmen were still in the house, and I put the gun down to go open the door for them, the gunmen could’ve shot me, so I wasn’t going anywhere and
was letting them know to just kick our door in. Brandon You’ll get the rest.
Please write the editor AJ Daulerio at ajd@deadspin.com and please request that they remove the blog post from their site.
If you guys want to let Rick know how irresponsible he was you can write him at rick@deadspin.com
HERE’S THE 911 CALL AND THE DISPACTHER CALL.
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