Visalia, California

From the Visalia Times Delta of July 18, 2006

Man shoots burglary suspect

Couple thought they heard a shot and responded

Sandra Wilson said she and her husband thought a would-be burglar shot at them last Saturday night.

But what they actually heard, said Tulare County Sheriff's Sgt. Chris Douglass, was the sound of someone out front shattering the glass of their double-paned living room window.

\Inside the house, the sound of a brick from the Wilsons' front garden crashing through the glass "sounded like a shotgun blast," which made the couple think somebody was shooting at them, she said.

So Wilson's husband, John, a hunter who had armed himself with a rifle to investigate what sounded like a break-in, fired back, she said. Sheriff's officials said at least one of those shots hit one of the suspects, a woman.

On Monday, three holes from those shots remained in the front window panes that hadn't been shattered by the brick.

Wilson said she and her husband thought their lives were in danger before her husband fired.

Douglass said Sheriff's investigators believe the couple reasonably thought somebody had fired a gun at their home.

When she and her husband went outside, Sandra Wilson said, they found a wounded woman covered with broken glass lying in the flower bed under the window. They heard a car speed away from their rural neighborhood on Avenue 266, south of Visalia.

Sheriff's officials would not say how badly wounded the woman, considered a suspect in the case, was. She was taken to University Medical Center in Fresno and may be arrested after she is released, Douglass said.

Because she wasn't in custody, the Sheriff's Department would not disclose her name Monday.

On the other hand, deputies did disclose the name of Nathan Michael Dean, 32, of Visalia, whom Sheriff's detectives identified as a second suspect in the case and arrested Sunday on suspicion of burglary of an inhabited dwelling and assault with a deadly weapon.

He was being held Monday in the Tulare County Main Jail on $35,000 bail.