Good Guy with a Gun #322: Dearborn, MO

No matter the cause of his insane behavior, she had to end it, alone. | Original incident: September 18, 2024

Sep 18, 2026

These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is essentially the same as the calendar version.

Yesterday’s story was about a half-naked man. Dearborn, Missouri wasn’t about to let that stand unchallenged.

About 9 AM on a Wednesday at her rural home, a woman saw a man in her pasture. She’d never seen him before. He had no shirt on, and he was trying to climb onto the pony that belonged to her and her husband.

He tipped the pony’s water tank over.

He grabbed the electric gate and shocked himself, and that made him angry enough to rip the gate off and throw it.

She called her husband. He called 911, and deputies started toward a report of a “partially clothed suspicious male party outside of a private residence.” She went to the bedroom and took a handgun out of the locked safe. Somewhere in there she put her four-year-old in a bedroom.

What she heard next was the front door shaking, and the dog. The dog was yelping, and she told investigators she thought the man was killing it.

He’d moved off to the driveway by then, so she opened the door and told him she had a gun, to leave the dog alone, and to get off her property. He put his arms up over his head, said something unintelligible, and ran at her.

She fired several shots. He kept coming, so she backed into the house. He came in after her, and she kept firing until he was finally stopped. Then she took her child out to a neighbor’s.

(But nobody needs high-capacity magazines, right?)

The man was Joshua C. Hinderliter, 37, a local; he died in the house. Unsurprisingly, a toxicology report showed THC in his system.

In November, almost two months later, the Platte County prosecutor, Eric Zahnd, declined to charge her.

“This woman reasonably believed a man she did not know who rushed toward her and into her home might hurt or kill her or her four-year-old child. While Mr. Hinderliter’s death is unfortunate, this woman had every right to defend herself and her child.”

In an odd coincidence, Mr. Zahnd died yesterday at age 53; you can see a notice in the right-hand column of the screen capture above. He had served for almost 24 years, and intended to retire on December 31. My condolences go out to his family.

I’m happy to use his wise and correct words in this column. I would add only that she was fortunate to have the Great Equalizer to help her.

Sources

News

The Platte County Landmark ran the story twice, the day it happened and again when the prosecutor ruled. The sheriff’s office talked to the Landmark for the first one.