This gun saved lives

January 3, 2013
Loganville, Georgia

A woman and her two children are alive today because she shot the man who broke into her home, while she and the children were there.

Police believe that the man intended to steal from the house belonging to Donnie and Melinda Herman, but they theorize that he heard the sounds of the two children while he was there and started looking for them.

When the man broke in, she called the 9-1-1 emergency number, using a cell phone.  They told her to hide in her house and to stay on the phone with them.

She was married, and after she had hid, with her two small children in the small attic of the house, the police told her to stay on the phone with them so that they would know what was happening.  After she and the children had hid, she asked the police to call her husband, which they did.

After her husband was told that a man had broken into his house, with his wife and their two children inside, he spoke on the phone with her, reassuring her while she and the children had hid inside a crawl space in the attic.

The police had already told a uniformed officer to go to the house, but he had not arrived when the burglar found the woman and two small children, hiding in the attic.  She had placed herself between the attic door and her children.  She had also armed herself with a handgun, which her husband had taught her how to use.

When the burglar opened the door to the small attic, he thought that he would find the people who had made the noises that he had heard downstairs.  He did not expect to see a woman ready to defend herself and two small children with a gun, but that's what he found.

Minutes earlier, while her husband had been talking with her on her cell phone, he had told her to defend herself from this intruder.  He reminded her that he had already taught her how to shoot, and he talked to her again after she fired the first shot.

"Shoot him again!" he said.

She shot six times.  Five of those shots hit the intruder.  She and her two children were not harmed by the man who might have killed her and two children if she had not been armed with that handgun.

The man, wounded by five bullets, was able to leave the house, but he was captured shortly afterwards by police and is now hospitalized and under arrest.

Melinda Herman is now glad that her husband taught her how to shoot.  So are the children.  She doesn't like to think about shooting anyone, but that makes her a better human being than the burglar, who might not have had any regrets if he had been able to rape a defenseless woman after killing two children.

Link to a similar story about the same crime, published January 4, 2013 on the website of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

This January 6, 2013 story on the website of a Fox News affiliate includes the photo on the right. This link and the link to the story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution were added 12/14/17.

Updates

These are the first three paragraphs of an April 2, 2013 news story on the website of WSB-TV, Atlanta.  The link in the first paragraph was in their story.

WALTON COUNTY, Ga. —
A burglar shot multiple times during a home invasion will spend 10 years in prison for the crime.

Channel 2’s Kerry Kavanaugh was the only reporter there when Paul Ali Slater pleaded guilty to burglary charges Tuesday morning. The judge sentenced him to 20 years, with 10 years to serve, and also banished Slater from Walton County.

Investigators said Slater broke into a Loganville home on Henderson Drive in January and pursued a woman and two children inside. Investigators said Slater broke through a bedroom door, a bathroom door and a closet door before he reached an attic crawl space where the woman was clutching a .38-calibur handgun.

A similar story, dated February 2017

This is a complete February 16, 2017 Bay News 9 story.

The St. Petersburg Police Department is investigating an early morning shooting at a home on 24th Avenue South.

• Woman shoots intruder at St. Pete home
• Middle-aged man expected to be okay

According to police, preliminary information indicates an intruder was shot at the residence around 6:15 a.m.

Police said a woman saw a man she didn't know coming into her home through a side window before she shot him.

The woman told police she warned the man that she was armed and shot the intruder when he did not retreat.

The man was transported to Bayfront Health St. Petersburg with a gunshot wound and is expected to be okay.

No other information has been released at this time.

The intruder was identified in an update to this story.  The update appears on the same web page.