An Ohio criminal’s burglary attempt ended with him pleading for his life when the 73-year-old homeowner emerged from a bedroom with a gun.
Daniel McGown, a retired attorney, says at around 5:15 a.m. he heard someone ringing his front and rear doorbells, then knocking on his door of his Akron home.
His home had been broken into several days earlier when he was out of town. McGown suspected the burglar was back for more.
After several minutes of doorbell ringing and door knocking to see if anyone was home, McGown could then hear someone force open the still-broken door, knocking over ladders he leaned against it, and enter the home.
McGown, a concealed carry permit holder, pulled out the Sig Sauer 9 mm pistol he kept under his pillow and slipped downstairs into the living room.
That’s where McGown surprised 51-year-old Thomas Gaffney.
“My home was being violated and here was a guy doing it in my presence,” McGown tells WEWS. “Here’s the guy, and I just wanted to make him stop doing that.”
“If you don’t move, I won’t shoot you,'” McGown announced, before telling Gaffney he was calling the police.
“Please do call the police. Please don’t shoot me,” McGown begged.
But McGown had a problem. His cellphone was upstairs in the bedroom.
“I told him, ‘you’re going to walk ahead of me and we’re going to go upstairs where I can get my cellphone and call the police,'” McGown said.
“I told him to get down on his knees in front of the bed and lay down on it with his arms out, and I called the police and they showed up, and there he was,” said McGown.
McGown says he’s thankful the incident ended with without him having to shoot Gaffney. “If he had reached his hand towards a pocket or something where I thought that he might have had one of the guns that went away last night or the night before, then I might have been tempted to do that.”
Police arrested Gaffney and took him into custody. In his pockets they found what appeared to be a crack pipe, as well a box of ammunition just like the kind stolen from McGown’s home several days earlier.
Gaffney is charged with burglary and possession of drug paraphernalia. Police suspect he was involved in the earlier burglary of McGown’s home.
