The man next ordered her to bind Aldo. With her "leave a little wiggle room in the belts" plan possibly not enough to save them all, Charisma figured she was now better off just refusing to obey. So he gave her his flashlight to hold and moved to tie Aldo up himself. "What are you going to do, rape me?" she asked. "You bet your sweet ass I am," is what Arthur remembers him replying, and this was a mistake on the man's part ... Uh, in addition to all his other trash life choices up to this point.Â
Maybe if he pretended to be only a robber for a little longer, he could have tied them all up and stayed in control (as, though the trio didn't know it, he had managed to do during five earlier attacks this summer). Instead, both Arthur and Aldo got up to fight back. The man shot each of them, Arthur in the right side of his chest and Aldo in the liver. Charisma, meanwhile, took the opportunity to run to the nearby highway and pound on a parked camper to try to get help. No one was inside, and no other help materialized.Â
Back at the beach, Aldo was down, but Arthur kept going with a time-honored move: "I grabbed him and bit his ear twice and behind his back." Yeah, he fought Tyson-style. He also managed to grab the gun at one point and fire one successful shot himself. The man, now wounded, retrieved the gun but took off. Arthur headed to the highway after Charisma, who at first mistook him for the masked man. Then the two of them went back to Aldo -- who was the more severely injured and was praying like he was about to die -- and carried him into their jeep so they could go get help.Â
They drove to a convenience store, where they asked the cashier to call 911. This cashier was too bewildered at the sight of two youngsters in their underwear covered in blood to do anything, so they got his phone and dialed it themselves. An ambulance arrived. Despite pausing for some needless interrogation ("What were you doing at the beach at that hour?"), the emergency personnel got them to a hospital, where both guys got treatment.Â