Holly MatkinCommerce, GA – A 20-year-old home invader ended up hiding in the closet of a 79-year-old woman’s home after she opened fire on him inside the residence.
The incident took place at the Gwendolyn Agard’s rural farmhouse just after 12 p.m. on Feb. 12, WXIA reported.
She and one other woman were inside the home when the suspect, later identified as 20-year-old Hans Edward Rogers, tried to open a window in the residence from the outside, the Athens Banner-Herald reported.
“She gets her gun and goes to the back door and peeps out the blinds and he is standing there,” Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum told the paper. “She told him in words I can’t tell you that he better not come in her house or she’d take care of things.”
“He didn’t have no pants on – he was naked!” Agard told 11Alive.
The woman called 911, and quietly told the dispatcher that someone was trying to get into her residence.
“They’re trying to get in the back door,” the frightened woman said in the 911 recording. “Hurry – please, please!”
Agard told the dispatcher that she was in the kitchen, keeping an eye on the door that Rogers was attempting to get through.
Suddenly, he shattered the glass and tried to make his way inside.
“Ok, c’mon now,” the elderly woman yelled at Rogers. “I got something for you!”
She fired a single round from her handgun, and Rogers took off running into the yard.
Agard returned to the phone and begged for officers to hurry.
“I’m just scared,” she said shakily. “Please, please dear God. Lord have mercy.”
But instead of leaving the area, the persistent burglar made his way up an outside staircase to an upper room, and forced entry by breaking a window, Sheriff Mangum told the Athens Banner-Herald.
He than began ransacking the upstairs rooms, according to the recording.
“You! Who are you?” the woman yelled defiantly at the intruder from the main floor. “When you come down those stairs, I’m gonna blow your damn brains out. I’m waitin’ on ya – come on!”
The terrified homeowner again whispered to the dispatcher, urging her to have officers come to her home faster.
The dispatcher assured her that at least 10 units were on their way to her, and told her she needed to put the gun down as soon as they showed up.
Suddenly, a commotion broke out in the background, and a second shot rang out.
“Ma’am, are you shootin’ at him again?” the dispatcher asked.
“Yes, ma’am!” Agard replied, just before police arrived.
Rogers was found cowering in an upstairs closet, and was taken into custody, WXIA reported.
He and the two women inside the residence were uninjured.
“She shot the first time with a .32 [caliber] and then she shot the second time with a .357 [caliber],” Sheriff Mangum told the Athens Banner-Herald.
“He made the comment to my mother, you know, ‘b—h, you’re trying to kill me,’ because, you know, she was shooting at him,” the woman’s daughter later told WXIA.
“She didn’t allow herself to become a victim,” the daughter added. “My mother’s a very strong woman…I don’t know if I could have handled that situation as well as she did.”
According to investigators, Rogers had taken his mother’s car from the Powder Springs area, but ran out of gas about 80 miles later, the Athens Banner-Herald reported.
He then made his way from Interstate 85 to the elderly woman’s farmhouse.
“I don’t know what would have happened if she didn’t fire the gun,” Sheriff Mangum said.
Rogers has been charged with felony offenses of home invasion and first-degree burglary, and also faces a misdemeanor count of criminal trespass, WXIA reported.