Tawas City, Michigan is a small town on the west coast of Lake Huron. A 66-year-old man owns a modest house there, where he lives on his own. He has a cleaning woman stop by on a regular basis. As with many homes in the rural Midwest, the door wasn’t locked. One Sunday, at about 8:20 p.m., two masked intruders had silently entered the house. From wnem.com:
“I was watching TV and suddenly there was a knife at my throat,” the 66-year-old man said.
He lives alone and smiled as he described the house as a “storage unit” where he sleeps.
“They wore masks. The bigger guy demanded money and guns. I’m thinking ‘how did he know I had money and guns,'” he said.
“They tried to get me into the bathroom, but I wasn’t having it. I thought they’d kill me for sure if I went in there,” he said. “I thought about running for the back door, but they were younger and would have caught me and stabbed me to death by the time I hit the stairs.”
When they came close to his bedroom, the homeowner said he decided to “go for it.” His 30.06 hunting rifle was near the bed, loaded.
“I shoved the guy and went for the rifle. I just grabbed it and fired,” he said.
The Michigan man killed one attacker and wounded the other in his upper thigh. The good guy with a gun exited his house to seek help.
Both attackers had criminal histories. Police are looking for the cleaning woman, suspecting a connection to the “hot burglary.” No surprise there: it’s not uncommon for criminals to develop a ring of sources who keep an eye open for likely places to rob. It’s one of the security risks that’s unavoidable if you allow people into your domicile.
The attackers probably knew that the door was habitually left unlocked. When I was growing up in Northern Wisconsin we never locked our doors. What would be the point, in a house with no visible neighbors? When we were home, the dogs always alerted us to the presence of visitors. When we weren’t, any criminal need only break in unhindered.
Anyway, if the bullet hit bone, the surviving perpetrator is likely in very bad shape. Ammo like .30-06 is designed for optimum destruction of tissue in big game. Gruesome as it may be, score another one for the good guy.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included. Gun Watch