Gun-Toting Granny Shoots Intruder During Robbery

It was 3 a.m. on Monday morning when Ethel Jones, a 69-year-old grandmother, heard some noises outside her Decatur, Ga., home.

"I heard somebody at the back door and then around at the front door," Jones told the Decatur Daily. "I said to myself, 'Somebody's fixin' to break in.'"

Jones, a mother of four, sleeps with a .38 pistol under a pillow that is next to her when she is alone in her home.
Since the sexagenarian does not own a car, Jones thinks that the intruder probably thought no one was home.

The robber proceeded to remove an air-conditioning unit from a window in a back room before entering the home. When Jones walked out of her bathroom, she saw the suspect, who was holding a pen light near her bedroom. "I shot three times," Jones said, "and he ran away hollering."
Jones, who used to go target practice with her former husband, immediately dialed 911, and even though the dispatcher kept coaxing her to put the gun down, Jones was so shaken by the incident that she simply could not release her grip on the weapon. She was terrified that the robber was still lurking outside of her residence.

Police investigators cracked the case quickly and determined that a nearby neighbor, 18-year-old Michael O'Neal Bynum, had been the perpetrator. He was reportedly in stable condition after going to a nearby hospital for a gunshot wound to his abdomen.

Bynum, who was on probation for a prior burglary conviction, will go to a county jail upon his release from the hospital. He will be charged with second-degree burglary and held without bail.