A Minnesota man has joined the brave ranks of white gun-owners defending the public from imaginary black men.

33-year-old Christopher Thissen told police that the gunshot wound he sustained resulted from a fight with a black man who threatened to harm a bartender, Owatonna.com reports. But upon review of surveillance footage police saw no evidence of a struggle. When further prodded by detectives, Thissen revealed a very different chain of events.

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“Thissen told police he’d left the bar at closing and “found the gun in his car,” at which point he held it pointing at his arm while cycling it to see if it was loaded, and accidentally fired it when his thumb slipped off the hammer. He admitted he’d made up the story about the fight in the parking lot,” Owatonna.com reports.

Thissen faces a misdemeanor charge for falsely reporting a crime, as well as reckless discharge of a firearm. Needless to say things could have ended much worse if police had continued to be on the hunt for a gun-wielding black man: 32-year-old Philando Castile was shot dead by police in Minnesota as he was informing an officer that he was licensed to carry a gun, according to his girlfriend.

As City Pages darkly quipped, “The black man described in Thissen’s original story is still at large. He is a suspect in hundreds of other police investigations, historically, and is expected to continue popping up at the scenes of crimes that did not happen.”