Assault and Battery with a Deadly Weapon, Charges and Penalties

My question involves criminal law for the state of: massachusetts

I work at a taco bell on the late night shift. Yesterday, Saturday night around 302am right after close as we are cleaning up we hear a angry customer at the speaker yelling and cursing. He finally pulls up and start punching the hell out of the window we use to serve people. We all just ignore him and he left after cuting his hand from punching the window so much.
So I step outside just to check on everyones cars cause drunk people do some irrational thing when they don't get what they want. Well the cars are fine I guess hes gone the other employee that came with me then check forgot to secure the front door so 5 minutes later there he is bloody hand and all yelling I want my ****ing tacos. He throws a large stack of trays in my direction then takes the coin donation jar (not small) and throws it to the floor. So me a regular employee tells him he has to leave now. He says "so you wanna take this outside" I said you just need to leave. So he walks to the door I go to see him out and I see that he is parked right by my car. Me being an idiot I continue outside to again check on my car. He turns to me yelling something I cannot remember and gives me a nice shove not enough to knock to down but took me back a few steps. So again me being an idiot I open my car to grab some form of defense I remembered I had left my bb gun in the door unloaded just with co2 in it. He sees me reaching grabs my arm but I already have a hold of it. I justvwanted to scare him off and go home to my 2 little girls. So hes got a hold of my hand I pull the trigger like 3 times in no real direction. So he puts me in a headlock and gets me on the floor the only thing I can think of is hit him in the head with my right hand with the but of the bb gun. One of 2 girls came and took it from my hands the other one was laughing and recording much like my generation loves to do get a good fight on video. I guess it did the trick I slip free and put him in a headlock he struggles for a minute or two then gets a hold of my leg and slams me still in the headlock he bites me just below my arm pit. When he stopped biting me I let him loose and the fight was over. The girl recording comes over talking all this stuff about facebook and youtube I just kept saying I was defending myself.

So cops show up I actually knew one from my childhood I explained what happend to him he said everything will be fine just dont say anything about the bb gun. The his boss shows up I guess watches the girls video and comes to the conclusion that I goto jail and the drunk guy gets to drive home

My court date is Tuesday if I pled not guilty and self defense what could possibly be my outcome. Oh and also I have no record so theres that

I'm not convinced at all you can pull off self defense as a reason why you did this.

Plead not guilty and talk to your attorney. Otherwise, don't mention this to another person. At all.

Well I never intended to use it and he attacked me before I even had it

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Quoting fr0zenalive

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Well I never intended to use it and he attacked me before I even had it

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Do you think he has psychic powers, such that he knows immediately that the gun you're going for is a BB gun and that you don't intend to shoot him with it? You state that you repeatedly fired the BB gun -- how was the other person to know that it was not loaded with pellets? Also, why do you believe that it is "self-defense" to escalate a conflict by getting a weapon? Leaving aside the question of what you intended when you approached the guy in the parking lot, and whether the police believe that you were only checking on your car, you've given us no reason to believe you couldn't have simply walked away when you chose instead to get your BB gun.

Lawyering up is a very good idea.

You aggressively engaged on multiple occasions. You could have simply gotten into the car, locked the door and backed away from the situation. It was your choice to re-engage.

The fact that the senior officer(s) watched the recorded video and determined you needed to go to jail doesn't help you at all. If this guy was truly the aggressor and was acting in a way which would cause you to fear for your life, I would suspect the video recording to show that. Because you ended up being arrested and the other guy wasn't would seem to contradict that. You also don't explain why this guy was acting the way he was. It would appear his experience at your store didn't meet his customer expectations.

I will disagree with some others on here who take issue with you escalating the situation by retrieving a gun. It's impossible to know if you truly escalated the situation or if you were acting in self defense. I wasn't there - none of us were, so we don't know what details you are leaving out and which details you are massaging to suit your needs. But the fact that you had time to go retrieve the BB gun from your car would seem to suggest that you had ample time and distance to get away from the threat vs. retrieving a gun. That being said, self defense philosophy revolves around disparity of force. Whether or not you could argue disparity of force seems irrelevant to me because it would appear there were a number of other ways to resolve this situation without leaving your place of business to go to your car to retrieve a BB gun.

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Quoting PADriver13

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I will disagree with some others on here who take issue with you escalating the situation by retrieving a gun. It's impossible to know if you truly escalated the situation or if you were acting in self defense.

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Even if there were a legitimate self-defense claim to be made, introducing a weapon escalates the situation. The question of whether the escalation is justified under the state's self-defense laws is a different question from whether introducing weapons to a conflict constitutes an escalation of the conflict.

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Quoting Mr. Knowitall

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Even if there were a legitimate self-defense claim to be made, introducing a weapon escalates the situation. The question of whether the escalation is justified under the state's self-defense laws is a different question from whether introducing weapons to a conflict constitutes an escalation of the conflict.

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Understood and agree. My comment had more to do with the notion that someone retrieving a weapon to use against someone who is unarmed is not necessarily escalating. Without getting off on too much of a tangent, I would argue that someone bashing your head into the sidewalk is using a deadly weapon (i.e. a large mass of concrete). All I was trying to point out is that there are no where near enough details to make any sort of judgement here and I was simply suggesting the possibility that OP might not have actually been escalating the encounter if there was in fact a disparity of force between the two individuals. But I tend to agree with the other respondents of this thread that it sure sounds like OP had ample opportunity to go back into the store, get in his car and lock the doors, drive away, etc. and that he did not need to get a BB gun and re-confront the other actor.

Are you posting this incident or it is just a coincident?

http://www.click2houston.com/pd-taco...b-gun/26961070

Coincidence. They take their fast food service quite seriously in Mass.