Free Republic

KIRO Team 7 Investigators have discovered a career criminal, nicknamed "the obituary burglar," is out of prison and into a new job. It's one that has victims, police and taxpayers alike shaking their heads in disbelief. Now, Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne reveals who hired a 22-time felon to work around senior citizens. Terry Lee Alexander gained notoriety a decade ago by ransacking the homes of elderly victims while they were away attending funerals. With that resume, the City of Kent thought Alexander would be a good employee and handed him the keys to the publicly-funded Senior Activities Center. It's Saturday...

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- An Orange County man caught two burglars breaking into his house, so he pulled out his gun and shot them both Tuesday night. One of the burglars was killed and the other is in critical condition. The deceased burglar was identified as 17-year-old Brandon Martinez. Deputies say the owner of the house on Rubens Court (see map) won't be arrested. They say he did nothing wrong. The homeowner, along with his brother and son, had just gotten home from work when he confronted the burglars Tuesday night. They had already ransacked his house and even tried...

The 26 year old, who has not been named, was traced by detectives after the owner of the house reported the crime. Officers noticed the computer was still on and when the 52 year old owner touched the keyboard, the social network site's homepage flashed up. The man, from Albano Laziale near Rome told police he was not a member, and they quickly realised the last person to use the computer had been the burglar. He had written several messages on his wall - but not revealed he was carrying out a crime - and police were quickly able to...

A pair of crooks picked the wrong Milford home to break into. They weren't attacked by the family dog or confronted by the police. Instead, they were confronted by a 13-year old boy. Josh Cichy came home Friday night to two men trying to rob his house. That's when the teen went straight for his spotlight, an airsoft pistol and his shotgun to scare them away. Cichy says he first shined the spotlight in their eyes then fired a warning shot. The thieves took off running. Fox 2's Simon Shaykhet spoke with the teen about how he defended his home....

A Tennessee man has been charged with assault for shooting a burglar he caught leaving his neighbor's home. According to a report in The Kingsport Times-News, Dennis McClanahan, 52, caught Dustin Eads, 29, breaking in to a neighbor's mobile home trailer. McClanahan had called 911 to report the break-in when he saw Eads exit the trailer. McClanahan confronted Eads at gunpoint and attempted to hold him for police. Eads reportedly went for the gun and a struggle ensued during which McClanahan struck him in the head with the handgun. Eads broke free and attempted to flee in his vehicle, while...

MANATEE — A resident of the Palmetto Point neighborhood came home Tuesday morning to find an intruder making off with his shotgun, but before the burglar could get away, the resident opened fire on him with another gun, according to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office. Whether the intruder was hit was unknown, but deputies said the burglar got away with nothing. The incident started about 9:45 a.m. when a 61-year-old man came home to his residence in the 5200 block of Palmetto Point Drive, Palmetto. He entered through the front door and found an intruder wearing only black shorts and...

A knife-wielding burglar had a shock when he attacked a pensioner in his home - and discovered his victim was a retired boxer. Senior citizen Frank Corti, 72, a former junior boxing champion is still a bit handy with his dukes. And when he spotted the aforementioned intruder, Gregory McCalium, in his hallway he sprang into action and delivered two right hooks.

Pharmacist Jerome Ersland talks about a fatal shooting that occurred at Reliable Discount Pharmacy in Oklahoma City. Photo by Sarah Phipps, The Oklahoman Jerome Ersland was back at work Thursday filling prescriptions and hoping that by taking the life of a 16-year-old boy two days earlier, he had saved others. Advertisement Click here to find out more! Rubbing an oversized bandage on his left forearm, where he said he was grazed by a robber’s bullet, Ersland related details of what he said was a highly organized hit on the Reliable Discount Pharmacy. "I just regret anybody would get killed,” Ersland...

OKLAHOMA CITY -- One burglar may be considering a different profession after nearly losing his life during a break-in, last Wednesday. Heather Fitzgerald says she was checking e-mail in her garage with the garage partially open. Shortly before 3:00 a.m., however, an intruder crawled in. Heather immediately worried for her children, who were sleeping inside the home. She grabbed her 9-milimeter pistol and fired two shots at the man. Police do not believe he was hit because they found no blood at the scene. As he was running away, she says she lined up the gun's laser sight on his...

CARMICHAEL, Calif. -- A shop owner allegedly shot and killed a burglary suspect at a Carmichael shopping center early Monday, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department said. Officials said 65-year-old Bill Dunbar, who runs a coin and jewelry shop at Marconi and Walnut avenues, opened fire on two burglary suspects shortly after 4 a.m., sheriff's Sgt. Tim Curran said. One of the burglary suspects was hit and died in the parking lot. The other suspect, identified as 21-year-old Sergio Antonio Arauza, got away but was found nearby and arrested, Curran added. The deceased was identified as the suspect's brother, 24-year-old Vincent...

The Desert Eagle ought to come with an optional set of clean drawers to be handed out to foiled burglars.

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - According to Livingston Parish sheriff's officials, a suspected burglar was shot, then caught Saturday morning after trying to break into a shed. The reported burglary happened near Highway 63 and Tyler Ballard Road. A Livingston sheriff's deputies say the suspected burglar, 32-year-old Charles Avants, tried to break into the shed when the homeowner shot Avants in the arm. Avants got away but went straight to a Hammond hospital for treatment, where sheriff deputies say they found him and arrested him. He has been charged with aggravated burglary and simple Burglary. His bond has been set...

A northern Idaho woman says she has a problem pet. She says her one-year-old cat is burglarizing neighbor's clothing. "It's his fetish. He collects clothing mainly at night," owner Judy Waring said. Waring's one-year-old feline named Jack started stealing clothing in October, CBS station KCNC-TV reported. As the belongings started piling up, Waring said she no longer felt comfortable staying quiet about her pet's habit. Hats, shorts, underwear and 27 pairs of gloves are among the personal items Jack has nabbed. Warning said she put all the clothing out on a clothesline in front of her house and encouraged her...

Deputies say a couple was at their home on Bent Waters when they heard someone trying to get inside. (News 4 WOAI) SAN ANTONIO -- A man who police say was shot at while attempting to break into a Northeast Side home is still on the run. Deputies say a couple was at their home on Bent Waters when they heard someone trying to get inside. The homeowner shot at the intruder. But the couple does not know if he was hit because he ran off. Deputies want to know if the attempted break-in is connected to other break-ins in...

OSHTEMO TOWNSHIP -- An armed homeowner in Oshtemo Township scared off a pair of burglars earlier this week when he fired two shots from his gun, police said Tuesday. No one was injured, according to a press release from the Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Office. Police said two suspects broke into the house in the 7000 block of West H Avenue Monday afternoon. They were confronted by the armed homeowner, who fired two shots before the suspects fled in a small vehicle. Deputies located the vehicle and arrested one of the suspects, an 18-year-old man, lodging him on home invasion charges...

EVANSVILLE - An Evansville resident shot an armed burglar early Sunday morning when the suspect tried to rob the man in his home. Derrick Murray told police that he was asleep in his house on the 400 block of east Riverside when his back door was kicked in and some one told him to get down on the ground. Police say Murray got his rifle and shot 26-year-old Derek Clark in the leg after Clark confronted him with a handgun. Police say Clark then ran out the door and attempted to get into an accomplice vehicle with multiple suspects. The...

A rural North Texas woman said she dialed 911 repeatedly but got no answer as an intruder roamed her home in the dark. Laverne Hokett lives in Parker County, just west of Fort Worth. She said she was awakened one night last month by someone breaking through her back door. She dialed 911 several times from her cell phone but got no answer. Then she called her daughter Deborah Turpin. She and her husband arrived at her mother's home and held the intruder at gunpoint while dialing 911 over and over before getting an answer. Sheriff's Capt. Mike Morgan says...

A deadly shooting in an Orange County neighborhood was determined to be self-defense, according to information released this morning. Investigators say the shooter, 35-year-old Willie Busby, was cooperative during the investigation and was acting in self-defense when he shot a man on his mother's property Thursday afternoon. After the shooting, Busby ran into a patch of woods near the home at 1372 Claracona Road near Apopka. Deputies responded to the shooting around 2:57 p.m. and found 22-year-old Robert Howard dead. An arrest warrant had recently been issued for Howard's arrest in connection to an armed burglary case. Howard is alleged...

The home intruder gunned down by a northeast valley resident Sunday was a registered sex offender with a long criminal history, Las Vegas police said. The Clark County coroner's office identified the dead man as Mark Clinton Vains, 42, of Las Vegas. Vains died of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest at a residence on the 4600 block of Crystal Peak Drive, near Cheyenne Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard. Resident Paul Witte returned home about 4:15 p.m. and upon entering, discovered Vains, who was carrying a pellet gun, homicide Lt. Lew Roberts has said. Roberts said Witte's gun was registered....

Police said a Johnstown man fired three shots after he found a burglar inside his Hornerstown home. One of those bullets almost hit a police officer. Just before 2 a.m. Monday, police said Earl Carnahan called to report a burglary at his home on Horner Street. A Johnstown police officer was nearby and saw the burglar running out of the house. The officer said he chased the Willie Gates down a nearby alley.

VANCOUVER, Wash. -- A man wearing only his underpants caught a burglar breaking into his home and held him at gunpoint until officers could arrive, police said. The suspected prowler was facing serious charges after the alert homeowner caught him in the act and held him at gunpoint early Tuesday morning in northeast Vancouver. Police said Matthew Morris, 24, was trying to break into the family's cars and possibly their home, when he ended up facing the barrel of the homeowner's gun. Tuesday, a woman FOX 12 will refer to only as "Sandy" was still shaken up over her family's...

The 6'3", 285 pound homeowner hit Jenkins in the face. Jenkins fell to the floor and layed there, bleeding from the mouth, until deputies arrived.

Yesterday, a Springfield, Ohio man noticed his garage door was open when it shouldn't have been. When he armed himself and went to investigate, he was attacked by the burglar. As the burglar landed a blow, the resident fired a shot and struck his assailant who escaped. Fortunately, the homeowner was able to protect himself from a violent criminal attack. We can only speculate what might have happened had he not been armed. Would the burglar simply have knocked him down? Or would he have decided to eliminate a witness? Fortunately, we don't have to find out. This is exactly...

-------------cut-------------- The incident happened shortly after 10 a.m. in the 3300 block of Dondis Creek Drive, police said. When an alarm sounded at a home in the 3300 block of Dondis Creek Drive after 10 a.m., the 47-year-old woman inside the home discovered three men trying to break in, grabbed a handgun and confronted the group, according to police. The three men fled, but one turned and began to approach the woman, who fired the handgun, police said. A patrol officer responding to the scene saw two men walking in the neighborhood and stopped them, police said. One was suffering...

A home invasion leaves one man dead and another is on the lose. County police say, around 9 last night, two suspects broke into a house on Burcale Road in Myrtle Beach. Police are investigating the shooting death that occurred at Courtyard 1 Apartments on Burcale Road, that’s near the Clay Pond village community. They say, the owner was home at the time of the robbery and shot one suspect while the other took off. Police also tell News 13, that neighbors living next to the burglary victim’s apartment heard gun shots and a round of gunfire went through their...

CEDAR HILL — Police said a Cedar Hill resident shot and killed a person attempting to break into a vehicle in his driveway Friday morning. The gunfire erupted at 7:30 a.m. in the 9100 block of Sleepy Hollow, one of the city's nicest, most established neighborhoods. Police said the homeowner heard an alarm going off on his pickup truck. He grabbed a gun, went outside, and opened fire when he saw the alleged burglar attempting to remove a stereo system. The suspect died at the scene. "This is extremely rare," said Cedar Hill spokesman Corky Brown. "This is a really...

FRESNO -- A burglar who broke into a home just east of Fresno rubbed spices over the body of one of two men as they slept in their rooms and then used an 8-inch sausage to whack the other man in the face and head before he ran out of the house, Fresno County sheriff's deputies said Saturday. Lt. Ian Burrimond, describing the crime as one of the strangest he's ever heard of, said a suspect was found hiding in a nearby field a few minutes later and taken into custody on suspicion of residential robbery. Deputies, he said, had...

A northwest Charlotte homeowner shot and killed an intruder in his home Tuesday afternoon, police said. Officers said the man arrived at his Toddville Road home and saw a strange car in the driveway. He found the door kicked in and shot the burglar inside, police said. The suspected burglar died and the homeowner is currently being interviewed by police.

The suspect, who led police on a multi-state chase, was identified as 27-year-old Grayson Lee Clevenger. Burnsville police said Clevenger answered his cell phone at one point during the chase, telling a detective he couldn't talk because he was being chase by the police.(edit)Detectives followed the vehicle until marked patrol cars could meet up and attempt a stop. In an attempt to end the pursuit peacefully, detectives called the suspect on his cell phone. Clevenger answered the phone, saying, "Dude, I can't talk, I'm being chased by the police" and hung up. (edit)Clevenger eluded police and remains at-large

'Castle Doctrine' Gives Texans Unprecedented Authority to Take Action Against Intruders A Texas man who shot and killed two men he believed to be burglarizing his neighbor's home won't be going to trial. A grand jury today failed to indict Joe Horn, a 61-year-old computer technician who lives in an affluent subdivision in Pasadena, Texas.In the Lone Star state, where the six-gun tamed the frontier, shooting bad guys is a time-honored tradition, and Horn's case centered on a Texas state law based on the old idea that "a man's home is his castle." The "castle law" gives Texans unprecedented legal...

BUFFALO, Minn. -- Steve Remer chased burglars from his Buffalo, Minn home with a gun after finding his bedroom door tied shut and unfamiliar noises around the house. “It really makes you mad thinking that somebody came in like that while you were sleeping,” Remer said. Remer was startled out of his sleep by some strange creaking noises he thought were caused by the wind. When he tried to open his door, he found it had been tied shut. “I could see the rope there and thought, who the hell is playing this joke on me,” Remer said. Then, Remer...

The Yomiuri Shimbun Three members of a group of burglars who have been arrested on suspicion of theft told police that they broke into apartments in the Kanto area managed by a major commercial landlord about 500 times from January 2007, the police said Thursday. The police suspect they stole cash and other assets worth tens of millions of yen, they said. According to the police, the three said all the apartments had the same type of doors, which were easy to open with a wire. Lan Sen, 27, and Wang Xing, 24, from Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, and Su Xin,...

A would-be burglar met his match when he tried to elude Margo Foster, a marathon runner with a black belt in karate who also knows kickboxing and kung fu, police said.

Two men and a woman who used an ordinary cardboard box to break into over 200 Toronto area fast-food joints were caught by lucky timing, police said on Friday. The trio arrived at their target with an oversized cardboard box, which they propped up against the restaurant's front door. One person hid in the box and used specialized tools to break into the restaurant, while the others stood guard with a police scanner and two-way radios. "They were able to, by experience, literally remove the glass from the pane of the door and then set the glass aside," said Detective...

OGDEN, Utah — It's not a good idea to mess with the mayor, even if he isn't very big. Mayor Matthew Godfrey and his wife were awakened early Wednesday when somebody tried to break into their house through a side and then a rear door. Godfrey jumped out of bed, checked on his children and went outside. "He was heading across the front lawn riding a bike of ours," Godfrey said. "I ran him down and tackled him, wrestled him and put him in a headlock." He held the man down while his wife called 911. Curtis Poorman, 20, was...

Sandy Berger, who stole highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, destroyed them and lied to investigators, is now an adviser to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Berger, who was fired from John Kerry´s presidential campaign when the scandal broke in 2004, has assumed a similar role in Clinton´s campaign, even though his security clearance has been suspended until September 2008. This is raising eyebrows even among Clinton´s admirers. “It shows poor judgment and a lack of regard for Berger´s serious misdeeds,” said law professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University, who nonetheless called Clinton “by far the...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A burglar visited Graeme Glass' home in New Zealand twice in one day — first to steal some goods and later to return them, along with a heartfelt apology note. The thief struck while Glass was at work in the southern resort of Queenstown on Tuesday. The burglar smashed a window to gain entry and made off with a laptop computer, a camera, and Glass' wallet with an American Express credit card.

Last updated at 17:58pm on 8th August 2007 A homeowner has been arrested and quizzed by police after an intruder he confronted during a burglary fell out of a third floor window. The burglar, 43, was left fighting for his life after he tumbled up to 40 feet when he was disturbed rifling through through the flat. He is thought to have got up and tried to run off but collapsed on the pavement. Police, who received a 999 call, found him unconscious on the ground outside the smart Victorian appartment block in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester. The burglar fell from this...

GREENCASTLE - An Antrim Township mini-mart owner who has been the victim of several recent burglaries shot an intruder during a confrontation early Thursday, according to Pennsylvania State Police. Merlony Colaco, 29, has seen his Molly Pitcher Mini-Mart at 13640 Molly Pitcher Highway burglarized more than half a dozen times since March. Colaco has owned the store for a year and a half. The first year was relatively tranquil, but in March the establishment was robbed four times in 14 days. In one incident, Colaco held a woman at bay with a gun until police arrived. On Thursday at 1:46...

POMONA -- A suspected burglar using a chain and pickup truck to steal an ATM from a market this morning failed to escape capture when his prosthetic leg fell off. Gregory Daniels, 48, was arrested on suspicion of burglary. A second man fled the scene and was not in custody. The pair smashed a large glass window of the Pomona Ranch Market at 2277 N. Garey Ave. about 3 a.m., police said. They used a chain and a truck to yank a bolted-down ATM from a concrete floor. Police came to the area and spotted the getaway car. Officers followed...

Armed woman holds suspected burglar Friday, March 30, 2007By NADIA M. TAYLOR Staff Reporter A mother who had just dropped off her daughters at school Wednesday morning held a suspected robber at gunpoint after she returned home to find him in her south Mobile driveway, Mobile police said. Lelia Richardson left her Parkway Drive home at about 7 a.m. to take her two daughters to school, police spokesman Officer Eric Gallichant said Thursday. When she returned about 50 minutes later, she saw an unfamiliar car under her carport and the door to her home open. The door frame was busted...

"History will be kind to me," Winston Churchill once said, "for I intend to write it." Indeed, he did. His multiple-volume histories of the two world wars are still widely read, though discounted by professional historians as incomplete and in some ways misleading. Churchill is not the only politician who has wanted to write the history of his times; most politicians and political operatives want at least to shape the way history views their actions. Some are better at this than others. In the previous century, Democrats did much better at this than Republicans. Most of us still see the...

President Bill Clinton’s National Security Advisor Sandy Berger has pleaded guilty to stealing classified documents from the National Archives, but the case is still not over. In a curt February 16 letter, the Department of Justice (DOJ) dismissed a 60-page report by the Republican staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs that demanded Berger be given the polygraph test he agreed to take in order to determine the extent of his theft of materials from the Archives. “We believe there are no facts that would justify a polygraph of Mr. Berger at this time,” said a letter...

President Bush is reportedly expected to nominate longtime prosecutor Noel Hillman to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals less than a week after a congressional report criticized the then-justice Department official for "incomplete and misleading" assurances to the court during Sandy Berger's 2005 plea bargain for taking classified documents. Noel Hillman Hillman, a newly appointed federal judge in New Jersey, most recently served as lead Justice Department prosecutor against Jack Abramoff in the Capitol Hill lobbying scandal. During his tenure with Justice, Hillman oversaw the investigation of Hillary Clinton's 2000 campaign finances, indicting and prosecuting her finance director, David...

Eve and Steven Greene made a simple plea to the burglar who broke into their house: keep the valuables but return the cremated remains of their four-year-old son. "Just drop it off somewhere with a note on it," Steven Greene said. "And that'll be that." It worked. Someone left the urn containing the ashes of Zachary Greene at the end of the Greenes' driveway Wednesday morning, two days after it was taken in a burglary. Police said a burglar broke into the home, snacked on Cheerios and tracked mud all over the house as he filled pillowcases with about US$10,000...

Throughout the Berger affair, we were repeatedly assured that former National Security Advisor Sanyd Berger could not have destroyed any documents that the government did not have copies of. He could not, as a result, have been part of a cover-up of Clinton's disastrous fecklessness towards al Qaeda. It was this assurance that led many to view the episode as criminal buffoonery, rather than serious felonious conduct. The release of the Berger Report by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform changes that understanding, and makes the decision by the Department of Justice to give Berger the slightest of wrist...

TAMPA -- An intruder shot by a Plant City homeowner has died of his injuries, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. Noe Alvarez-Ramirez, 20, was shot Nov. 27 by John Kilgore, 57, deputies say. Alvarez-Ramirez died of his injuries Dec. 31 at Lakeland Regional Medical Center. Detectives have no plan to file charges against Kilgore. Alvarez-Ramirez broke into the Kilgore's home near Plant City, and Kilgore's wife, Cynthia, 43, found the intruder in the couple's bedroom, deputies say. Cynthia Kilgore took the couple's two sons, 14 and 16, into another bedroom, and her husband shot Alvarez-Ramirez. The ability to...

A homeowner stopped an alleged burglar by beating him into submission with a football helmet. Kevin Williams, 44, of Palm Bay spotted a man outside his window at 3:15 a.m. Monday using a screwdriver to pry at the screen door, Florida Today reported. "I had to protect my home . . . I wasn't sure what in the world he would do, rape my wife, steal something, I didn't know," Williams said. "I got my son's helmet from the garage, went out there and hit him several times. I started from the head and worked my way down to the...

"I'm just a regular guy- an ‘Average Joe' trying to get along in life and I don't want anybody taking my stuff or my kids stuff for that matter." A Tucson burglar made a bad career move... when he broke into the home of a Tucson security specialist... with cameras rigged up all over his house. Dan Standage is legally blind, and when he's away... his security cameras keep an eye on the home front. His vigilance paid off this week... when his cameras clearly caught a burglar poking around his home. The video speaks for itself. It shows a...

AN alleged burglar, dubbed "the new piano man", has baffled police who have been unable to work out the man's name, age, nationality, or even his language. The origin of the mysterious prisoner alleged to have broken into the same house three times is proving a major headache for authorities. The man, who apparently speaks no English, is accused of breaking into the house near Ammanford, Carmarthenshire, to wash and cook food, and is alleged to have stolen a sewing kit. But police have no idea where he is from, and have been completely unable to communicate. The new Piano...