MI) Detroit woman tells of self-defense shooting 04-29-04

http://www.freep.com/news/locway/shot29_20040429.htm

Intruder’s killer: ‘I had no choice’
Detroit woman tells of self-defense shooting
April 29, 2004
BY BEN SCHMITT
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Their eyes locked.

Then Barbara Holland saw the barrel of the gun.

She lay on the floorin her house after an intruder had knocked her down
while pushing through her side door. While on her back, she drew a 9mm
handgun from a holster on her waist.

Her assailant’s glare suddenly changed.
“He looked surprised,” Holland said.

Then she pulled the trigger.

Holland, a 38-year-old Detroit business owner and mother, remembers
firing three shots. Detroit police told her she fired six.
Either way, she killed the 42-year-old man, Clabe Hunt — who had shoved
intoher home on Troester, near Hayes, on Detroit’s east side at 8:10
p.m. April 13.

He was an ex-con with five children and was armed with a loaded,
nickel-plated semiautomatic handgun that was not registered to him.
Autopsy reports indicate he was shot in the head multiple times. He
never fired his weapon.

Police officers said Holland’s gun was licensed, and they determined the
shooting to be self-defense. Wayne County prosecutors continue to
investigate, which is routine in most fatal shootings.

Citizens defending themselves are precisely what backers of Michigan’s
controversial concealed-weapons law had in mind when they worked to pass
the legislation in 2001. The law makes it easier for anyone without
felony convictions or mental illnesses to obtain a permit to carry
concealed weapons.

“The more the criminal element knows that Michigan residents can protect
themselves and will protect themselves, the more crime goes down,” said
state Sen. Alan Cropsey, R-Dewitt.

Some opponents of the law predicted a large increase in
self-defense-type shootings. Gov.
Jennifer Granholm, who opposed the measure when she was state attorney
general, has acknowledged that has not occurred.

Even a justified shooting takes its toll, though, as Holland has
discovered.

She is slowly coming to terms with the fact that she took a life.
Sometimes she has tinges of remorse. Mostly she feels as though she had
to protect herself and her 15-year-old daughter, who was home that
night, hiding in the living room after the shots.

Hunt’s family members are also hurting. They want more answers from
police.

“Was someone else with him? Where is his car?” said Hunt’s 40-year-old
sister, who requested anonymity because she is the owner of a business.

“I’m not necessarily mad at her, but I don’t know enough. Why unload the
gun on him?”

‘Like Friday the 13th’

Holland still remembers the words of the man whom she says she never met
before he charged her.

Using a vulgarity, Hunt said: “I got you, I got you,” Holland recalled.
“I kept wondering if he was talking to me, but he came running right up
at me,” she said. “It didn’t seem real.”

The shooting was the first in an unusual night of violence, even in
Detroit, which is experiencing a rise in homicides this year. In four
hours, nine people were shot. Four, including Hunt, were killed.

“It was like Friday the 13th,” Holland said. “Only it was Tuesday the
13th.”

When police homicide officers arrived at Holland’s home, Hunt’s feet
were inside her side entrance. The rest of his body lay in the driveway,
investigators said. Hunt still had a gun in his right hand.

Holland’s daughter, Tabitha, heard her mother scream, “Oh, Lord,” as the
shots rang out. She eventually ran outside, thinking the worst.
Instead, she found her mother alive.

“I had normal feelings about taking a life, if you can call that
normal,” Barbara Holland said.
“But I’m not losing sleep over it any more. I really had no choice.”

‘I had a strange feeling’

Holland owns a small used-car lot on Hayes and Troester with rent-to-own
deals. She employs three workers and has about 20 cars and a couple of
motorcycles for sale.

What sticks with Holland is something she is calling divine
intervention.

Before she closed April 13, Holland said, two suspicious men came into
the office asking about cars and then a Kawasaki motorcycle.
One man said he had $1,000 in cash.

Holland said she told him to go outside and pick out a car.

“But he never left,” she said. “He just stared at me.”

Then the man asked about the motorcycle inside the office. Holland told
him it cost $2,500.
He asked about a payment plan but let the matter drop. “Then, they both
just left,” she said. “I had a strange feeling and I said a prayer.”

She then checked to make sure the gun, which she has owned since 1992,
was loaded.

Holland got into her 1998 Ford Escort station wagon and drove home. She
pulled into her drivewayand walked toward her side door. A video
cassette fell out of her laptop computer case.

As she bent down to pick it up, she saw Hunt running toward her,
pointing the gun.

She screamed for help and tried slamming the door. Hunt blocked the door
with his foot, pushing it open. Holland fell back onto a landing leading
up to her kitchen.

Then she fired.

When Hunt’s funeral took place a week later at Swanson Funeral Home on
West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, Holland closed her shop.

“I did it out of respect for his family,” she said. “I don’t know them,
but I thought it was the right thing to do.”

Hunt’s wife, Cynthia, did not attend the funeral.
She could not be reached.

“It’s been hard on everybody,” Hunt’s sister said. “We had just seen him
two days earlier, on Easter. He called me on the day of his death and
asked me to watch his kids. I’m not saying my brother was a great guy,
but he didn’t bring his problems near us.”

Hunt’s five children range in age from 27 to 2, his sister said.

He lived near 8 Mile and I-75 and was not working. Before going to
prison in 1985 for armed robbery, he had attended the now-closed
Northeastern High School in Detroit but never graduated.

He was released on parole in 1996, went back in a year later for
violating parole and spent 1999 through 2002 in a halfway house,
according to state Department of Corrections records.

Hunt’s sister is still baffled that police have not been able to find
her brother’s red 1990 Ford Tempo. The missing car makes her think
someone else was involved in the robbery attempt.

Police said they are still looking for the car but have no evidence of
other suspects.

Meanwhile, Holland said she’s considering selling her business and
moving west.

“I think I’m ready to move on now,” she said. “California.”