Here's an armed robbery story with a happy ending. Well, okay, a happy ending would be one in which the armed robber changes his mind, orders a slice of pizza, pays for it, and leaves. But since that didn't happen, this seems to be as good as we could hope for:

"He pointed the gun on me," remembers Abbondante, walking through what happened in his restaurant, "he told me to open the safe." Abbondante was trapped in his office, a small room at the back of the restaurant. There was no cash inside the safe.

But that's where Nando keeps his handgun.

"When I opened the safe, I didn't have a choice because he would see the gun and shoot me or somebody else," says Abbondante. "I just took the gun, turned around, and shot the guy."

Police showed up in minutes, but the man was already dead.

Well, I guess that thug won't be holding up any more pizza joints. Mr. Abbondante summed the situation up nicely: "Sometimes the owner gets killed. Sometimes the bad guy gets killed. This time the bad guy gets killed."