Photo of woman holding gun courtesy of GunsHolstersAndGear.com under Creative Commons CC BY 2.0, image manipulation by America’s 1st Freedom staff.
A pregnant woman in Lithia, Fla., used an AR-15 rifle on Oct. 30 to shoot dead one of two masked men during a violent home invasion in which her husband was pistol whipped and one man allegedly grabbed her 11-year-old daughter.
The woman’s husband told reporters in a video interview that two unknown armed, masked men forced their way in the back door of their home, pointed a gun at him, and grabbed their daughter. They demanded money, then pistol-whipped and kicked him repeatedly in the head. When his wife, who is eight months pregnant, looked out of a back bedroom, they reportedly fired a shot at her.
“I’ve got a fractured eye socket, a fractured sinus cavity, a concussion, 20 stitches and three staples in my head,” the injured homeowner said in the news report. “I took a severe beating.”
He said after the men shot at his wife, she retrieved an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and fired once, striking one of the assailants and causing both to flee. The man she struck died of his wound in a ditch outside the home, per a Facebook video posted by the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. The Sheriff’s spokesperson in the video confirmed that the AR-15 was legally owned.
“[The intruders] came in with two normal pistols, and my AR stopped them,” the husband said. “[My wife] evened the playing field and kept them from killing me."
In a press release, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said that the second suspect had not yet been located and the investigation was still active.
