Woman kills rape suspect in her home
By Peter Ortiz
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 2, 2000
When a man broke into her Apache Junction home early Tuesday and announced, "I'm going to kill everyone," Bricie Tribble didn't hesitate.
She reached for the handgun on her kitchen counter and shot the man dead. Only later did she realize that she knew the man and that he was believed to have raped and shot a woman just an hour earlier.
The man's death ended a night of terror that began in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Chandler at about 11 p.m. Monday when the man pedaled his bike up to a 33-year-old woman and asked for the time.
Police said the man pushed the woman into her sport utility vehicle and forced her at gunpoint to drive to a desert road in northeast Mesa, where he sexually assaulted her and shot her in the cheek, right arm and chest.
The attacker drove off in the woman's vehicle, but she managed to make it to a nearby house and place a 911 call.
"The guy raped me and then he took off in my truck," the terrified woman told the operator. "I guess he left figuring I was dead. I am not dead."
A little after midnight, the man, in his 20s, was inside Tribble's Apache Junction home going through the personal belongings of the sexual-assault victim, which he had brought into the house, police said.
Tribble, 28, grabbed the loaded handgun and fired several times. She later told an emergency operator that she recognized the man she had just shot as a former worker in her husband's excavation business.
Tribble's husband, Jeff, and 9-year-old nephew were also in the home but were not harmed.
The dead man's name was being being withheld by the Chandler police pending further investigation.
* * *
azcentral.com |
