Good Guy with a Gun #35: Burlington, IA
Original incident: December 12, 2023. A resident with a gun stopped a home invasion in a rural area — and that's all we know.
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Let’s take a break from well-known places like Amarillo and Los Angeles, and slip away to Burlington, Iowa.
It’s not a big place, and the scene of the crime is actually a few miles north of Burlington anyway. Here’s a picture roughly centered on the neighborhood.
At four in the morning on Tuesday, December 12, 2023, an unknown person entered another person’s home.
If you’re like me, you may look at this map and wonder how it’s possible not to know everyone from this area. Burlington itself, though, has a little more than 23,000 citizens, so it’s possible.
Someone called 911 to report the home invasion.
Things apparently escalated inside the house, though we have no details.
A few minutes later, as deputies were on the way, someone called 911 to report that the home invader had been shot.
The man was transported to a local hospital for non-life-threatening wounds.
Sources
There are only three articles about this incident, all of which appear to be summaries of a police report.
That thing that never happens, happens every day.
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