Resident Shoots Home Invader In Englewood
UPDATED 10/13/11 12:44 p.m.
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A city worker shot and wounded one of two men who broke into his Englewood neighborhood house Thursday morning, police said.
Perry Pearce, 53, who neighbors said works for the city Department of Water Management, was jumped as he walked to his truck at the rear of his house in the 5700 block of South Ada shortly before 7 a.m., the Sun-Times Media Wire reported. His attackers forced him into the home at gunpoint, but he managed to wrestle the gun from one of them and shot him in the abdomen, a witness told the wire.
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A shaken Pearce came out onto his stoop to a round of applause and cries of "hero" from his neighbors later Thursday morning, the wire reproted.
Pearce said he was going to his truck to go to work, when the men jumped him.
"They cut a hole in the fence and stuck me up," he told the Sun-Times. "One had a .38 and the other had a 9 mm.
"They held me on the ground, outside for 20 minutes with a gun in my face and knocked me in the face with the gun," he added, pointing to a bruise and cut on the top of his head.
Pearce said he was tied up by the robbers, but as he was recounting the story to the wire, a detective pulled him back into the house.
Both burglars ran from the rear of the home. But the man who had collapsed a couple of blocks away and was taken to hospital, police told the wire.
He suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen and a graze wound to the head, and was being treated at Stroger Hospital of Cook County.
Mike, who lives next door, said the shots woke him up.
"I heard two shots, and I didn't really think nothing of it," he said.
Another neighbor and friend of the homeowner, Barbara, says she is just glad he is OK.
"That's a 10-4," she said. "It's a shame, though."
The man's house is wired with surveillance cameras, and he has a large Rottweiler.
As of midday Thursday, no arrests had been announced, and the second suspect remained at large.
