‘I just let loose.’ Homeowner uses AK-47 to kill burglars who shot at his friend, cops say

Miami Herald

A Memphis, Tenn., man’s Friday night turned gruesome when he and a family friend came home to find two gunmen rummaging through the house.

“I see my house being ransacked and the dog was still going hysterical in the cage,” the homeowner, who was not identified over fears for his safety, told WMC. That’s when one of the two intruders noticed the homeowner and his friend and said “Hey, they are here,” the homeowner told the station.  

“He picked up his weapon, turned around and points them at me,” the homeowner told the Fox 13. “Two pistols.”

One of the guns jammed, however, and the intruders ran toward the back of the house, the man told WATN. By this point his friend had also run out of the home, and the intruders had gotten at least one weapon to work and were firing at the friend, the man told the station.

As the shooting went on, the homeowner pulled out a weapon of his own from a closet – a “personal” AK-47 rifle.

“I don’t know what’s going on but I know I’m going to defend my life to the best of my ability,” he told WMC. “I just let loose, not knowing it hit both of them,” the man told Fox 13.

When officials arrived, both 28-year-old Azell Witherspoon and 17-year-old Demond Robinson were pronounced dead, according to the Commercial Appeal. Police detained the homeowner but concluded that the shooting was in self-defense and did not press charges, according to the paper.

The homeowner told WMC this wasn’t his first brush with violence, and that his home had been shot up less than a year ago.

“Gun crime, violence, it’s getting out of hand in Memphis,” the homeowner told WATN. He told the station he intends to move away from the area.

“We are living in a day and time where we don’t use much wisdom. Like the young folks…, it’s just like they don’t care,” a next-door-neighbor told WREG after the shooting.

The homeowner told WATN he didn’t mean for anyone to die, but everything happened very quickly.

“I was just fast, rational thinking,” he told the station. “It was them or it was me, and unfortunately they was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

It was only part of a bloody weekend for Memphis. Nine people were shot and four killed in total over 31 hours in the city, the Commercial Appeal reported.