Good Guy with a Gun #61: Hope Mills, NC

Original incident: December 20, 2023. If someone's trying to break into your home, even if it's someone you know, you might need to be ready to stop him.

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It was 7:30 AM on a Wednesday, so it’s likely that 45-year-old Shantay McQueen was just starting her day in the modest townhome where she lived.

Until Deshawn started to climb into her back porch window.

She knew 30-year-old Deshawn Howard. Maybe he had knocked first and she wouldn’t let him in, or maybe he was trying to get in without her knowledge.

This is the complex in which the incident occurred, as it looked in June of 2023.

Imagery from Google Maps street view.

Either way, she grabbed her 9mm Smith and Wesson and shot him before he made it through the window. He fell out onto the ground.

She called 911, hysterical. The operator couldn’t understand her at first, but between sobs McQueen was able to say, “Somebody just broke into my house, and I had to shoot him.”

“Yeah, he’s alive,” she also said. “He’s crying right now. He needs to get the ambulance.”

But when the operator asked if she could reach him, she said, “I can’t get to him. I’m scared he’s going to hurt me.”

Deshawn Howard was still alive when deputies arrived a few minutes later, but he was pronounced dead at the hospital not long after.

Sources

The Fayetteville Observer covered this story in depth, with an initial report (archive), a follow-up (archive) when Howard was identified, and a very good article (archive) about the 911 call.

If more organizations talked about the 911 calls police receive, we’d get a much stronger sense of what it was like for the victim in the moments during and just after a shooting.

WNCN 17 gave an initial report and a follow-up when Howard was identified.

WTVD 11 gave a report after Howard was identified, or possibly updated their original story.

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