These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is significantly updated from the calendar version.
A little after 11 on a Friday night, 85-year-old Wayne Williams was sitting on his couch when somebody started banging on his front door, just six feet away. Then came the kicking and yelling.
Williams went to his bedroom for the .380 pistol he keeps for home defense, unzipped the holster, threw it on the bed, and carried the pistol to the front door. Then he opened the door.
He told Cowboy State Daily three days later that he wasn’t sure what he’d been thinking, and that it was a big mistake. Seems right: He should have called 911 and shouted through the door. (It’s nice to see an honest critic of his own work.)
The man on the porch was slim, looked about 25, and stood six inches taller than the homeowner, who’s roughly five-foot-three. He seemed to be drunk or on drugs.
“The guy was obviously irrational,” Williams said. “He was saying ‘they’ sent him to my house; ‘they’ said he owns my house and I don’t — crazy, crazy stuff.”
The man shoved his way inside. Williams pulled the trigger, and the pistol clicked: he’d forgotten to rack a round into the chamber.
“Go ahead and shoot me,” the man said.
There was an argument on X recently about carrying with a round in the chamber or not. Most people who advocated for carrying that way (which was most of them) called out this exact issue as the reason.
So our GGWAG, all five-foot-three of him, had to wrestle the man back out the door.
It helped that the intruder was “kind of uncoordinated.” They grappled on the porch in the dark until, the homeowner believes, the man tripped on the top step and took them both down the concrete stairs.
“So we both fell down the stairs. I was on top of him at that point.”
Both of them were struggling to get to their feet when he fired a single shot into the dark and heard the man say, “I’ve been hit.” A detective found the spent casing between the steps and the front door.
He thought he’d hit the man in the leg. The bullet actually went into the abdomen and out through the back.
He ducked back inside and called 911. It seemed to him that the officers who showed up were at first more concerned with him and his gun than with “the guy who was attacking me,” but he put the gun down and cooperated.
The intruder was Jeremy David Merta, who was 21 by the time he made it into a courtroom seven months later. Three days after the shooting, a detective found him on a hospital gurney and got his side of it, such as it was. He’d started drinking with family at a bar around 5 PM — beers, Jägermeister, and José Cuervo — then went home, then back to the bar, then home again. He left on foot, upset, believing he was headed to the Cedar Bar, which is several blocks from the homeowner’s house.
Somewhere in there he blacked out. The next thing he remembered was waking up shot, with the homeowner standing over him.
His Nike basketball shoes were on the lawn. The tread, a pattern of concentric circles, matched the marks on the homeowner’s damaged screen door, and that’s what the detective pointed to when Merta’s attorney asked for evidence that his client was the initial aggressor. The detective’s affidavit also noted fresh scratches on the homeowner’s face, arms, leg, and knee.
The detective didn’t try to book Merta: the jail wouldn’t take a man in that condition, and he was in no shape to escape. Months of operations followed. Merta was told to stay in touch so he could make his court dates, and the detective testified that he did an “excellent job” of it.
The homeowner spent a few weeks wondering whether he’d see Merta again. That had passed by the time of the hearing, though he was surprised that Merta wasn’t in jail.
The charge was a felony: unlawful entry into an occupied structure to commit battery, good for up to 10 years. The following June, Merta pleaded no contest. His plea agreement had called for a guilty plea, but that requires telling the court what you did, and the county attorney explained the problem:
The judge allowed a no contest plea as the defendant’s level of intoxication on the night in question would not allow him to provide a factual basis for a guilty plea.
The agreement offered Merta a deferral: if he completes a term of probation, the felony conviction never goes on his record. The length of the probation was left to the judge, with sentencing set for late August.
Sources
News
Clair McFarland of Cowboy State Daily interviewed the homeowner at his house three days after the shooting and again on the day of the preliminary hearing, and covered the case through the plea in four articles. (They also have the most beautiful design and typography of any news source I’ve ever come across.)
In Brief: Riverton Homeowner Shoots Apparent Burglar (Original incident)
85-Year-Old Riverton Homeowner Fought Off, Shot Possibly “Irrational” Intruder (The interview)
Riverton Man Shot By 85-Year-Old Homeowner Faces Felony Intrusion Charge (Preliminary hearing)
Drunk Intruder Shot By 85-Year-Old Riverton Man Could Get Probation (The plea)
Felony for suspect shot by homeowner (Riverton Ranger)
County 10 ran two items, the police release and the call log.
Riverton Police Department investigate reported attempted burglary where shots were fired (The release)
County 10 Law Enforcement Log: Riverton Police Department - August 12/13, 2024 (Call log)
2A / specialist media
85-year-old Wyoming homeowner who says he fought with, shot intruder describes scary late-night altercation (The Blaze)
85-Year-Old Man Fights Then Shoots Intruder (The Truth About Guns)
Elderly Wyoming Homeowner Shoots Irrational Intruder (GunsAmerica Digest)
Homeowner Shoots Alleged Intruder During Late-Night Burglary Attempt in Riverton, WY (USA Carry)
85-Year-Old Homeowner Fights, Then Shoots, Alleged Intruder (Breitbart)
85-Year-Old Wyoming Man Uses Handgun to Fight Off ‘Irrational’ Attacker (Colion Noir)