Invade Home, Get Shot: The Paul Slater Case

     On Friday, January 6, 2013 in Loganville, Georgia, a town of 11,000 30 miles east of Atlanta, Melinda Herman was at home watching her 9-year-old twins. She was working in her second-floor office. At one o'clock that afternoon Melinda looked out a window and saw a man she didn't recognize pull up in front of her upper-middle-class suburban home. The man, later identified as 32-year-old Paul Ali Slater had been released from jail in August 2012 after serving six months for simple battery and three counts of probation violation. Since 2008 this thief and burglar had been arrested seven times. He had six children.

     Melinda watched the man approach the house. He knocked on the front door and when she didn't answer he laid on the doorbell. Frightened, Melinda called her husband Donnie at work. (In late December, Donne had taken his wife to a shooting range where she learned to fire a .38-caliber revolver.) Donnie told Melinda to take possession of the firearm then hide in the attic with the children. He called 911.

     When Melinda looked out the window again she saw the man coming toward the house with a crowbar in his hand. As Paul Slater used the tool to break into the Herman home, Melinda and the twins hid in a crawlspace closet.

     From inside the attic closet Melinda Herman could hear the burglar rummaging through the family's belongings. She became extremely alarmed when she heard the intruder enter the attic. Suddenly the closet door opened and there he was standing a foot from her and the children. Melinda raised the six-shot revolver and fired all of its bullets. Five of the slugs hit Slater in the face and neck. Four of these bullets passed through his body.

     The shot intruder fell face-down on the attic floor. As the blood started leaking from his bullet-ridden body he begged Melinda who was still pulling the trigger of the empty gun to stop shooting. Melinda and the children stepped over the home invader's body and ran out of the house. As they took refuge in a neighbor's place Mr. Slater managed to get to his feet and stumble out of the dwelling. He made his way to the SUV but a few houses down the street ran his car into a tree.

     The bloodied and badly wounded burglar crawled out of his SUV and collapsed on a nearby driveway where deputies from the Walton County Sheriff's Office found him. "Help me," he cried. "I'm close to dying."

     Emergency personnel rushed the wounded intruder to the Gwinnett Medical Center where he was placed on a ventilator.

    The local prosecutor charged Paul Ali Slater with first-degree burglary and other offenses.

      Paul Slater, following a remarkable recovery, pleaded guilty in April 2013. At his sentencing hearing a month later, he said, "I knocked on the door. I tried to take every precaution to make sure I was going into a vacant house. The times were tough for my family and I made the decision to commit a crime. I was going into the house to steal some jewelry.

     The judge sentenced Paul Slater to 10 years in prison.

Troy James Knapp: Utah's "Mountain Man Burglar"

     In 1986 when he was 28, Troy James Knapp went to prison in Kalamazoo, Michigan for burglary and related offenses. Knapp pleaded guilty to destroying property in 1994 while living in Salt Lake City. Two years later police in Seattle arrested him on the charge of stalking and harassment. In 2002, after serving two years in a California prison for burglary, Mr. Knapp left the state in violation of his parole.

     In 2007 the wilderness survivalist (he survived on other people's stuff) lived in the mountains of southern Utah. In the summers he stole food and gear from cabins in Iron, Kane and Garfield Counties, and moved from one campsite to the next. During the winter months he lived in the cabins he burglarized in the summer. The owners would return to their seasonal dwellings to find bullet holes in the walls and doors. Knapp also left notes with messages like: "Pack up and leave. Get off my mountain." (If everyone had packed up and left Knapp would have starved.)

     Between 2007 and 2013 prosecutors in Iron, Kane and Garfield Counties charged Troy Knapp with 13 felony burglary crimes and 5 misdemeanor offenses. Because of the remoteness of Knapp's break-ins and the fact he kept on the move he eluded capture for more than five years.

     In late February 2013 a man hunting with his son in Sanpete County crossed paths with Knapp about 125 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. Aware they had conversed with the Mountain Man Burglar, the father notified the authorities.

     A few days after speaking with the hunters 9,000 feet up on a mountain near Ferron Reservoir in the central part of the state, forty police officers and a law enforcement helicopter closed in on the fugitive as he trudged through three feet of snow. After firing fifteen rifle shots at the helicopter, Knapp surrendered to the small army of approaching lawmen.

     When taken into custody, Knapp possessed an assault rifle and a handgun. He was booked into the Sanpete County Jail without bond. An Assistant United States Attorney in Utah charged Knapp with several federal firearms offenses.

     In April 2014, pursuant to an arranged plea bargain, Knapp pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to the use of a firearm during a crime of violence. At his sentence hearing on June 9, 2014 federal court judge Ted Stewart handed down the mandatory minimum sentence of ten years in federal prison.

     Knapp's attorney, in addressing the court, said, "There's an admiration for somebody who chooses to live off the land, because he does it while the rest of us wouldn't. Even if he needs a little help from some cabin owners."

     Sanpete County prosecutor Brody Keisel had a different take on the case. He told reporters after the federal sentencing that Knapp was nothing more than a "common crook." 

Breaking Into a House Can Be Fatal

     Eighty-year-old Thomas Greer lived in Bixby Knolls, a neighborhood in Long Beach, California. Mr. Greer came home at nine o'clock on the night of July 22, 2014 and found two burglars in his house. He shot and killed one of them who, prior to being shot, said, "Don't shoot me, I'm pregnant. I'm going to have a baby."The homeowner shot her anyway.

     At a press conference regarding the shootings, Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell said the woman, 28-year-old Andrea Miller, showed no outward signs of being pregnant.

     Officers arrested Andrea Miller's accomplice, 26-year-old Gus Adams on charges of residential burglary and murder. Because Miller had been killed during the commission of a felony perpetrated by Mr. Adams, he was charged with criminal homicide under the felony-murder doctrine. The judge set Adams' bail at $1 million.

     Both Andria Miller and Gus Adams had criminal histories involving burglary. Investigators believed the couple broke into Mr. Greer's home three times before. When Mr. Greer returned home that night and encountered the intruders the suspects attacked him, hitting him with their fists and body slamming him to the floor, breaking his collar bone.

     While Gus Adams tried to pry open Mr. Greer's safe, the burglary and assault victim snuck into a room and grabbed his .22-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. As Mr. Greer opened fire the burglars fled through the garage and into an alley. The homeowner chased after them firing his gun. One of his bullets hit Andrea Miller who died in the alley.

     On July 29, 2014 police officers arrested Gus Adam's 49-year-old mother, Ruby Adams on suspicion she had acted as a lookout in the burglary of the Greer home. The judge set her bail at $175,000.

     The authorities also announced that according to the medical examiner's office Andrea Miller was not pregnant.

     In January 2015 the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office decided not to prosecute Thomas Greer for killing Andrea Miller.

     Ruby Adams, in April 2016, pleaded no contest to residential burglary. The judge sentenced her to three years in prison.

     In August 2016 a jury acquitted Gus Adams of felony-murder but found him guilty of first-degree residential burglary and elder abuse. The judge sentenced him to 12 years behind bars.

A Bad Day For David Sturdivant

     David Sturdivant, a 64-year-old ex-Marine (Purple Heart/Vietnam) was doing okay in Atlanta, Georgia. He lived alone in a two-story house and worked in his own engine repair shop attached to his dwelling. Mr. Sturdivant had recently been the victim of neighborhood burglars who had broken into his shop and stole his HAM radio, various electronic items, a couple of riding mowers and his tools. Thieves had also stolen his two antique Thunderbirds.

     After awakening from a nap at one o'clock in the afternoon on April 8, 2011 Mr. Sturdivant looked out his second-story window and saw a pickup owned by Dennis Alexander. With its tailgate open, the vehicle was parked near a riding mower in Mr. Sturdivant's shop for repair. To Mr. Sturdivant it looked like Mr. Alexander, a man with a criminal history of burglary and theft, was about to steal the mower. David Sturdivant stepped out onto his balcony and yelled, "Get off my property and stop stealing my stuff!" When Denish Alexander mocked the property owner Mr. Sturdivant entered his house and returned with a commercial grade M-14 rifle. From the balcony he fired one bullet into the ground to frighten Mr. Alexander off the property.

      Atlanta police officers in the neighborhood working with a television crew filming a segment for the reality TV show "Bait Car" heard the shot. In less than two minutes they were on the scene shouting at Mr. Sturdivant to drop his rifle. Without taking the time to fully comprehend the situation, three officers fired fourteen shots at Mr. Sturdivant. One of the bullets tore into his stomach. Mr. Sturdivant had not shot at the officers and had not pointed his rifle at them.

     A week after the shooting Mr. Sturdivant was discharged from the hospital. He had lost a kidney and was missing several inches of his colon. Police officers immediately took him into custody and hauled him to the Fulton County Jail in his wheelchair. The district attorney charged David Sturdivant with four counts of aggravated assault for pointing his gun at the police officers. He also stood accused of aggravated assault for shooting at the suspected thief and for possession of a weapon in the commission of a crime. If convicted of all charges Mr. Sturdivant faced up to 105 years in prison.

     While Mr. Sturdivant recovered from his bullet wound in the jail's hospital, looters cleaned out his house and business then burned the dwelling and shop to the ground.

     At a preliminary hearing on October 27, 2011 the suspect turned down the district attorney's offer of a probated sentence in return for a misdemeanor plea. Claiming total innocence Mr. Sturdivant rejected the plea bargain.

     On November 11, 2011 a judge tossed out the prosecutor's case against Mr. Sturdivant. After serving seven months in the county jail Mr. Sturdivant was free. But he had nowhere to go except to the local VA hospital. Mr. Sturdivant lost his freedom, his house, his business, his household belongings, his antique cars, his tools, his kidney and a piece of his colon. He was the victim of criminals and the police.

Mayson Armando Ortiz-Vazuez's Meth-Crazed Rampage

     At six-ten in the morning of Friday, August 28, 2020 an ex-con from Orlando, Florida named Mayson Armando Ortiz-Vazquez was driving in Polk City, Florida with a female passenger in his car. He was in the town to buy drugs. For some reason Ortiz-Vazquez lost control of his vehicle, swerved and crashed into a chainlink fence.

    Not far from the accident, school bus driver Margie Yzaguirre had pulled over to pick up a student. Shortly after the youngster climbed into the bus Ortiz-Vazquez approached the vehicle and demanded to be let onboard. When the bus driver refused to let him in, the six-foot, 250 pound Ortiz-Vazquez, with his arm bloodied from the car accident, screamed and pounded on the bus door. Bus driver Yzaguirre drove off.

     Left behind by the school bus, Ortiz-Vazquez jumped on the hood of a passing car. After rolling off the vehicle he jumped onto another moving car, breaking its windshield. After growling at the shocked driver, Ortiz-Vazquez rolled off the car, got to his feet and walked to a dwelling on Old Polk City Road in nearby North Lakeland.

     At six-thirty that morning, Ortiz-Vazquez smashed a glass paneled front door and forcefully entered a dwelling occupied at the time by a 9-year-old boy, his parents and the boy's grandparents. The boy's father, when confronted in his living room by a crazed, bloodied intruder holding a shard of glass from the smashed front door, picked up a gun and shot him. Later that morning Mr. Ortiz-Vazquez was pronounced dead at the Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center.

     According to Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, Ortiz-Vazquez was a man "totally out of control." In  reference to Ortiz-Vazquez's behavior that morning, the sheriff told reporters the violent spree had "meth written all over it."

A Righteous Shooting

     At eight-forty on Sunday morning November 30, 2014, a minister (not identified in the media) living with his wife and three young children on a rural road near Valley Center, Kansas, was forced to make a life and death decision.

     Alerted to an intrusion by his activated  home burglary alarm, the pastor ran into his kitchen to find a window shattered and a man about to enter the house. The minister, to protect  himself and his family, grabbed his handgun and opened fire.

     The intruder immediately retreated and ran off. Deputies with the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office in responding to the home burglary call came upon a man lying on the side of the road not far from the break-in. Officers rushed the bleeding man to the nearest emergency room.

     Police identified the burglar who was shot while breaking into the pastor's house as Cory Landon. Lucky for him, he had been struck by a single bullet that grazed his forehead. After he was treated at the hospital and released deputies booked Landon into the Sedgwick County Jail on the charge of aggravated burglary. (In Kansas and most states intruding into a dwelling is a more serious offense than breaking into a commercial building.)

     Landon told the arresting officers that he and a few of his friends had been camping out in the area of the break-in.

     Neighbors praised the pastor for his bold anti-intrusion action. Faced with the same situation they all said they would have used deadly force. The neighbors did not believe the pastor's decision, given his position in the community, was immoral. He had reacted as a father and a husband, not as a man of the cloth. "That's an armed citizen taking care of business," one of the neighbors told a local report.

      As for the burglar, breaking into an intrusion-alarmed dwelling in rural Kansas in broad daylight was dangerously stupid.

     In 2015 Cory Landon pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a short prison term followed by probation.

Lock Picking

Lock picking involves opening a lock without a key, and without physically destroying or abusing the lock mechanism. There is probably no such thing as a totally pick-proof lock, but very few criminal intruders possess the skill, tools, time, and good fortune to manipulate the internal parts of a high-security lock in such a way to produce a key-like effect on the mechanism. Lock picking depicted on film and TV looks easy. Even with low security locks, it is not.

Scared Straight

     Ross Wilson, a man in his mid-forties with six children who didn't live with him, resided in a rental house in a crime-ridden neighborhood in Fairfield, a suburb of Hamilton on New Zealand's Northern Island. Mr. Wilson, who worked at a sales job in Hamilton, had, within the past year, moved to Fairfield from Porirua, Wellington, New Zealand. He recently told his relatives that he hated living among drug dealers and other criminals but couldn't afford a safer neighborhood.

     In March 2013, after someone broke into his house, Mr. Wilson posted the following on his Facebook page: "To the scumbag who burgled my house--I hope I'm there to watch when Karma comes and screws you up."

     Just after midnight on June 19, 2013, Tom Smith [not his real name], broke into Ross Wilson's house. As the 21-year-old burglar crept through the dark, he bumped into Mr. Wilson's corpse as it hung from the end of a rope. The thief screamed so loud, several of Mr. Wilson's neighbors called 911 to report a domestic disturbance. The terrified burglar ran out of the house. When he arrived at his own place of residence, Smith called the police and reported what he had encountered at the scene of his crime.

     The Hamilton County police believed that Mr. Wilson had hanged himself a couple of days before Smith's criminal intrusion. A few of Mr. Wilson's relatives urged the local prosecutor to charge Smith with burglary. Because Smith had been scared witless, the authorities decided not to bring charges against him even though he had been in trouble with the law. The local police hoped that this burglar has been scared straight by his deceased burglary victim. 

Sam Mullet: Amish Outlaw

     During a three week period in late September and early October 2011, a dozen Amish men from a breakaway Amish sect located in the village of Bergholz in southeastern Ohio, on Bishop Sam Mullet's orders, invaded Amish dwellings in nearby counties where the intruders forcibly cut the hair and beards off the men, and shaved the heads of the Amish women. These terroristic raids were intended to degrade, intimidate, and humiliate the targets of Sam Mullet's wrath. The bishop had asked his raiders to bring back photographs and clippings of his Amish enemy's hair as proof his orders had been carried out. (According to author Donald B. Kraybill, Amish men's beards and the uncut hair that Amish women roll into buns are treasured symbols of religious identity.)

     On October 8, 1011, Jefferson County Sheriff Frank Abdulia's deputies arrested Sam Mullet's sons, 38-year-old Johnny and 53-year-old Lester. The deputies also arrested Levi and Lester Miller. Johnny and Lester Mullet were charged with burglary and kidnapping in connection with the hair and beard cutting invasions in Holmes, Carroll, and Trumbull Counties. Shortly after the arrests, the Amish men were released after making bail.

     FBI agents and Jefferson County deputies, on November 22, 2011 arrested Sam Mullet, three of his sons, and three other men from the Bergholz group on federal civil rights charges as well as a number of state violations related to the hate crime home invasions. The United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio said, "While people are free to disagree about religion in this country, we don't settle those disagreements with late night visits, dangerous weapons, and violent attacks."

     Four of the home invasion defendants were released on bond. The United States Attorney successfully kept the bishop behind bars by arguing that he had a "penchant for violence," and was a danger to society. (Mullet had allegedly threatened to kill Jefferson County Sheriff Frank Abdulia.)

    Sam Mullet's Attorney suggested that his client be placed on electronic monitoring like many other defendants awaiting trial in federal court. The problem was, being old-order Amish, the bishop's house wasn't connected to the power grid. In one of his release requests, Mr. Mullet asserted that he was needed at home to tend to his household and farm related chores. The prosecution argued that because Mullet had 16 children, and many more grandchildren, that was a lie to get him out of jail.

     Found guilty in September 2012 of several federal hate crimes and related offenses, the judge sentenced Mullet to 15 years in prison.

     In March 2015, a U.S. appeals court overturned the hate crime convictions on procedural grounds. As a result, the federal judge re-sentenced Mullet to ten years behind bars.

    Mullet underwent triple bypass heart surgery in 2017 to repair blockages in his arteries.

     On March 4, 2020, Sam Mullet was transferred from a federal prison near Cleveland to a halfway house in Youngstown, Ohio. He was scheduled to complete his prison sentence on January 18, 2021.

    The 74-year-old prisoner, on March 17, 2020,  asked United States District Court Judge Dan Polster to reduce his 10-year-sentence to time served due to his underlying health problems that made him vulnerable to the coronavirus. Three days after the request, Judge Polster ruled that Sam Mullet could finish out his prison sentence at home in Bergholz.

The Home Invading Ex-Mennonite

     A lot of crime is inexplicable. Young shoot up schools, shopping malls, theaters, and even hospitals. A man in New York City was pushed in front of an oncoming subway train, while in a small town in Pennsylvania a music teacher shot his ex-wife to death as she played the organ in church. Every week there's a new murder-suicides To write about crime today is to write about mental illness, personality disorder, and drug abuse.

     The changing nature of crime and criminal behavior in this country reflects a population of people who are losing the ability to cope with modern life. Politicians, desperate to appear honest, competent, and useful, fall all over themselves with ridiculous, feel-good laws that are irrelevant to the sources of these social problems. Instead of more cops, SWAT teams, and gun restrictions, the country needs more psychiatrists. America is mentally ill.

     At nine in the morning on Friday, December 14, 2012, two elderly Mennonite sisters invited a nice looking young man, who said he was an insurance salesman, into their house. Both in their late eighties, the sisters lived in a brick, ranch-style home on Indiantown Road in rural Lancaster County in the heart of southeastern Pennsylvania's Amish country. (Mennonites, devoted to the plain, simple life, are more modern that their old-order Amish counterparts. Unlike the Amish, they do not practice shunning.)

     Dereck Taylor Holt, the 22-year-old man who entered the Clay Township house that morning, was not an insurance salesman. The former Mennonite, with no fixed address, chided the frightened sisters for being members of the church, and railed angrily against the religion. He then repeatedly shocked the elderly women with a stun gun, and between periods in which he read Bible passages to his victims, slapped, kicked, and punched them. Holt used duct tape to bind his captives' hands and feet, then ransacked the house in search of cash and valuables.

     During the bizarre, sadistic home invasion, an elderly Mennonite friend of the sisters came to the house and knocked on the door. Holt pulled this woman into the home where he shocked and assaulted her before binding the visitor in duct tape. Following the two-hour ordeal, Holt used household cleaning substances he took from the house to remove his latent fingerprints from the scene. Before leaving the ransacked house and the terrified women, Holt destroyed their Bible.

     At 4:20 that afternoon, the three Mennonite victims were discovered by a relative of the sisters who called 911. The women were rushed by ambulance to Ephrata Hospital. One of the victims had an heart attack, the other a broken shoulder, and the third was treated for bleeding on the brain. (The victims would survive their ordeals.)

     The next day, officers with the Northern Lancaster County Regional Police arrested Dereck Taylor Holt. Officers booked him into the Lancaster County Jail on charges of burglary, aggravated assault, unlawful restraint, theft, and a Pennsylvania hate crime called ethnic intimidation. The judge set Holt's bond at $1 million.

     In May 2013, Holt pleaded guilty to all of the charges except ethnic intimidation. At his August 2013 sentencing hearing before Lancaster County President Judge Joseph Madenspacher, Holt, in a five-minute statement, said: "I'm not a heartless being. I'm not an empty carcass incapable of contributing to society. But I can't defend my actions. This was the culmination of a long, two-year addiction to substances. These actions wouldn't have happened without my alarming abuse of mind-altering prescription medication."

     Judge Madenspacher sentenced Holt to 12 to 40 years in prison where he would receive psychiatric treatment.

The Sleeping Burglar

     A Florida burglary suspect was facing charges after police found him asleep in the bedroom of a home he was trying to burglarize. The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office said they were responding to a burglary call Monday September 8, 2014 at a residence in Nokomis, Florida when they found Dion Davis, 29, asleep on a bed next to a bag of stolen jewelry. A cleaning lady made the call to authorities after discovering the passed out suspect…

     The sheriff's office posted a photograph of a sleeping Davis on their Facebook page, accusing the suspect of "falling asleep on the job." Davis didn't even wake up when deputies arrived and started taking pictures.

"Florida Burglary Suspect Caught Napping on the Job," CBS News, September 10, 2014 

Intruder Shot and Killed by Homeowner

     Startled awake by a noise at the back of her home on January 29, 2015, a suburban Detroit woman woke her 74-year-old husband who in turned grabbed his handgun and headed toward the sound to find out what was going on…The homeowner came fact-to-face with--and was forced to shoot--an armed intruder.

    The burglar had entered the home through a window…He died at the scene.

     Southgate, Michigan Public Safety Director Thomas Coombs told a reporter with The Detroit News: "Based on the information we know presently, a grand jury would find the shooting justified. He was protecting his life."…

     Dewey Thompson, who has lived near the couple for more than a decade, told a local TV reporter that this intruder "won't break into anybody else's house. That's how I feel about it. I don't care."...

Chuck Ross, "74-Year-Old Michigan Homeowner Fatally Shoots Armed Intruder," The Daily Caller, January 30, 2015

Criminal Justice Quote: Knife-Wielding Degenrates Randomly Invade Home.

     Two young men broke into a randomly chosen suburban Seattle home and attacked an 18-year-old victim with knives. The assailants have been sentenced to more than 25 years each…Vincent Sisounong, 22, and 20-year-old Blessing Gainey earlier pleaded guilty to attempted first-dgree murder and first-degree burglary. They were sentenced Friday October 10, 2014.

     Prosecutors say the two were motivated by "pleasure and greed" when they attacked the teen who was staying at his family's Kirkland, Washington home on October 12, 2013. The victim, Deep Rewat, suffered severe cuts to his leg, shoulder and head and underwent surgery at Harborview Medical Center.

     Superior Court Judge Jean Rietschel called the crime "absolutely horrifying." A prosecutor told the judge the victim would have died had he not escaped and sought help from a neighbor. Outside the courtroom, Rewat said the sentencing was "definitely a big step in moving forward."

"2 Men Who Attacked Teen With Knives Gets 25 Years," chron.com, October 11, 2014