Armed Seniors Fight Back
Date: Jun 29, 2006 6:40 PM
FYI (copy below):
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/F2CF3C2FF1400B94862571990018F62F?OpenDocument
In East St. Louis, golden years are lit by flashes of gunfire
By Todd C. Frankel and Denise Hollinshed
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
06/25/2006

EAST ST. LOUIS ? After her 87-year-old next-door neighbor
fatally shot a burglar trying to come through the front
door, Eleanor Anderson – herself an older adult living alone
- began sleeping with two items under her pillow: a cell
phone and a gun.

The grandmother was intent on defending herself in a
neighborhood that has changed drastically since she was a
young girl. Anderson’s small, light-green childhood home is
protected by security bars and an alarm system. She also
has her gun. And when Anderson, 61, heard gunshots one
recent night, she was ready. She called police and waited
with her snubnose .38.

“Us being seniors, criminals don’t think we’d do anything,”
Anderson said, looking over her gold reading glasses and
standing in a room filled with pictures of her four
granddaughters. “We don’t play anymore. We won’t take this
lying down.”

There is something jarring about the image of a gray-haired
grandma (or grandpa) packing a pistol. And there is
something laudable in the image of an old-timer turning the
tables on a criminal.

“People despise crime in general,” said Illinois State
Police Master Sgt. James Morrisey, who investigated the
burglar shooting. “And elderly people are (thought) of as
easy prey for predators. I guess people like to see that
victims are not always victims.”

Widespread attention followed February’s shooting by
Anderson’s octogenarian neighbor, including intense media
coverage – even a mention in the recent American Hunter
magazine – and public pleas for the prosecutor to overlook
her lack of a gun permit.

Then, earlier this month, 74-year-old city resident Willie
Brown shot and wounded an intruder standing at his bedroom
door. More attention, and plenty of praise, followed.

These shootings are not unique to East St. Louis. But this
dilapidated city of 31,000 – including 3,400 people over 65
- has struggled for years with a soaring crime rate. The
city also has a sizable group of seniors who, for a variety
of reasons, have opted to stay in their homes even as they
grow more vulnerable and the area around them grows more
dangerous.

The two shootings, plus another two years ago when an
87-year-old resident fired at a burglar, have heartened
seniors. At a morning Bible study class held at the Clyde
C. Jordan Senior Citizen Center, older adults expressed
pride about the self-defense shootings, mixed with sadness
that criminals were preying on the elderly.

“People are fighting back,” said Robert Haines, 62.

“The philosophy of turning the other cheek is certainly
healthy. But not to the extent that you become a victim,”
said Willie Harris, 63.

A few blocks away, Henry McKinzie, 70, sat outside and
recalled how his former neighbor, Nina Sloan, shot at a man
trying to break into her kitchen on 88th Street in August
2004. She fired two shots through her kitchen door. The
burglar ran off. He was never caught.

McKinzie and his wife looked after the elderly woman for
years. She had no family and lived alone. She died in
March at age 89.

For McKinzie, the recent spate of seniors defending
themselves recalled Sloan’s actions.

“We’re proud of our elderly folk,” he said.

‘I’m in a foxhole’

Willie Brown also keeps his gun under his pillow.

On June 15, he was awakened by a knife-wielding burglar
outside his bedroom on Caseyville Avenue.

“I reached behind my back and whipped my gun from under my
pillow and said, ‘Take this .38,’ and I blasted him,”
recalled Brown, a retired Korean War veteran who keeps busy
mowing lawns.

The burglar fled but a suspect was arrested later by police.

Although Brown successfully defended himself, he was shaken
by the brazen crime.

“It seems like I’m in a foxhole in my own home,” he said.
“That’s pretty bad.”

East St. Louis Police Capt. Lenzie Stewart praised the
seniors for fending off the intruders, but he worries that
another elderly person might be hurt by their use of a
handgun. He said the city needs to do a better job of
protecting its elderly citizens. But he understands why the
seniors stay, despite the threats around them.

“Most of the residents in this city,” Stewart said, “they
don’t want to give up where they live and were raised.”

Jacksie Mae King rebuffed her daughter’s attempts to get her
to move from her small cream-colored house on a dead-end
street next to a set of railroad tracks.

King, who celebrated her 88th birthday last weekend, had
endured three burglaries in the last four years, said her
daughter, Pamela Paulette-Clark. The family installed more
window bars and a better alarm system after the first two
incidents. But King, who uses a walker, suffered a large
black-and-blue bruise on her face after a burglar in
December beat her, her daughter said.

So Paulette-Clark gave her mom a .32-caliber Colt revolver.
She told her how to use it and explained that the bullets
would shoot through a door.

On Feb. 7, King heard someone smashing a window on her
house. It was a little after 2 a.m. She heard the intruder
trying to open the front door. She fired at least two shots
into the door, hoping to scare him off, police said.

Several hours later, Paulette-Clark entered through the
house’s back door. She was coming to make her mom some
breakfast. Her mom was seated at the kitchen table. Next
to her was the gun.

Paulette-Clark recalled her mother saying, “We had guests
last night.”

She thought her mom meant mice. She hoped her mom wasn’t
trying to shoot at rodents.

But then she walked to the front door and looked outside.
There was a body.

Paulette-Clark said she walked back into the kitchen, called
police and told her mom, “Well, I have news for you – We
still have guests.”

King had no idea that she had killed the intruder, police
said. In May, the state’s attorney’s office announced it
would not prosecute King for any crime, including not having
a gun permit.

King is remorseful about the shooting, said her neighbor
Anderson.

“But it was going to be he or she,” said Anderson, who
sleeps better with her gun under the pillow.