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Condolences: Roger Covault, Robert T. Harris

DAYTON — Robert Bragg said he had no time to consider the risks to himself when he confronted two ski-mask-wearing gunmen headed down his street Tuesday afternoon.

The 24-year-old Ohio Air National Guardsman, who works as a military policeman at the Springfield Air National Guard base, went into his house and came out with his personal 9mm Baretta semi-automatic handgun and headed into the street soon after he heard gunfire and screaming.

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Robert Bragg, an airman for the Ohio Air National Guard, sits on his porch on Coventry Road on Wednesday. Bragg apprehended an armed suspect in the Covault Market and Coin Laundry shooting. Click to enlarge

Police said the gunfire had come from inside the Covault Market and Coin Laundry, 3705 Wayne Ave., where the owner, Roger Covault, 71, of Vandalia, and one of his employees, Robert T. Harris, 53, of Dayton, had been shot. Both died.

About a half-hour before he heard the gunfire, Bragg had been sitting on the porch of his house on Coventry Road, where he lives with his family — up the street and around the corner from the store — when he noticed two young men he didn't recognize walking on his street.

Bragg became suspicious.

The two wore long pants and long sleeves, baggy clothing in weather that was hot and steamy. It was a muggy 92 degrees in the Dayton area, according to the National Weather Service.

Bragg said when he spoke to them, one asked him for the location of a street. He said he told them there was no street by that name anywhere around the neighborhood, and they moved on.

Bragg said he heard gunshots at about 1:30 p.m. and got a bad feeling. Moments later, he saw two men carrying handguns headed his way. He told his mother, Barbi Byrd, to dial 911.

"I just knew I had to stop them," recalled Bragg, who holds a concealed carry permit.

He walked across Coventry with his handgun at the ready. When the two moved into range, Bragg identified himself as a military policeman and told both to stop, to drop their weapons and hit the ground.

"They were both stunned," Bragg said.

One lowered his gun. For an instant, the other began to raise his gun as if to take aim at Bragg.

"I think he thought about it," Bragg recalled. "And once he realized I was going to shoot him before he could shoot me, he just took off on foot.

"For a split second, I thought I was going to have to" shoot him, Bragg said.

The one who lowered his gun hit the ground and dropped the gun and his ski mask.

Police arrived soon thereafter and took the gunman into custody. The one who took off through a yard was captured by police.

Bragg, a Tecumseh High School graduate and an undergraduate student in finance at Wright State University, said he joined the military after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as a way to serve his country. He said he plans to graduate from college in 2009 and look for a job in the financial industry.

Since his actions and the shooting that killed two men he knew, Bragg has had time to reflect. Many people have told him that he's a hero.

Bragg politely thanks those who praise his actions, like an elderly woman who drove by his house and hailed him from her car on Wednesday afternoon. But he also said he wonders.

"It's hard to feel like a hero when two people lost their lives," he said. "It's a horrible loss."

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7407

or sbennish@DaytonDailyNews.com.