Good Guy with a Gun #40: Wasilla, AK
Original incident: December 17, 2023. When a home invader stabs her husband, a wife picks up the Great Equalizer and permanently neutralizes the threat.
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I don’t know anything about Wasilla, so here are some fast facts.
It’s not a large place, with only about 10,000 residents, but it’s the fourth-largest city in Alaska. To be fair, it’s part of the Anchorage metro area, which is over 300,000 people in all. Small as it is, you do probably know some of the names that come from there: Larry Csonka, Lisa Kelly from Ice Road Truckers, and, of course, the Palins.
Larry Csonka in his heyday, Lisa Kelly, and Sarah Palin
And Wasilla is where a husband and wife were home alone at 9 AM on a Sunday morning — that’s about an hour before dawn at this time of year — when 22-year-old Justice (heh) Beaudoin-Martinez forced his way in through a sliding glass door.
The couple know him or anything about him. They didn’t even notice him when he first entered.
Eventually they did notice, though, and the husband fought Justice, who was armed with a knife, while his wife ran to get their .44 Magnum revolver. That seems like a big weapon for a woman, but it did the trick: Justice stabbed the husband, and then the wife shot Justice.
The end of the story follows a familiar trajectory: The couple called 911, first responders applied first aid to both of the men, Justice Beaudoin-Martinez died at the scene, and the husband went to the hospital for further treatment of his non-life-threatening wound.
Police said that the evidence was consistent with an act of self-defense.
Sources
Mat-Su Valley News is a Facebook group that appears to have quoted the original police report. The police report itself is no longer online.
Alaska Public Media is the only source I can find for the caliber and type of firearm. Their report overall is very good.
The winner for TL;DRing the story is clearly Your Alaska Link. It’s practically a tweet, but it gets the main points across.
KTUU 2 gave the story airtime and a good writeup.
The Anchorage Daily News reported on this shooting and mentioned it a second time a few days later — as part of a story about another GGWAG incident in Houston. (Not Texas. There’s a Houston about 14 miles west of Wasilla, and it happens to be where Justice Beaudoin-Martinez was from.)
The Frontiersman, KTVF, and Alaska Native News also covered the incident.
On the 2A side, Luke McCoy covered this event at USACarry.
That thing that never happens, happens every day.
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