After coming under fire for suggesting that the victims of the Oregon community college shooting could have done more, retired neurosurgeon and GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson reminisced on Wednesday about the time he was held up at gunpoint in a Popeye's fast-food restaurant,
CNN reports.
Carson explained the encounter with Karen Hunter on Sirius XM radio where he noted that a "guy comes in, put the gun in my ribs. And I just said, 'I believe that you want the guy behind the counter.'"
CNN notes that Carson's depiction of the encounter is at odds with a controversial answer he gave on Fox News' "Fox & Friends" when he was asked how he would respond to a potential active shooter.
"Not only would I probably not cooperate with him, I would not just stand there and let him shoot me. I would say, 'Hey, guys, everybody attack him! He may shoot me but he can't get us all,'" Carson told "Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade.
Mathew Downing, the 18-year-old who is now known as
"the lucky one" in the Umpqua Community College shooting after being spared by the gunman, criticized Carson's comments.
"I'm fairly upset he said that. Nobody could truly understand what actions they would take like that in a situation unless they lived it," he told CNN.
However, defending his remarks, Carson added that he was "not judging [the shooting victims] at all."
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