Residents of an apartment complex in DeKalb County, Georgia were terrorized on Wednesday night by a machete-wielding man who went door-to-door trying to break into apartments. The attempted home invasions ended, however, when the man gained entry into one residence, and was shot by the gun owner who lives there.
The terrifying events unfolded around 11:30 Wednesday evening, and one woman, identified by WSB-TV only as “74-year-old Ms. Brown”, said she had already gone to bed when she woke up to a pounding on her door.
“I heard bam, bam, bam,” she said.
According to Brown, the man appeared angry about a cross and another religious item she had displayed outside her apartment. She said he yelled threats and returned multiple times to kick her door.
“The door started coming out. I had to take my sofa and push it against the door because it was coming out of the frame,” Brown said.
“I was terrified beyond words.”
The man eventually moved from Brown’s apartment, but tried kicking in the doors of several other units. He was apparently able to get inside one apartment, where he encountered a gun owner who defended himself with his firearm.
“I don’t know who shot him. I’m glad someone did shoot him,” she said. “Because he was wielding around that machete, and he was planning to kill people.”
Brown described the suspect as appearing completely out of control.
“Completely insane. Couldn’t be in his right mind,” she said.
Police say the man was taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, but so far they haven’t released his name, disclosed what charges he faces, or ascribed any motivation for his behavior.
Oddly, this is at least the second time in four months that a DeKalb County resident has used a gun to fend off a man with a machete. Back in June, police responded to an early morning shooting at a gas station, where they learned that the “victim” was actually the initial aggressor.
The incident began when officers arrived about 7:30 p.m. at a business in the 2000 block of S. Stone Mountain Lithonia Road. That’s where they found a man suffering from a gunshot wound.
A preliminary investigation determined that the man struck a vehicle with a machete when the person who had been driving the vehicle shot the man.
The shooter also struck the machete-wielding man with the gun, police said.
Witnesses said the man with the machete charged at another man, forcing him into a restaurant. The man with the machete then began damaging the side mirrors of a vehicle.
After shooting the man, the suspected shooter sped off in his vehicle before police arrived.
“He pretty much got what he deserved. Even though I’m a business owner, I was in my restaurant and he was swinging the knife at me, so I was scared and nervous,” said Uh-Huh Soul Food owner Robin Billingslea.
I love that witnesses in both incidents told local reporters the men with the machete got what was coming to them instead of fretting about their upbringing and whether they got enough hugs and kisses when they were babies.
There was virtually no follow-up from any of the local media to the June machete attack that was stopped by an armed citizen, and police never publicly declared the shooting justified, at least as far as I can tell. I’ve also found no indication that the armed citizen was ever arrested or charged.
Hopefully the Atlanta media will do a better job of staying on top of the more recent defensive gun use, but I’m not gonna hold my breath. Local media tends to at least report on armed citizens defending themselves or others, especially when shots are fired, but in cases like these where the only ones injured were the attackers themselves, we often don’t get much beyond the initial reporting.
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