A Tampa mother held a home intruder at gunpoint as she frantically called 911 for a half-hour until police finally showed up.
Lauren Richards called 911 at 12:41 a.m. to report someone prowling around her home.
While waiting for police to arrive, Richards tells her local NBC affiliate her pet pig began sniffing near the garage suspiciously. Realizing the intruder was in her garage and preparing to break in to her home, she took action.
Confronting the man in her garage, he held him at gunpoint and placed a second call to 911 at 12:54 a.m., 13 minutes later. Police had not yet arrived.
“I have a gun pointed and I need the police to show up immediately,” Richards told Channel 8. “I called 10 minutes ago and nobody has shown up.”
She continued to hold him at gunpoint until police finally arrived at 1:07 a.m., nearly a half-hour after she initially called.
As she held the intruder at gunpoint for nearly 15 minutes, she continued to ask 911 dispatchers why police were failing to show up.
She contacted neighbor Melodie Nieves, who also called 911 and whose husband Hector rushed next door with a gun to help detain the intruder.
” According to the county, the recent average response time for such a call is around 10 minutes and 31 seconds. But in this incident, it was 26 minutes,” Channel 8 reports.
It took police longer than that to report to the second call, even though it was dispatched as a burglary in process.
“Had she not had a gun and been ready to protect herself or call the neighbors, she might be standing here cause who knows what would happen,” said Nieves.