Alphecca

Homeowner Shoots Intruder

From the self-defense files comes this St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN) story:

With its always-drawn curtains, boarded-up back windows and no cars in the driveway, the house might have looked like easy pickings to a burglar.

Wrong.

It was one resident short of being vacant, and Gerry Whaley was one rifle short of being defenseless Monday night, police said.

That became deadly clear just before 11 p.m., when an intruder armed with a flashlight met Whaley, armed with his .22-caliber rifle. Whaley shot and killed the man.

Whaley, a slight-framed, 73-year-old widower described by neighbors as reclusive, had been awakened to sounds of what he thought was someone breaking into his house on Bittersweet Street in Coon Rapids, investigators said Tuesday. He grabbed his rifle around the time a man in his late teens or early 20s entered his second-floor bedroom, according to Anoka County sheriff's Capt. Bob Aldrich, relating Whaley's account.