Author: Jonn Lilyea

From Leesburg, Florida;

According to Sheriff’s Lt. John Herrell, Tavares police received a call just after 1 a.m. from a man who claimed he’d been abducted and brought to a house on Melrose Avenue in Leesburg’s Bassville Park neighborhood.

Two deputies arrived at the house just as two men, one armed with an assault rifle, were emerging. Sebastian D. Badwell, 22, of Sorrento reportedly fired at the deputies, who returned fire and struck the shooter in the leg near his ankle. He was airlifted to Orlando Regional Medical Center with injuries that investigators said are not life threatening.

Deputies arrested the other man, identified as Kailon M. Harris-Caldwell, 20, of Eustis.

Herrell said deputies found five people inside the house, some with minor injuries that appeared to be from beatings.

The original call for help was from a man who said he’d been abducted from his Tavares home by the suspects and brought to the scene of the home invasion in Leesburg.

From DeKalb County, Georgia;

The man broke into an apartment at the South Hairston Road complex, held a woman against her will and fired shots at officers when they arrived, police told Channel 2 Action News.

He then barricaded himself in an apartment before police fired tear gas inside, police told Channel 2. After an hour-long standoff, the man came out firing and officers fired back, officials said.

It is not clear if the man died on the scene or en route to a local hospital. His name has not been released.

From North Little Rock, Arkansas;

The man who lives in the house told police he and a woman were watching a movie in a bedroom when he heard loud banging at his front door and a man he didn’t know began kicking it in. He told officers he warned the man that he had a gun but they kept kicking the door until it was forced open.

When the man got into the home, police say the resident fired his gun twice and the suspect left the scene.

“I was sitting in my house and I heard a loud crack and I didn’t want to assume it was a gunshot but I guess it was…followed by a yelp,” says Chris Paradis, a neighbor.

According to police, the woman who was inside the house knew the man who was shot and drove him to the hospital for treatment. He was reported to have a gunshot wound to the torso and was still being treated by late Tuesday afternoon.

From Winston-Salem, North Carolina;

Winston-Salem police say just after three this morning,a group of people was trying to break into a car.

A man yelled at them and when the suspects tried to run one of them was shot in the back.

“I would hate for someone’s life to get cut short because of a stupid mistake they made at a young age,” said Stephon Gatewood.

Gatewood lives a few houses down from the commotion.

He woke up this morning when police knocked on his door and tried to get more information about what happened.

Gatewood says break-ins happens all too often.

So often in fact, he tries to limit his losses.

Make sure I don’t have anything valuable in there and leave them unlocked. I would rather someone just go in there and look around rather than just break my windows and not get anything at all,” said Gatewood.

Gatewood would like to see more of a neighborhood watch to deter the break-ins.

As for the break-in suspect who was shot, police haven’t said who shot him, but several shell casings were found nearby.

He was taken to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries.

From Sewickley, Pennsylvania;

The man had just come from the Northwest Savings Bank in Sewickley around noon Monday.

The suspect, Stephen Mattie, was allegedly running down the street with a bandana covering his face.

He was reportedly dropping money as he ran down Locust Street before being stopped by a boxing coach who happened to be walking by.

“He was fumbling money all over the place,” said Jaryd Boyer. “I see some guy just coming down, masked up.”

Boyer and his friend stopped him.

“Just went up to him, grabbed him and my boy came up behind me and made sure he didn’t have a gun,” Boyer said.

Moments later, police arrived and arrested Mattie, who is facing robbery and terrorism charges.

From Parkland, Washington;

A 16-year-old suspect will face burglary charges when he is released from the hospital — after a Parkland homeowner shot him in her home Saturday night.

Pierce County sheriff’s deputies [WTF?] woke up when her dogs started barking, heard a scratching sound then saw an intruder down the hallway. She grabbed a handgun and told the supsect to stop. When he kept coming, she fired a warning shot through a window but that didn’t deter the teen. She then shot him in the arm and called 911.

When deputies arrived, the intruder was screaming in pain. While waiting for deputies, the homeowner said the suspect kept yelling, “I’m so high!”

The deputies, one of whom is a trained military combat medic, applied tourniquets to the suspect’s arm until an ambulance could arrive.

From Norman, Oklahoma;

A couple took matters into their own hands when they discovered a burglar in their home, shooting him while police were on the way.

The couple woke up around 3:30 a.m. to the sound of Jerrold Allery Jr., the alleged burglar, rifling through cabinets in their home.

The woman pulled her handgun out of her dresser and loaded it in the dark. She said she’s had extensive training with the weapon after a previous home invasion.

However, she decided to give the gun to her military-trained husband, and the two confronted Allery together in the kitchen. They were determined not to be victims and to defend their home.

They said they told him to lay down but he refused. The woman called police and, on the 911 call, both can be heard ordering him to lay down.

Allery allegedly continued walking away from them, refusing to lay down, until he walked up the steps leading out of the sun room. There, he reached a door he couldn’t open while, below him, the couple continued to yell at him.

That’s when he turned around and, according to the affidavit, “began moving towards” the man with the gun. That’s when the homeowner shot Allery in the chest.

“Their safety was obviously at risk,” said Sarah Jensen with the Norman Police Department, “and they felt like the only way to ensure their safety was to fire the handgun.”

From Cocoa, Florida;

Jaleen Malik Howard’s last action to protect his apartment from three home invaders may have provided one of the biggest clues into who killed him.

Cocoa police said the 19-year-old — at home early Tuesday with his girlfriend and child — managed to exchange gunfire with a trio of men who stormed into his second-story apartment.

Bullets from a .40 caliber and 9 mm handgun pocked the wooden staircase and a nearby window in a chaotic scene, say police and neighbors.

One round from Howard’s gun struck and fatally wounded Rahkwon Shiem Yarveez Oquendo, 22, causing him to collapse in the street in front of the Peachtree Apartments on Peachtree Street east of U.S. 1. Howard was also shot, bloodied and dying in the stairwell in front of where he lived in Apt. 24 as neighbors attempted to comfort him.