NC: Man shot as robbers try to loot poker game: "A Hickory man was in stable condition Monday after an early-morning poker game over the weekend ended with an exchange of gunfire, police said. Carl Edward Merritt, 66, told police the shooting happened while he was playing cards with several other men around 3 a.m. Saturday in a storage shed behind a house in the 600 block of Ninth Avenue Drive S.E. Three or four masked men, at least one of them armed, burst into the shed and attempted to rob them, police Lt. Thurman Whisnant said. Merritt pulled out his own handgun and fired but was shot twice in the abdomen, police said. The robbers ran, and Merritt went to a nearby emergency medical services building."


TX: Home invader shot four times: "A 20-year-old man was shot four times Monday while forcing his way into an apartment in southwest Fort Worth, police said. On Tuesday, he was recovering but facing assault charges. ... According to a police report, Eric Johnson, 24, answered a knock at the door of his apartment and was confronted by two men. A man later identified as Kirby pushed the door open and entered the apartment, the report said. 'That suspect pointed a revolver at the complainant and said 'you know what this is,''according to the report. Johnson grabbed the revolver and began wrestling with Kirby; he then pulled a revolver from his own waistband and fired four rounds into Kirby's body, the report said."