NewsOn6.com – Tulsa, OK – News, Weather, Video and Sports – KOTV.com |
Lightning might not strike the same place twice, but criminals someties do. Shortly after 9:00 a.m. yesterday morning, Charles Sweeney of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was awakened by noises in his bathroom. He grabbed his gun and went to investigate.
As it turned out, a man had broken in through the bathroom window.
“I thought, okay, somebody just broke in,” Sweeney said (as recorded in the video above). I cocked the hammer back so the trigger would be in single action mode, and I just waited for him to come into view… He comes into view, and BLAM! Boy, that nine millimeter is real loud inside the house.”
Sweeney called for police and an ambulance immediately, but the intruder (identified as Donald Stovall) died in Sweeney’s house from a gunshot wound to his chest.
Remarkably, this wasn’t the first time Sweeney was forced to shoot an intruder in the house he’s occupied for over 60 years. Another man, Michael Watts, attempted to burglarize Sweeney’s home in 2013.
Sweeney shot Watts six times, but Watts survived and is currently serving a prison sentence. There’s another video interview of Sweeney from 2013 in which he says, “the next burglar gets the same treatment with a bigger gun”…
NewsOn6.com – Tulsa, OK – News, Weather, Video and Sports – KOTV.com |
For now, police seem to think Sweeney was well within his rights to defend himself.
“If you are in your home and you have an intruder come in and you feel that you are in fear of your life or the life of someone else who maybe in your home, you are well within your rights to defend yourself,” said Captain Karen Tipler.
For Sweeney’s part, he says he’d just like to be left alone.
“I wish they’d stop breaking in, and I wish people would stop bothering me. I’ve had a concealed handgun license since the summer of ’96… don’t break into my house! It will end badly. I will defend the place.”