Home Invasion, West Virginia Style
When my father died in 2000, my mother asked me, my wife and our three children to move in with her and my handicapped sister. She did not want to live alone and the big, old home place had plenty of room for all of us. The arrangement has been beneficial, convenient and economical for all concerned.
Three years ago, in February of 2007, there was a rash of home invasions that targeted elderly people (mostly women). There were apparently three criminals involved and they had hit several homes in the Charleston area.
One night at about 3:30 in the morning, there was a sudden, loud knock on our front door. My 74 year-old mother had fallen asleep on the living room sofa while watching a movie on TV and the rest of us were in our respective bedrooms. The knock was loud enough to wake us all up. I grabbed my GI 1911 A-1 and went to see what was going on. My mother was at the front door, with her Smith and Wesson .38 special held at her side. My wife grabbed her .38 and joined me in the kitchen where we could see what was happening. My nineteen-year-old daughter emerged from her room and when she saw what was coming down, she grabbed a phone and returned to her room to grab her Buffalo Scout .22 revolver and dial 911. At about that time, my oldest son appeared at the top of the stairs with his ChiCom SKS and my nine-year-old son came out of his room with his double-barrel 20 gauge.
We have security cameras located all around the house and garage and on a couple of the monitors we could see one man standing on the front porch and two more hiding around the corner of the house.
Through the door, my mother asked the guy on the porch what he wanted. He said his car had broken down about a block away and needed to use our phone. Mom told him to give her the number and she would call it for him. He wouldn't give her a number and insisted that he needed to use the phone. His story changed several times and he appeared to be getting desperate and his voice started to take on a threatening tone. I nodded to my wife and sons and my wife took up a position in the hallway and my youngest son crouched behind the fridge where he had a good view of the front door.
My oldest boy and I slipped out the back door. We crept around the house to where the two accomplices were hiding. One was male and the other was female. I think the male crapped himself when the cold steel of my boy's rifle barrel touched the back of his neck. The female turned around to find my .45 pointed right between her eyes.
We marched them around to the front of the house just as four police cruisers turned onto the block and pulled up in front of the house. The front door opened up and the guy on the porch was suddenly staring down the barrels of two .38s and a double 20.
The cops cuffed and stuffed the trio and took statements from all of us. As they were leaving, one cop slapped another on the back and laughed. "Idiots picked the wrong damned house tonight!"
What's really strange about the whole thing is that my neighbor is a city cop and his cruiser was parked right in front of our house! He slept through it all and when I spoke to him the next day, he asked me why we didn't just take the morons out and be done with it. I told him I'd considered it but didn't want to have to clean up the mess.
There hasn't been so much as a hubcap stolen in the neighborhood since.