Shrout demanded money. The Homeowner said he did not have any in the house. Shrout and the 81 year old started fighting. On or in the nightstand was a .22 caliber handgun. The home owner had never fired it. The handgun had been there for over 30 years. It is likely the ammunition was over 30 years old. From wpxi.com:
The 81-year-old was able to grab a .22-caliber gun during a struggle with Schrout and fired one shot, police said.I have not been able to find a picture of the handgun, or a reference to make or model, other than caliber. A source stated that it was a handgun, and not a rifle. The location, on or in a nightstand, is consistent with that. Here are more details. From cbslocal.com:
Schrout ran out of the house and the 81-year-old’s bedridden sister called 911, police said.
When police arrived at the home, they found Schrout dead outside.
The 81-year-old told police that he had never fired the gun before and that it had been sitting in his nightstand for 30 years. He also said he wished he had been stronger so that he could have fought off Schrout without having to shoot him.
The homeowner picked up a .22 caliber gun, which he had nearby and fired one round. It hit Schrout in the abdomen.Schrout was hit once in the abdomen with a .22 fired out of a handgun. It was probably a 40 grain bullet traveling about 800 feet per second. Schrout fled the house. He was found outside, lying dead in a neighbor's yard, near a shed.
Lt. Kolencik told KDKA-TV’s Ralph Iannotti, “The [unidentified] homeowner advised [us] that he had the gun for over 30 years sitting on his nightstand and has never fired the weapon… and uses it today and it saved his life.”
The .22 caliber is consistently underrated by the uninformed. A great many people and large animals have been killed with the caliber. It would not be my first choice as a defensive handgun, but it is far better than not having a gun.
Under the firearm storage laws in place in San Francisco, the firearm would have been stored illegally. If those laws had been in place in Pennsylvania, the Homeowner would have been storing the pistol illegally, or would not have been able to access it.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch
There is no fairness in bullet injury. A large, muscular or even obese man might be killed by a single .22. But here is a case of a man shot 21 times by police who survived.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.smh.com.au/world/man-survives-after-being-shot-21-times-in-gunfight-20100809-11ukw.html
I remember a case years ago a man decided to commit a murder suicide. he set his wife down on a sofa and shot her in the head the bullet bounced off and he turned himself in.
ReplyDeleteMy 84 year old mother used to rely on a .38 snubby on her nightstand. Over the past couple of years, she's become unable to lift and hold it steady. She's now got a bitty little .22 on that nightstand, with one in the chamber and six in the mag. A .22 you can hold and aim, and whose trigger you can still pull is worlds more protection than a larger handgun you can neither hold, nor fire if you could.
ReplyDelete