http://www.al.com/news/press-register/index.ssf?/base/news/1192526279114750.xml&coll=3
Poor lady, having to depend on a hatchet now.
Wounded man will be charged with burglary Tuesday, October 16, 2007By SUSAN DAKERStaff Reporter
Ethel Sanders, 81, was startled awake by noise coming from her laundry room on Monday morning, she said. She grabbed her .38-caliber pistol and moved to the porch steps of her shotgun house in north Mobile.
Standing on two bad knees, without the aid of her walker, she opened the door to the laundry room to find a nearly naked intruder, apparently washing his clothes.
"There was a man, well, a boy," Sanders said. "He had all his clothes off. ... I just shot out."
The force of the pistol shot knocked her to the ground. She said she found herself in a puddle of the man's blood.
The man grabbed her pistol, pointed it at her and then snatched his clothes from the washing machine, she said.
As he ran from her home on Edwards Street, Sanders said, a neighbor called police.
About 8 a.m. officers found the nearly naked James Penn, 25, at the nearby Plateau Community Center, said police spokesman Officer Eric Gallichant.
Penn had been struck by a bullet that went through his leg to his stomach. He was taken to University of South Alabama Medical Center, where he was expected to survive, Gallichant said.
When Penn is released from the hospital, he will be charged with first-degree burglary, Gallichant said. The spokesman said that Penn is homeless and had broken into Sanders' home to do his laundry.
This may not be the first time that Penn had been there. Recently, a neighbor saw some clothes drying in the sun on Sanders' fence and asked her about them, she said. "They thought it was my grandson," Sanders said. But it wasn't, she said.
When she went outside to check the clothes, they had vanished.
Sanders said she had seen Penn in her neighborhood previously, walking up and down her street.
Sanders said she knew his mother, who lived around the corner until her death a few of years ago.
"I feel sorry, I got a grandson, I wouldn't want anybody to do him like that but if he went inside someone's house they could," she said.
Sanders said she feels vulnerable in her neighborhood. Her windows are covered with burglar bars because someone once tried breaking into her living room. She said she bought the pistol four or five years ago to protect herself, but had never fired it until Monday.
"Whenever I hear noise, I just go grab my gun," she said. Sanders' husband died in 1982. She still wears her wedding ring but on her index finger.
"I got no help, I do the best I can," she said. "My health's all right except for my knees." Her only child, a daughter, wants Sanders to come stay with her, but Sanders said no.
As long as she's on her own, she feels that the gun is necessary. But police took it Monday as evidence and told her she would get it back when Penn's case is over.
"I need it 'cause I stay here by myself," she said.
In the meantime, there is a hatchet sitting next to her bed.
Poor lady, having to depend on a hatchet now.
