[eeyore_11]

Practically, I think he did just fine. Nobody got hurt. Nobody went to jail.

Legally (which isn't necesarily the same thing), I might ask myself how I would have reacted if I didn't have a gun. With no weapon, when I am confronted by two large gentlemen telling me to pay a toll I will either pay the toll or turn around and walk/run in the other direction. What they're doing isn't legal, but I'm in no position to argue with them.

I would suggest that any action other than the above prevents you from appearing as a victim to a jury (should it come to that), especially if you don't have witnesses to back you up.

In my eyes, your friend chose not to retreat when he could have. Had he gone condition orangeish-red with their first payment request he could have been maneuvering away from the threat even as he tried to deescalate.

In a neighborhood I'm unfamiliar with, I can't think of anything that someone I don't know could say to which I would respond "yeah right", especially if that person is going out of their way to say it to me. Alarm bells should have been ringing sooner than they did.

There is no taking the law into your own hands, whether you are armed or not. Shooting someone as you are running away may look very different (to a jury) from shooting someone so you could get to the pay phone God put there for you to use.

I realize that he had to get to a phone, but that wasn't the last phone on earth.