Toledo, Washington

From the Longview Daily News of August 21, 2007

Suspected burglar can't escape Toledo homeowner

Hal Durrett of Toledo was getting ready to take a shower Friday afternoon when he glanced outside and saw a strange man hanging around his vehicles. A white van with a septic maintenance logo was parked in his driveway.

Fuming from the loss of heirlooms when his Toledo rental home was burglarized last year, Durrett, 24, got his 40-caliber semiautomatic pistol and went downstairs just as the stranger pushed open the screen door.

The man's story about running out of gas seemed rehearsed. Durrett ordered him to lie on the floor and kept the gun trained on him as he dialed 911.

"That's when he got gutsy," Durrett said by phone Monday afternoon.

The stranger hurled himself on Durrett and tried to wrestle the gun away as they rolled. With Durrett, an ironworker, weighing 255 pounds to the stranger's estimated 160, the match was no contest, but the guy managed to get outside. He jumped into his van and backed out onto State Route 505.

Durrett fired three shots at the tires, flattening one of them, he said.

Lewis County sheriff's deputies found the van about a quarter-mile down the road and arrested Joel Anthony Anderson, 44, of Puyallup, Wash., without incident. "There was plenty of gas," Durrett said.

Anderson was booked in lieu of $50,000 bail on suspicion of first-degree burglary. He also had two warrants from outside Lewis County.

Durrett said he often imagined what it would be like to confront a burglar, but reality was nothing like he pictured.

"The guy didn't have a hood on and a mask," he said. "He just came walking in like he knew me, like we were old pals or something."

The incident had a different outcome than the 2002 fatal shooting of burglary suspect David Cline by Oliver Hooker of Centralia, who had been burglarized 10 times before the shooting. Hooker was tried for first-degree manslaughter. Although a jury found him innocent, Hooker said the ordeal left him bitter and broken.

Durrett said he wouldn't have shot the unarmed suspect at his house Friday, although people told him he would have been within his legal rights to defend himself once the man touched him.

"He wasn't going to kill me," Durrett said. "He was just wanting to steal stuff. I'm not one of those hang 'em high type of people. But on the other hard, I don't think a guy defending his own property should be put on trial."

Durrett said the suspect is lucky his girlfriend, Tiffani Alexander, wasn't home. "Tiffani has her own shotguns," he said. "And she's got more temper."