Professional Firefighter Craig Moore was returning home when he noticed a pair of snow-covered boots that didn't belong to him. Fearing an intruder was inside, he readied his handgun and began a room-by-room inspection. As he entered an upstairs bedroom, he came face-to-face with a man hiding under a comforter at the foot of the bed. To Moore's further shock, he recognized the man as his neighbor. Moore yelled at him, demanding to know what he was doing in the house and asking if he'd stolen anything. The neighbor cowered and begged Moore not to shoot. As Moore phoned police, the neighbor leapt from a two-story window, ran back inside to retrieve his boots and fled. Police arrested the neighbor, who was out on bail for several other burglaries, and took him to the hospital for treatment of a broken ankle. (The Record Enterprise, Meredith, NH, 02/17/11)
The Armed Citizen Extra
(The following excerpt did not appear in the print version of American Rifleman.)
A 77-year-old man awoke to the sound of someone breaking into his home. As it turns out, the intruder was a 24-year-old neighbor who used a pair or 18-inch wooden handles to break a bedroom window and climb in. The homeowner grabbed his gun and fired a shot, causing the man to flee. The police later found the suspect asleep nearby, drunk with a bullet wound to his left arm. (KTVZ, Chiloquin, OR, 09/04/09)
From The Armed Citizen Archive
May 1980: A young San Francisco hoodlum charged at garage manager Wayne C. Casteel when he was surprised burglarizing the place and shouted "You can't shoot me. I'm just a kid." But Casteel fired his cal .22 target pistol, wounded the youth in the shoulder, and held him for police. The aggressive young thief later admitted to having robbed the garage on several previous occassions. (Berkeley Daily Gazette)
