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

Today is 9/11. It would be impossible for me to say the right words, so I’ll acknowledge the moment, admit I’m insufficient to that task, and continue with my chosen one instead.

There was a break-in at Mom’s empty house a couple of weeks earlier, so her son put motion sensors in it. Early on a Wednesday morning, just before 4 AM, they went off.

The son went over. There was an intruder in Mom’s garage.

The intruder turned toward him “with something in his hand.” The son fired his handgun. Then he called 911. The sheriff’s department described the call as him “reporting that he had just shot an intruder in his mother’s vacant residence.”

Six deputies responded. They found the intruder face down on the garage floor with a gunshot wound and worked on him until EMS arrived; he was pronounced dead shortly after that. The intruder was Joshua Boone, 38, of Williamsport, Maryland — about twenty miles north, across the state line.

The son wasn’t charged.

This seems like a straight-forward DGU, but remember to know the law in your area and be ready for anything in the legal aftermath.

Here’s a very similar situation in North Carolina in May of this year. Steven Ennis was checking out his mother-in-law’s house after there were signs of Yet Another Break-in — but after confronting and shooting an intruder, he was charged.

NC’s Castle Doctrine didn’t matter because it was his mother-in-law’s castle, not his.

The Dunn, NC PD has a Facebook post on which there’s a lot of commentary, some of which is very much worth reading, and the Armed Attorneys covered this case shortly after it happened. I don’t see any updates since.

Be careful out there.

Sources

News

Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office: Homeowner shoots, kills suspected intruder (DC News Now)

Home intruder in Berkeley County dead after being shot with handgun (WV MetroNews)

Intruder shot and killed in Inwood, W.Va., home (The Winchester Star)

BCSD investigate an intruder shot in Inwood (The River 95.3)

Attempted burglar shot to death in Berkeley County, identified as Williamsport, MD man (Tri-State Alert)

2A / specialist media

Home Intruder Left DRT (dead right there) in West Virginia Self-Defense Shooting (AmmoLand)

Good Guy with a Gun #315: Inwood, WV