OHIO WOMAN SHOOTS INTRUDER AFTER HE ATTACKS HER IN HER PARENTS’ HOME
BLOOMINGTON — An Ohio woman said she was "fearing for her life" when she shot an intruder who tackled her after she discovered him in the garage of her parents' south Bloomington home early Friday morning.
"Anything could have happened by just the way he lunged at me, and I had the gun in his face and told him not to come out because I would shoot," said Kim Sinnott of Hamilton, Ohio. "He probably thought I wouldn't shoot."
Sinnott was still shaking nearly 10 hours later as she recalled details of the incident. She and her twin sister, Tamie Lesher, also of Hamilton, Ohio, had arrived at their parents' home in the 700 block of South Clayton Street on Thursday night for a visit to celebrate their father's 75th birthday.
"About 1:30 a.m. the alarm went off in the house. We noticed the light on in the garage. We saw somebody walking in the garage," said Sinnott.
Sinnott's mother handed her her father's .32-caliber handgun while her sister grabbed a pipe, and they walked outside to the detached garage.
"I told him that I had a gun. I was standing there looking at him with the gun pointing at him," said Sinnott. "I told him a hundred times not to come out because I had a gun and that I would shoot and that we were waiting for the cops, that we had the cops on the line right now."
The intruder opened up the overhead garage door and "lunged at me and tackled me, and we wrestled all the way over to my sister's car," said Sinnott.
"He grabbed me and pulled me down and that's when I shot (him), and he ran off that way," she said, pointing to the 900 block of Clayton Street where police apprehended the suspect.
"When he grabbed me and pulled me down I was fearing for my life," said Sinnott. "I shot him just for him to let me go. I don't know if it was in the leg or in the foot. I was scared to death."
The suspect, 21-year-old Mykale B. Davis of Bloomington, was taken to a local hospital for non-life-threatening injuries, authorities said. He has been charged with one count of burglary and one count of battery.
Davis was held at the McLean County jail in lieu of posting $5,270, a bond that includes $200 for an unrelated misdemeanor theft case. First Assistant State's Attorney Adam Ghrist asked that a previous personal recognizance bond in the pending misdemeanor case be revoked.
A May 21 arraignment is scheduled.
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Sinnott said she was not injured, but was "still shook up because I had my granddaughter in (the house) with my parents. My folks aren't doing too well. They're elderly."
The sisters were born and raised in the house where their parents still reside. Their parents added the alarm system after a previous burglary.
In this latest incident, the sisters said the intruder made himself at home, getting a soft drink out of the refrigerator in the garage.
"He was scoping out the tools, opened some doors and checking on his work bench," said Lesher.
Sinnott said nothing like this has happened to her before, "and I hope it never happens again."
She confronted the intruder because she felt she needed to protect her parents and her 13-year-old granddaughter. Sinnott has been raising the girl since her daughter died 11 years ago. Her husband died of cancer about 1½ years ago.
"God doesn't give you anything you can't handle, but I'm about done," said Sinnott, who was wearing a shirt with the words live, love and laugh on it.
"That's what I try to do."
pantagraph.com
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People who oppose guns typically oppose them because of feelings. Guns are loud and makes me feel scared, they say. But if you actually look at the scientific data, you’ll see that guns do reduce crime rates.
The peer-reviewed research
Whenever I get into discussions about gun control, I always mention two academic books by John R. Lott and Joyce Lee Malcolm.
The Lott book was published by the University of Chicago Press (now in its 3rd edition) The Malcolm book was published by Harvard University Press. Here is a paper by Dr. Malcolm that summarizes one of the key points of her book. saf.org
Excerpt:
Tracing the history of gun control in the United Kingdom since the late 19th century, this article details how the government has arrogated to itself a monopoly on the right to use force. The consequence has been a tremendous increase in violent crime, and harsh punishment for crime victims who dare to fight back. The article is based on the author’s most recent book, Guns and Violence: The English Experience (Harvard University Press, 2002). Joyce Malcom is professor of history at Bentley College, in Waltham, Massachusetts. She is also author of To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an AngloAmerican Right (Harvard University Press, 1994).
Upon the passage of The Firearms Act (No. 2) in 1997, British Deputy Home Secretary Alun Michael boasted: “Britain now has some of the toughest gun laws in the world.” The Act was second handgun control measure passed that year, imposed a near-complete ban on private ownership of handguns, capping nearly eighty years of increasing firearms restrictions. Driven by an intense public campaign in the wake of the shooting of schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland, Parliament had been so zealous to outlaw all privately owned handguns that it rejected proposals to exempt Britain’s Olympic target-shooting team and handicapped target-shooters from the ban.
And the result of the 1997 gun ban:
The result of the ban has been costly. Thousands of weapons were confiscated at great financial cost to the public. Hundreds of thousands of police hours were devoted to the task. But in the six years since the 1997 handgun ban, crimes with the very weapons banned have more than doubled, and firearm crime has increased markedly. In 2002, for the fourth consecutive year, gun crime in England and Wales rose—by 35 percent for all firearms, and by a whopping 46 percent for the banned handguns. Nearly 10,000 firearms offences were committed.
[…]According to Scotland Yard, in the four years from 1991 to 1995 crimes against the person in England?s inner cities increased by 91 percent. In the four years from 1997 to 2001 the rate of violent crime more than doubled. The UK murder rate for 2002 was the highest for a century.
I think that peer-reviewed studies – from Harvard University, no less – should be useful to those of us who believe in the right of self-defense for law-abiding people. The book by economist John Lott, linked above,compares the crime rates of all U.S. states that have enacted concealed carry laws, and concludes that violent crime rates dropped after law-abiding citizens were allowed to carry legally-owned firearms. That’s the mirror image of Dr. Malcolm’s Harvard study, but both studies affirm the same conclusion – more legal firearm ownership means less crime.
If you still think that guns are somehow bad for reducing crime, why not check out a formal academic debate featuring 3 people on each side of the debate?
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