Three armed home invaders/burglars are now at room temperature after their target grabbed his own shotgun and fought back. The shootout went down in a suburb of Houston.
The Houston Chronicle reports:
Three would-be burglars are dead after a Channelview resident confronted them with a shotgun as they entered his home Monday, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.
The incident unfolded when three men backed into the driveway of a mobile home in the 1800 block of Amie Michele Lane off Sheldon Road near Wood Road sometime Monday morning, Gonzalez said. One of two residents inside the home spotted the three men exiting the car and walking toward the home.
The three men entered the home, although it was not immediately clear if they forced their way in or simply walked in, Gonzalez said. That’s when the second resident, hearing the commotion, exited a room armed with a shotgun and opened fire on the three men inside the house, killing them all where they stood, Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said the dead men appeared to be in their 20s.
One of the suspected burglars managed to shoot back at the armed resident during the gunfire, Gonzalez said. According to family members, he was taken to Memorial Hermann hospital where he remains in serious condition.
Apparently Yair Gallegos was the resident who opened fire. Family members of the residents chimed in:
“We are sad and dismayed, but thank God we are not the ones losing the life of our son,” said Lino Pérez., stepfather of Yair Gallegos, and speaking on behalf of the family including Gallegos’ mother, María Guadalupe Gallegos. “I am like his father because I have been with him since he was 4 years old,” he said.
The couple live with their two other children in the same block. Pérez said he was already at work as a mechanic when a neighbor called him “saying that some young guys entered into the property” where Yair Gallegos lives with a roommate, “and that there was a fight going on there.”
“I talked to my wife to go see what was going on there, but by the time she got there… the fight was over, the three guys dead and my son wounded,” Pérez said, adding, “most people would agree with me in that this was a matter of survival, it was those guys who enter the house, or my son.”
One guy on the black has doubts that it was a potential burglary.
Neighbor Alberto Martinez said he didn’t hear any shooting from his home, about six or seven houses away from the crime scene. He said he and his wife know Gallegos’ parents and that “the family, they are really good people.”
However, Martinez said he has doubts about the authorities’ version of the crime.
“They say it may have been a robbery. I don’t think it was a robbery. It looks more like, I don’t know, revenge or something like that,” Martinez said. “Those boys had nothing of value in that house. It wouldn’t be the house that a thief would choose to steal in this neighborhood.”
Regardless of the kind of crime, neighbors were surprised that a crime took place in their community.
“I have never seen a crime happening in this neighborhood in the five years I have lived here, let alone a shooting,” said Margarito Rodriguez, a construction worker who lives in the same block. “People here are good, many work in construction. This is a good neighborhood. I am really surprised.”
They also report that this will head to a grand jury.
Who on earth tries to break into a house in rural Texas? I mean, shouldn’t this be expected?
Perhaps Sheriff Gonzales summed it up best in the ABC report: “I want to just warn people that if it turns out that you’re breaking into somebody’s home, regardless of the circumstances, that eventually you’re gonna end up dead or you’re gonna end up in jail,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said.
