BOOM! Headshot!: First-person account of surviving home invasion

A gent formerly from North Carolina shared his story of surviving a violent home invasion while stationed at Ft. Bragg.  The incident happened in May 2012.

He posted his recollection of what happened in a thread at AR15.com.

Castle Doctrine, huh… Well my story has been posted a few times all over Arfcom but never in team… so here it is again. (It’s a copy paste from previous posts.)

And to answer any questions, I was fully protected by the castle doctrine. North Carolina is where the event took place and December of the year prior, some changes to the doctrine occured which protected me even further.

On Friday June 1st, 2012 at approximately 4:40pm I was at home in my dining room. Sitting at the table working on a database for my unit. The dining room is at the front of the house, with a window next to my front door. The Blinds were approximately half way up, it was still bright out so no lights were on. It was a bit cloudy and rain was on/off.

While sitting there doing my work, someone approached my door. They proceeded to begin ringing the bell very quickly, as well as pounding on the door. This set my dog off. Like completely off in a way I have only seen him act once in the past (When he lead police to an armed man mugging people, which is a completely different story.) My dog was at that window with the blinds part way up barking at the person, so I got up and looked through the peep hole. At the door was a late teens/early 20’s looking African American male. He had nothing in his hands and was not acting as if there was an emergency. There was a vehicle parked in my drive way still running. Upon assessing the situation I deemed there was no emergency and he was not selling anything. I made the decision not to answer my door, as I do not answer if I do not know who it is or if they are there going door to door.

The slamming on the door and ringing of the bell lasted approximately 3 minutes or so. The person stopped and went back to the car. He entered the rear passenger door and they slowly backed out of my drive way. My dog had stopped barking and was just growling, I watched the car as it left to make sure they were just going to each house. They backed out and went around the corner. (I lived on the corner) The struck me as odd, because the road they went down is a dead end. The hair stuck up on the back of my neck and I just had a feeling. As a citizen and soldier with training, I like to always be ready, and had my EDC weapon with me, in this case a Glock 26 Gen 4, loaded with 147gr Winchester Ranger-T rounds.

After watching the car leave, I quickly went to my bedroom to grab my shoes and take a look around. It was now approximately 4:45pm. I slipped my shoes on (Nike Lunar Glides. Have I mentioned how comfortable they are?) and was about to lift a foot up on the bed to begin tying the first foot when I heard a large bang at my back door. I Immediately dropped what I was doing and took up a defensive position. (Point A in the crappy picture). I was at a corner where I could see the door clearly and they could not see me.

Standing at the low ready at that point, there was a second large bang at the back door. It flew open so hard that not only did the door break the stop behind it, the door knob AND the dead bolt handle put holes in the wall. I brought my gun up and 2 African American males began to enter. I yelled for them to stop freeze. The first male continued to advance towards me.

I let off one round into the head of one of them, who proceeded to do the sack of potatoes thing. The other badguy turned and ran out the door, jumped my fence. I was not going to shoot him in the back as much as I wanted to. I stayed in the home, made sure the door way was clear and nobody was hiding, never went outside or near the body of the downed man.

Once I had made sure the area was clear, I pulled my cell phone while keeping my gun trained on the door and suspect on the ground. I proceeded to call 911, then my girlfriend who was on her way home after picking up her kids at day care, and then my unit to inform them of what happened.

The 911 operator instructed me to stay inside and once the LEOs arrived, to put my gun down and have ID ready. The first Sheriff waited for others to arrive, pulled me out and cleared the house. Made sure my gun was in an area they had access to. Then pretty much every other Sheriff in the county as well as Fireman and EMT arrived at the scene.

Here’s my crappy paint work showing a little bit of the layout and where I was.

A side note. there were more than just the 2 bad guys involved. 4 total, the 2 who entered, a female who was in the car, and a 4th male in the car.

As of the time of this post, all are accounted for in prison or… other.

Here was the first news story associated with the incident. There’s TONS more you can find online. Including my name which I didn’t want released. Luckily my girlfriend and her kids were left out of it.

First ABC news story. (Looks like they finally removed the video. It was pretty intrusive, trying to get shots inside my house and what not.

Edited to add: The people involved were not local (Traveled from Fayetteville and obviously assumed nobody was home since I did not answer. It pisses me off to think they were coming in even with my dog there though.

More…

It did turn out the 4 people were gang related. There were death threats towards me and wanting to fire bomb the house. The Sheriffs showed up at our door at 7pm about 2 nights later and told us we had to move. Could not offer us protection due to reduced man power. We were renting so we quickly found a new place the next day. Sadly our rental company wasn’t too happy with what had happened and since it was the first of the month, charged us for that month despite us being moved out on the 4th, as well as the next month after that.

With that said though, one of the Captains from the FD did offer me a job after. He and everyone else were extremely grateful. Turns out the same people broke into his home and roughed up his wife. The one who took the bullet was 21 years old with a 5 page rap sheet so I was told.

More…

I know this isn’t talked about much, but the human body is extremely resilient. It’s pretty difficult to take someone down in most cases. His body tried to continue to work, the sounds it made, especially the attempt at breathing will never leave my head.