elderly-couple-shoots-burglar

By Brandon via concealednation.org

One woman is in custody and another is at large after tying up an elderly man in his Gold Beach, Oregon home. FOX 12 confirmed that 50-year-old Sheila Clark of Coos Bay was apprehended in a grocery store after police identified the man’s vehicle parked outside. The 72-year-old man was allegedly captured inside his own home and restrained. According to investigators, they stole his cash and credit cards . . .

Clark’s accomplice, Michelle Taylor of Crescent City, stayed behind to guard the man while Clark drove to a local market. It was during this time that the man managed to break free and retrieve his handgun. No sooner was it out than Taylor, 27, fled.

Authorities are still searching for Michelle Taylor in connection with this crime and previous outstanding warrants for her arrest. Clark was also charged with crimes relating to this incident in addition to her outstanding warrants.

It is unknown at this time how the women were able to gain entry to the man’s house and illegally restrain him. Those details won’t likely emerge as investigators are focused predominantly on the criminal actions of these two women.

If anything, this serves as a great reminder it’s always good to keep a firearm close-by when you’re home. While we’ve reported on plenty of stories where home invaders and criminals announce their presence well before they make entry, it’s just as safe to assume they will not.

Preparedness, even in the comfort of one’s home, is a necessity.

To learn more about self-defense preparedness in the home, be sure to check out our article addressing how you can maintain a state of readiness at all times.

40 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve had people make fun of me for walking around my house while holstering. They say: “what? Do you not feel safe in your own home?” . To which I reply: “I do now. “.

    • Just ask them what percentage of home invasions happen in the home, followed by what percentage of them happen while the home is occupied. (Hint: 100% is the answer to both)

      Oddly enough the same percentage of carjackings occur in cars that are occupied.

    • I get the “what are you afraid of?” straw-man a lot. Lots of replies are possible but I like to straw-man them back and see if they pick up on it. Any straw-man will do. Something like, “You’re inside a carpeted house and wearing tennis shoes. Are you planning on running a 5K around the living room?”

      Little do they know I actually wear it because I’d be pretty ashamed of myself if I owned one and suddenly needed it and it wasn’t close to hand.

  2. Wasn’t there a movie that had a plot to this effect? A couple of attractive women conned their way into a house and seduced a guy, then destroyed his life or something. I wouldn’t be surprised if they played the damsel in distress to get into the house and power his guard and then jumped him.

    • “A couple of attractive women….” The FOX12 news article has a picture of MS Clark. Coyote morning comes to mind.

  3. If you’re a real old guy and you don’t pay the hookers that come all the way out to your place for nothing they will rob you.

  4. The elderly are very commonly victims of violent crime and are most vulnerable to those who are younger and less enfeebled by age. Thus it is only natural that a gun would benefit them most as an equalizer.

    • Had a 70+ year old gent politely ask me to retrieve a .380 in a Sneaky Pete holster he almost forgot to remove from his vehicle this week. Same sorta deal with a Prius at the start of the month. Self defense does not have an age limit, however I often wonder at what point are you incapable of effectively wielding the tool.

      • George Burns described the stages of old age thusly:

        “First you forget names, then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up and finally, you forget to pull it down.”

        I think that when an old person gets past Burns’ final stage, they probably want to give up their car keys and pistol. Until then, they’re GTG.

      • I’ve known people who were sharp as a tack at 95 and those who shouldn’t be allowed to drive after 70. It’s a large variable.

        • And I see a whole lot of 14 to 30+ year-olds walking around or driving around while texting/talking, in total Condition White, and I think they should not be allowed out of their house without a nursemaid. Classic candidates for Darwinian selection.

    • Well guys, speaking from the standpoint of having attained—ahem—a certain rather advanced age and also having a certain amount of specificity on the subject, let me say that there is no hard-and-fast timeline for the degredation of one’s mental processes. Some people start losing it in their 40’s and 50’s, some in their 60’s and 70’s, and some are lucky enough have grreat mental acuity throughout their entire lives. It’s not about age, it’s about genetics.

  5. Nothing wrong with home carry, but this story is mostly a lesson on the importance of locking your friggin’ doors.

    You’re obviously not doing something right if you have a gun in your pocket and the thugs got into your house and tied you up anyway. If they hadn’t done such a poor job of restraining him, no telling how badly this could have ended.

  6. It is truly a shame that the country has degraded to this level. I home carry at all time. Even in our homes, our supposed last bastion of safety, we have to be vigilant. I live in a relatively small town in PA and when herion took hold in the last year or so we went from a few burglaries and a husband coming home early and shooting a wife and boyfriend to chaos. We have shootings, murders, and a wave of home invasions every month. I feel that things are getting to a point in our society where there will no normalcy anymore. Those of us who choose to be armed will make it through, like we always have. Those who do not will find themselves prey.

    • Um, violent crime in the US is the lowest it’s been since the 1950’s. It peaked in the early 1990’s and has been plummeting since.

      • That’s true, on the aggregate.
        There are still individual communities and neighborhoods that have gone south in recent years, for a variety of reasons.

  7. I’ve said it before here, and I’ll probably say it again.
    I keep a 22 mag. mini revolver in my pocket 24/7. Carry heavier stuff when I go to town.
    Everybody ought to keep something in their pocket. I mean a gun!

  8. I have been to both Crescent City and Gold Beach. Gold Beach is a quiet town where no one expects bad things to happen. In my brief 2 day visit to Crescent City, I felt like I was in an episode of Cops with the lyrics of the theme song stuck in my head — “bad boys, whatcha gonna do when they come for you”. It is further proof that things don’t always just happen to other people, that bad guys (and gals) are just as mobile as good guys/gals.

  9. This trend will only continue in low income neighborhoods, in particular black criminals ripping off the elderly, as cops retreat further under the gun from budget cuts and fear of lawsuits, thanks to blackliesmatters.

    Those who dont arm themselves dont generate any sympathy with me.

    • Odd, the last few incidents of elderly people getting beat or robbed in my area were all perpetrated by whites.

      • This is a good point. Imagine a gullible old WHITE person who hears the doorbell ring. S/he looks out the window and sees a:
        – black male
        – black female
        – white male
        – white female

        In which case is s/he most/least likely to open the door to see what the caller is looking for?

        Play-out the same question from the viewpoint of a gullible old BLACK person. I can imagine that the black would be far more circumspect than the white.

        Home invasions of gullible elderly white victims is tailor-made to attract white perpetrators, especially females.

        Most crimes bring-to-mind the image of a particular archetype as the perpetrator:
        – murder – black-male on black-male
        – knock-out – black-male on elderly
        – armed robbery – black-male on any victim
        – cold burglary – black-male on any victim
        – hot invasion – black-male on any victim

        We OUGHT to be THINKing about the intrinsic nature of each kind-of-crime and recognize that RACE – per se – is NOT an INTRINSIC characteristic in most cases. E.g., a white female perpetrator enjoys complete freedom-of-movement in a white neighborhood. Therefore, armed-robbery and hot invasions should be growth-industries for perpetrators who don’t conform to our stereotypes.

        Simplistic racial stereotypes leave us operating with blind-spots.

  10. My wife and I were watching COPS the other night, and suddenly the landmarks started looking familiar. Turns out the foot-chase from a vehicle with stolen 9mm and 5.56 pistols took place a mile from our house.

    Before, she was a little skeptical of my home-carrying (it does make snuggling on the couch a little more challenging). Now, she makes sure I’m doing it. And wants to home-carry herself.

  11. Oregon already took away property rights. They made it a crime to ride a bicycle standing up on the peddles.
    But they legalized murdering the defenseless ill.
    Will they next criminalize self defense at the UK has?

  12. Since when did 72 become elderly? It’s just a shame this whippersnapper didn’t shoot his intruder, saving local law enforcement time and energy trying to track her down.

    • He’s elderly if he wants his Social Security check, his Medicare card, preferred parking at the shopping center and a discount at Denny’s, even though he’s still ambulatory, employed, and just as capable of paying for his own breakfast as anyone else.

    • It IS a shame. According to the linked story, Taylor was already a wanted felon. Think of how many more crimes a well placed bullet can potentially prevent, which is but one good reason to never just “give them what they want” as so many anti-gun/anti self-defense advocates advise.

  13. We just had a 93 year old retired school teacher survive her SECOND home invasion. She lives 400 yards from me. I strongly suggest that you Google “Your home town & state + home invasion” and see what comes up. You may be surprised at the results. I live in a rural area in north east PA, and the cities of Easton and Stroudsburg are both over 25 miles away, but my “neighborhood” of say a 2 mile radius from my house has seen several robberies, home invasions, a mass shooting at the township govt. building during a public meeting with 3 dead and others wounded. I am always armed at home, and my wife is happier for it as she fears someone doing a home invasion on us.

    • SECOND home invasion? Why didn’t she have steel security screen outer doors installed after the first one? Or even before it?

      • She said in her interview that the first robber got all the “good stuff” and that she doesn’t have anything of value to protect anymore. She is also a warm friendly caring person that would try to help anyone that asked her. I fear that her gracious personality puts her at risk for bad things, but she isn’t the type of person to hide in a bunker.

  14. So repeat offenders repeated their criminal activity, no surprise there. I say execute the violent criminal on their 3rd conviction for a violent crime. Not everybody can be rehabilitated you know, just ask Charles Manson.

  15. Most crimes are crimes of opportunity, or at least of familiarity. Home carry is one thing and good, but understand that that’s an end game option.

    You want to avoid an attack altogether by screening as best you can who’s in your life and whom you come in contact with (familiarity).

    You also want to communicate the increased the difficulty of staging a successful attack on you, by keeping distance, maintaining awareness, strengthening perimeter defenses, etc. (opportunity).

    A self-defense firearm ought to be part one’s personal security plan. It just shouldn’t be one’s first line of defense.

  16. Though I live in Portland, Oregon, I regularly travel along the coast and through Gold Beach. Along with the normal tourist crowd in that area one encounters some very foul riffraff, many of them the so-called homeless “travelers” (tramps really) who hitchhike from Southern California to Seattle, Washington. Also residing in that region are quite a few unemployed trashy folks who engage in thefts, burglaries, assaults, meth production and just about anything that catches their larcenous fancy.

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