Good Guy with a Gun #12: Greeley, Colorado
Original incident: November 11, 2023
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Guadalupe Balderas, 26, tried to kick in the door of a home in Greeley, Colorado in an apparent home invasion; the 24-year-old man inside, unsurprisingly, tried to prevent him from doing so.
Instead of taking “no” for an answer, Balderas shot into the house and hit the 24-year-old in the arm. This didn’t make the defender any more likely to let Balderas into the home: He fired from inside the house and hit Balderas in the abdomen.
Balderas left the scene, but was arrested after he later went to the hospital and staff there reported the gunshot wound. Police arrested him on suspicion of several crimes related to the incident, including attempted first degree murder with extreme indifference and attempted first-degree burglary.
Our GGWAG protected not only himself but also a 26-year-old woman who was in the home, and after being taken to the hospital for treatment, he was released.
A longtime neighbor said, “I’m very surprised. I mean, we’ve never been aware of any gunplay in the neighborhood in all that time [30 years]. So yeah, it’s very surprising.”
I liked Fox’s legal analyst, George Brauchler, though I did wonder about one aspect of his commentary: He said it was surprising that Balderas didn’t run after getting some resistance from inside the home, suggesting that maybe there was something more personal going on. I’m not so sure: Bad guys with guns can feel invincible, especially if they’re hopped up on something — and he ran as soon as the GGWAG started shooting. I’d love to see some follow-up on this, but I didn’t find any.
Sources
All three of these are pretty good. Fox did a little better than the other two, in my opinion, by getting some local flavor (that’s where I got the neighbor’s quote) and analysis.
KDVR Fox 31, Greeley Tribune, Denver7
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