Good Guy with a Gun #133: Bingham County, ID (Free post — Top Story!)
Original incident: March 13, 2024. Can we make March 13 Christine Jenneiahn Day? This story of an 85-year-old woman defending herself and a disabled son against a 39-year-old man is unbelievable.
These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. If you bought or received a calendar, contact me for a complementary subscription. Today’s post is significantly updated from the calendar version.
I made this post free to honor 85-year-old (now 87 and still kicking!) Christine Jenneiahn. Everyone should know her name.
By the time you woke up this morning, Jenneiahn’s ordeal would already have started — at 2 AM local time in Idaho — and it would continue until she was finally able to call 911 ten hours later, after noon.
Jenneiahn lived in an isolated area with her disabled son, David, who had suffered a traumatic brain injury years before.
She woke up to a man in her bedroom, pointing his gun at her. He wore a black ski mask.
“Show me your hands,” he said. “Give me your hands!”
She couldn’t reach for the .357 magnum under her pillow. She showed her hands, and he put handcuffs on them.
He hit her with his gun — police found blood on the bedding — and pulled her from the bed. He dragged her to the living room and cuffed her to a chair.
He was ransacking the place, but didn’t get enough to satisfy himself. He put a bag over her head. She had asthma and was coughing, so he took it off.
He put a gun to her head and demanded her valuables. He threatened to kill her.
So she told him that there were two safes in the basement.
While he searched for safes in the basement, Jenneiahn dragged herself — still handcuffed to a chair — to her bedroom. She retrieved that .357 Magnum from under her pillow, returned to the spot he had left her, and stashed the gun in the couch cushions.
He returned, angry. Not enough valuables. She hadn’t told him that her son was there. He threatened to kill her.
It was now or never. She grabbed her .357 and shot him twice in the chest.
He emptied the magazine of his 9mm Beretta, hitting her multiple times in the stomach, leg, arms and chest. She sustained eleven bullet wounds.
Then he ran.
He didn’t make it past the kitchen.
A half-hour had passed; it was now 2:30 in the morning. She could see it on the grandfather clock.
The night dragged on. She was able to move to the couch, and she dozed as she could. She eventually moved to the floor.
And Christine Jenneiahn, too stubborn to die, lay there until her son came upstairs after noon and asked her what was going on. He gave her a phone, and she called 911 at 12:17 PM. The 911 call was ten minutes long, and it ended when deputies entered her house.
She was taken to the hospital, where she was listed in critical condition. But she survived, and it seems that she’s still kicking as of this writing.
The invader was 39-year-old Derek Condon. Jenneiahn didn’t recognize him during the incident, but they knew each other from a pawn shop she had owned and from a gun club.
Yes, a gun club. Maybe that should have given Condon pause.
In fact, Jenneiahn had helped an Olympic shooting team for twenty years. She’s the kind of person who might keep a .357 under her pillow — a “nice old lady,” as she said to the police, but “you can only push somebody so far.”
When police evaluated the scene, they found that Condon had brought two sets of handcuffs and keys, a .22 Kel-Tec with a suppressor, and lock picks. There was duct tape in the car. He had used a screwdriver to jimmy the window on the back door and gain entrance.
He had parked a mile away and walked to the house, leaving boot prints going one way in the snow.
There’s a little more to say that comes from Steve Condon, who is apparently Derek’s brother and former business partner. He posted comments on a public Facebook post that color my understanding of Derek Condon. I won’t quote all of them, but here are two.
First:
Isn’t it interesting that non of the people who raised him, or were raised with him, have come to his defense? Think about that. There’s a reason for that.
Next, an obituary that the family had produced but that the wife had taken down — after all of the words about how incredible of a person he was — it closes this way:
It was no surprise that his life ended the way it did, as his family who knew him best, had spent the last 12 years trying to convince him to change course, settle down and be the father figure that his children needed him to be. As that pressure built, it was causing stress in every facet of his life, he eventually broke off nearly all contact with those to whom he was affectionately known as “Bruncle” and “Uncle Stu”, and his brother Steve, as of December of 2022. Derek leaves behind many a broken heart and fractured life in his early departure. He will always be remembered as a kind, loving, thoughtful, courageous, giving and fantastic human, that anyone would have been lucky to know, for most of his life. He was only 39 years young. There will be no formal services, in keeping with Derek’s wishes.
Sources
This story was everywhere, and with good reason. Ignore them all except for Andrea Olson’s work for EastIdahoNews.com. Phenomenal work.
Wow. I am so glad that lady survived; what courage and initiative she has.