Good Guy with a Gun #301: Lee’s Summit, MO

If you’re willing to be up at 7:30 on a Saturday morning, how about getting a job? | Original incident: August 31, 2024

These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.

One might wish that these guys were willing to be at non-criminal work at 7:30 AM on a weekend day. Or that they would take up golf, or maybe fishing, which — I’m told, trust me, I don’t know for myself — lead to similar early-morning habits.

But no, one of them was in the driver’s seat of a getaway car while the other was inside a stranger’s house. The homeowner found in the house and told him to get out.

The man wouldn’t go, so the homeowner fired one shot into him.

That did the trick. The man got himself out of the house and into the getaway car, and the two enterprising-but-maybe-not-so-bright people got away.

But not for long, thankfully. Lee’s Summit police caught up with the car, stopped it, and took the miscreants in. (The home invader’s wounds weren’t life-threatening.)

By the end of that Saturday, Jackson County prosecutors had a warrant for 32-year-old Trent Taylor: first-degree burglary and two counts of harassment, bond at $45,000 or ten percent. The department identified him publicly the next day as one of the two suspects, presumably the home invader — I don’t see a first-degree burglary charge landing on the driver.

I don’t know what the harassment counts are related to. Wouldn’t any crime be considered “harassment” of some sort or another? I’m guessing at this point that it’s a lawyerly thing: Detectives said they didn’t believe Taylor and the homeowner knew each other, so it’s not like there was a history of harassment here. If you understand it, please drop a comment.

Sources

News

Lee’s Summit homeowner shoots, injures intruder Saturday morning (KSHB 41 Kansas City, day-of)

Investigation opened after homeowner shoots man attempting to burglarize property (KCTV5, next day)