I was working as police officer and received a call for a shooting at a address in the city, i was 1st responder! upon arrival, seeing a female on the ground moaning (still alive) and no weapon near her at the time.
my back up arrived along with other officers, we called in ambulance since they stage until we give all clear, she was shot in the leg, good size hole, bleeding pretty good, shot went through and through. msp was applying pressure as much as possible, victim was obviously very intoxicated.
I found the shooter and who was the complaintant who called 911 and told 911 he shot someone in his backyard, he showed me where he left the gun , (on the washing machine close to the back door where he shot from)
Story: He and his son were sound asleep at around 0200-0300, he was woke up by what sounded like loud gun shots hitting his house, in a half dazed sleep he grabbed he 45, loaded and looked out the back door, he seen a dark shadow of a person carrying what looked like to him a long silver in shotgun, the shadow figure commenced to beating on his vehicle and smashing windows out of his car, by this time his son was calling 911, then the unknown person started heading for the back door holding the long silver weapon in a high position like a rifle and stated she was going to kill everyone in the house, by her voice thats when he knew she was a female, fear for his life and sons life, he took one shot at her, doesn’t even remember where he aimed at her, but she went down.
then he shut the door and waited for police and his son stayed on the phone with 911. I later found the weapon by one of the cars, silver in color, it was a baseball bat. she was banging against the house and cars with it. she thought it was another house of an ex-boyfriend.
after all the interviews and photographs and talking to my lt. who was the officer on duty and talking to detective (that I worked with when I was in detective bureau) I made the decision it was going to be self defense.
we had his gun, knew who he was , works in the city area and wont be going anywhere. my fellow detective agreed. my lt. was skeptical and wanted to take homeowner to jail and left prosecutor decide. i had already talked to the on duty prosecutor and he agreed that homeowner need not go to jail either based on the circumstances. homeowner had no criminal history and gun was legally registered to him.
Female suspect went to hospital, for a few days and then to jail for felonious assault with intent to do great bodily harm. I dont know how the case ended because she plead to a lesser offense 6 months down the road. This was the only time I didn’t have to take the shooter to jail!
Protecting a citizen from going to jail for self defense felt good for a change. the detective did come out to the scene as well and also interviewed the homeowner/shooter on scene as well. it was a long night as usual when on a shooting scene. I tried to keep this short!
Post edited by mods to add paragraphs for readability (hope you don’t mind, Vince!).