Milwaukee, Wisconsin

From TheMilwaukeeChannel.com of February 9, 2006

Mom Fights Back Against Burglar

A Milwaukee mother she woke up Thursday morning to find an intruder in her house, but she was more than equipped to defend herself, her children and her little brother.

The man went through a window into the woman's house.

Her first instinct, she told 12 News, on hearing the breaking glass downstairs at the front door was to call 911, which she did.

But, with her young son and teenage brother downstairs, she decided she couldn't wait and had to take things into her own hands.

At 6 a.m., she was awakened by the sound of broken glass, and it terrified her.

WISN 12 News is not identifying the woman, or the house, at her request.

"I called 911. I grabbed the pistol, and I came down the stairs. As I was coming towards the front door to see what all the commotion was at, he was kind of walking towards the direction of me, and I fired two shots," the woman said.

The shots sailed a bit over the intruder's head into the wall as he dropped to the ground.

But the woman said the drama was far from over.

Bleeding from the broken glass, he scampered into the front room where her 6-year-old son and 16-year-old brother were scared to death.

"Right after I fired two shots, he kinda ran into the living room and grabbed my little brother by the neck, and I told him, 'If you do not let him go, I will kill you.' I said, 'I'm gonna count to three.' And I said, 'One, two,' and the police were already at my door, and they told me to put the pistol down. 'We got him. We'll get him. Don't worry about it,'" she siad.

She was grateful police arrived as quickly as they did, for her sake and his.

"Maybe next time before you go to leap in somebody's house he'll think about it because it might not be a next time, and he might not survive. Because if the police hadn't came I probably would've kept shooting," the woman said.

She said she bought the gun last summer after her older brother was murdered.

"I never knew when, but I always wanted to have it," she said.

Still shaken by actually having to use it, she's glad she was able to do what she had to do.

"We're OK, you know, we're OK. This was a scare. It was a scare, but we're all right and he's all right," the woman siad [sic].

Police confiscated her gun, which is standard procedure in any shots-fired incident in Milwaukee...

No charges are expected, and she will likely have her gun back in a day or two, 12 News reported.

The suspect is a 43-year-old Green Bay man with two theft convictions.

He told the woman he was only breaking in because he was afraid because somebody was shooting at him outside.