WARNING: Odds are high that this story will make your blood boil.

Fox 4 News reports that in July, a 30-year-old man named Ryan Flores tried to rob a Starbucks location in California, but was thwarted by 58-year-old Cregg Jerri, a patron who intervened:

In the video, the suspect is shown wearing a Transformers mask and threatening a barista. Seconds later, Jerri picks up a metal chair and hits the suspect in the back. During the altercation, Flores stabbed Jerri in the neck. Jerri eventually wrestled the knife away from Flores and stabbed the suspect multiple times, according to police.

Flores is currently sitting in jail and faces attempted robbery charges. In a sane community, the story would end here. Alas, we instead live in a society that far too often indulges the notion that life circumstances force young people into criminality (which apparently has been extended to not-so-young people in this case), and therefore they can’t be expected to anticipate unpleasant results from their decisions to threaten, rob, and terrorize innocent people.

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As a result:

While police called Jerri a hero, the suspect’s mother said her son is a victim. “He has 17 total stab wounds, lacerations, and defensive wounds,” Pamela Chimienti told KSEE. Flores, who remains in jail on attempted robbery charges that will taken up in court in October, now plans to sue Jerri for excessive force, according to KSEE. “The guy, in my opinion, went from a good Samaritan to a vigilante. Stabbing somebody that many times, it doesn’t take that many stab wounds to get somebody to succumb to you,” Chimienti said.

Boy, we have a real Mother-of-the-Year contender here, don’t we folks? It sure is a mystery how Mr. Flores turned out the way he did…

The good news is that police Chief Jerry Dyer has dismissed a potential lawsuit against Jerri as “ludicrous” and declared the hero doesn’t face criminal charges.

But the fact that we can’t automatically rule out the possibility of the lawsuit happening — or, more worryingly, the possibility of it being taken seriously by some lunatic judge — is a damning indictment of how litigious and morally backwards our society has become.