Des Moines Homeowner Confronts Burglar

Des Moines, Iowa

From the May 14, 2008 Des Moines Register:

This was Randy Owens' situation Tuesday: He had a gun in his hand and a cane-wielding burglar cornered in his garage.

Now what?

He decided to do whatever he could to stall the man until Des Moines police arrived.

The burglar gambled that Owens, 42, wouldn't shoot him. And he was right. In the end, Owens watched the man walk into the early morning darkness and disappear.

"I didn't shoot him, because there was nothing in here that was worth a man's life," Owens said. "I really wasn't in fear for my life. I think he just wanted out, and I gave him a way out."

Last fall, burglars took Owens' boat out of his backyard in the 1500 block of East 21st Street. They picked it up and passed it over a fence. So when a motion alarm sounded about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, Owens grabbed his handgun and went to the garage, where he discovered the door had been kicked in.

"I walked in real slow and easy," said Owens, a food service coordinator for the Iowa Department of Corrections in Newton. "I found him hiding in the corner under the workbench. He had my grinder all rolled up and my welder unplugged, and he was getting ready to go out the door with them."

The burglar said he had a wife and two kids. He said didn't want to go to jail. He walked toward Owens.

"Stop right there. I've got a gun," Owens told him. Owens told the man to get on the floor.

"He took his cane and tried to hit me with it," Owens said. "I blocked it with my arm. I cocked my weapon, and he lunged at me and tried to take it from me. I shot at the furnace to let him know it was a real weapon."

The burglar managed to squeeze out of the crowded garage and vanish.

"I do think that if I hadn't had the gun, he might have beaten the tar out of me with the cane," said Owens, who wore a brace on his injured arm later in the day.

Sgt. Vince Valdez of the Des Moines Police Department said Owens "exercised unusual restraint after he'd been attacked with the cane. ... At that point he's being assaulted by a burglar."