Good Guy with a Gun #373: Desoto, TX

Give police their due: They responded in three minutes. But they couldn’t possibly be fast enough to stop the man who was already chasing her with a gun. | Original incident: November 8, 2024

Nov 08, 2026

These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. (Do you have yours yet?) Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.

Just before eight on a Friday night, a woman driving home from a nearby Taco Bell noticed a dark truck behind her. It followed her into her neighborhood, and when she pulled into her rear driveway, it pulled in right behind her.

This could be anyone’s neighborhood: Living in a nice area doesn’t fully protect you. Image taken from Fox 4’s coverage.

She ran inside, called 911, and got her pistol.

She told the dispatcher there was a man she didn’t know in her backyard, and that he had a pistol. Then he started trying to force his way in through the rear garage door. The dispatcher could hear her screaming and yelling on the line.

She fired several times — through a door, she told police afterward. Two of her rounds hit him, one in the chest and one in the face, and that stopped him.

Several neighbors were calling 911 about the gunshots at the same time. “I just heard one gunshot go off first. Then it was followed by two more,” said neighbor DJ James.

Officers arrived about three minutes after they were dispatched. She met them out front and told them she thought she’d shot him “somewhere at the back of the house.” Surveillance video caught a caravan of police cars pulling up and officers with their guns out running to the back alley. They found him on the floor of her garage with a loaded pistol beside him.

He was 35-year-old Octavio Flores Mondragon, who lived about a mile away. She didn’t know him. Officers gave him first aid until the ambulance came, and he was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

“There was a lot of confusion going on,” neighbor Joe Kindred said. “We just don’t have this kind of activity here, so it was jarring and scary.”

Mondragon was charged with burglary of a habitation with intent to commit another felony, a first-degree felony in Texas. Police hadn’t determined a motive — was it road rage? attempted robbery? something else? — and they were looking into whether he was tied to other crimes in the area.

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