Good Guy with a Gun #19: New Port Richey, FL

Original incident: November 21, 2023. A home invader with a hatchet gets stopped by a homeowner with a handgun. [Insert "bringing a hatchet to a gunfight" here....]

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A hatchet?

Mid-morning on a Tuesday in New Port Richey, Florida, a man armed with, yes, a hatchet tried to force his way into an apartment at the Trinity Palms at Seven Springs complex.

The resident inside didn’t wait to find out why. As the intruder breached the threshold, the resident shot him.

That’s really the whole story. Deputies rolled up to a secured apartment and a deceased threat.

Consider the fact that someone died, and this is all we know about the incident: If I weren’t actively hunting for Good Guy with a Gun stories, this would be just another Defensive Gun Usage (DGU) that nobody would know about.

Side note: New Port Richey is different from Port Richey, which was the site of Good Guy with a Gun #3, published on November 3.

Sources

I’m surprised this didn’t get more coverage, given the intruder’s weapon was a hatchet. There’s something that makes my hackles go up when I hear about it.

Then again, the Tampa Bay Times is the only source that mentions the hatchet. The other three resources — WTSP 10, Pasco News Online, and Patch — are all essentially identical to the Tampa Bay Times article, but without the hatchet.

That thing that never happens, happens every day.

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