A young Oklahoma mother shot and killed an intruder to protect her 3-month-old baby on New Year's Eve, less than a week after the baby's father died of cancer.
Sarah McKinley says that a week earlier a man named Justin Martin dropped by on the day of her husband's funeral, claiming that he was a neighbor who wanted to say hello. The 18-year-old Oklahoma City area woman did not let him into her home that day.
On New Year's Eve Martin returned with another man, Dustin Stewart, and this time was armed with a 12-inch hunting knife. The two soon began trying to break into McKinley's home.
As one of the men was going from door to door outside her home trying to gain entry, McKinley called 911 and grabbed her 12-gauge shotgun.
McKinley told ABC News Oklahoma City affiliate KOCO that she quickly got her 12 gauge, went into her bedroom and got a pistol, put the bottle in the baby's mouth and called 911.
"I've got two guns in my hand -- is it okay to shoot him if he comes in this door?" the young mother asked the 911 dispatcher. "I'm here by myself with my infant baby, can I please get a dispatcher out here immediately?"
The 911 dispatcher confirmed with McKinley that the doors to her home were locked as she asked again if it was okay to shoot the intruder if he were to come through her door.
"I can't tell you that you can do that but you do what you have to do to protect your baby," the dispatcher told her. McKinley was on the phone with 911 for a total of 21 minutes.
When Martin kicked in the door and came after her with the knife, the teen mom shot and killed the 24-year-old. Police are calling the shooting justified.
"You're allowed to shoot an unauthorized person that is in your home. The law provides you the remedy, and sanctions the use of deadly force," Det. Dan Huff of the Blanchard police said.
Stewart soon turned himself in to police.
McKinley said that she was at home alone with her newborn that night because her husband just died of cancer on Christmas Day.
"I wouldn't have done it, but it was my son," McKinley told ABC News Oklahoma City affiliate KOCO. "It's not an easy decision to make, but it was either going to be him or my son. And it wasn't going to be my son. There's nothing more dangerous than a woman with a child."
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A great story. Good job to this woman! Glad her child is safe.
Secretly, I stay calm because I imagine my Babushka and Dedushka standing there and hooting with laughter at this guy. My grandfather was a paratrooper in WWII who had his thigh-bone shattered by a bullet, and crawled through the snow on his stomach for almost 48 hours to rejoin his unit surrounded by Nazi camps driven to ground by the snow storm. My grandmother was a year too young (fifteen) to try out for being a sniper, so she glued a different number over her birth year and got accepted anyway because they were so short on volunteers. She was apparently quite good, as she liked to remind me whenever I skipped chores. Of COURSE they were deeply traumatized by what happened, but they also didn't give a single gram of fuck for ignorant pisspots. I hope I channeled them a little in my reply. <3
Because assumptions are bad.
Also, I really sympathise - I have a few friends with a parent who is in some stage of Alzheimer's, and it's just such a cruel disease.
And thank you for your kind words. I grew up in a multi-generational household, and my grandmother has been such a big part of my life since I was small. It is so hard to watch her slip away little by little.
You're so lucky. I had only my mother, grandmother and great grandmother - no fathers, grandfathers or great grandfathers, and only three uncles, so my family unit has always been very small, and my great grandmother passed away around the age of 82 - she'd had a stroke a couple years before then and seeing her robbed of her independence after that was quite the blow.
As for the family unit - there's not actually a huge number of us, but we all lived in the same house for many years. I think we had eight people at one point - my parents, grandparents, my uncle, his two daughters, and me. Since both my parents worked such long hours, I grew very close to my grandparents, and very protective of them. It turned out that I needn't worry about the language barrier; I came home once to find out that my grandmother had invited in three Jehovah's Witnesses to have tea, and had successfully pretended to understand English with a total vocabulary of "yes," "no," and "tea?" In the end, I think she had listened to them for almost two hours, and they were getting to the exciting part about being saved by Jesus and joining a church when I came in. I think they black-listed our house after they found out...
I can't imagine sharing a space with more than two other people! And once again, your grandmother brings the awesome. I laughed out loud at that.
Edited at 2012-01-06 11:36 am (UTC)
But all I saw was that you gave an undergrad dissertation, I wasn't sure where you fell in the academic progression.
Thank you!