If not for the alertness and quick action taken by his wife, this pastor would most likely have a sadder story to tell.
Late Thursday night, while Pastor Robert Cook, 44, his 38-year-old wife Stephanie and their 12-year-old son were returning home from a concert in Northeast Philadelphia, a robber tried to attack them, ABC News reports.
A rifle-wielding 66-year-old man approached the family near the parking lot of the Saint James Lutheran Church and demanded the pastor's wallet, the police said.
The pastor was already reaching for his wallet when the bandit struck him in the head with the rifle.
"This is the first time I actually thought I'd die," Pastor Cook later told the police.
The bandit's action gave his wife the opportunity to pull out her own licensed gun from her purse.
"Then I heard my wife saying, 'Drop the gun! Drop the gun!'... He turns towards her, and I said, 'Shoot him! Shoot him!' And she shot him," the pastor said.
Stephanie said she was forced to shoot the suspect in the leg when he refused to drop the gun.
"Once he backed off from my husband and my son, it might have been a foot, two feet or something like that, but he still had the gun in his hand, he wouldn't drop it," she said. "As long as he had that gun in his hand, I knew he was a threat."
With a gunshot wound on his leg, the suspect still managed to flee.
The police eventually arrested the suspect near a local hospital where he was treated in custody for his leg wound.
Pastor Cook, who suffered a bruise on his head, said he would have shot the suspect himself if his family's safety was at stake. "If it comes down to my family or him, and it's him, I'm sorry," he said.
His wife and son were unhurt.
The police recovered the suspect's weapon, which appeared to be a nail gun that was made to look like a firearm.
Police have not identified the suspect, and the incident remains under investigation.
