Troy, Michigan

From the September 13, 2005 Detroit Free Press:

It started with what sounded like an explosion outside a Troy home and ended with gunfire and one man charged with trying to kill another.

Sterling Heights resident Scott Alan Wooten, 34, is scheduled for a preliminary examination Monday to determine whether he will go to trial following what police call a bizarre sequence of events in a Troy neighborhood.

According to Troy Police Lt. Gerry Scherlinck, here's what happened:

After a loud noise jarred a Briarwood Drive resident awake about 2 a.m. Thursday, the 38-year-old looked outside to see that a Jeep Wrangler had crashed into his attached garage.

Then his doorbell started ringing incessantly. When he looked out the door, he didn't see anyone, so he stepped outside, armed with a handgun.

He found a man in the driver's seat of the Jeep trying to dislodge it from the garage door. With the pair yelling at each other, the driver backed out of the driveway and drove off, with the homeowner trying to get the license plate number.

As the homeowner walked back to his house, the Jeep driver came back down the street with the vehicle's lights off, circled several times around a traffic island at the end of the block, then drove up the man's driveway again.

The homeowner, who told police he was afraid the driver was trying to hit him, hid behind a vehicle parked in his driveway.

But the driver of the Jeep kept circling on his lawn and driveway, then accelerated and smashed into the parked vehicle twice.

At that point, the homeowner fired about four shots at the Jeep before the gun jammed. He ran to his house to get a second gun.

His wife, meanwhile, had called police, as had neighbors.

When the resident came back out of the house, the driver of the Jeep began accelerating directly at him. The homeowner fired two more shots at the Jeep. The driver then left the subdivision. Police did not release the homeowner's name or specify which block of Briarwood Drive he lives on.

Police caught up with Wooten driving a Jeep with bullet holes in it, near Square Lake and Dequindre roads.

Police said Wooten first told them that he had been shot at while trying to get into his own home in Sterling Heights. He later told police that he didn't remember anything from the night.