A 73-year-old Lilburn woman shot through a door as a burglar approached her bedroom and then she chased him out of her house, continuing to fire, according to a police report.
Police found evidence that Hilda Douglas hit whoever was in her house earlier this month. Police found blood on the ground.
According to a report on the incident obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Thursday, Douglas said someone rang her doorbell around 9:45 p.m. on Aug. 3. She looked out her bedroom window and spotted a truck parked nearby in the middle of the intersection of Falconhurst Drive and Hewatt Road.
Douglas called 911 and waited.
Moments later, however, she heard glass shattering and then the pottery she placed in front of her backdoor breaking so she grabbed her gun.
According to the report, Douglas stayed in the bedroom but she “could see light from a flashlight getting closer from under the door. When she heard the doorknob turn, she fired one shot through the door.
“She then heard a scream on the other side of the door and the subject fled downstairs. Douglas went downstairs and saw the subject in the kitchen looking for the back door. She fired several more shots in the general direction of the subject as he ran outside.”
While detectives were still investigating at Douglas’s house, Jamie Christoper Lewis showed up at the Eastside Medical Center in Snellville with a non-life threatening gunshot wound to the chest. He was charged with burglary.
Lewis has been released from jail on an $11,200 bond.
“We find it likely that he just intended to break in and steal from the house,” Cpl. Jake Smith, spokesman for Gwinnett County police, told Sandra Parrish of WSB radio. “Unbeknownst to the suspect, the victim was home and she was armed.”
On Thursday, Douglas was in the parking lot for the Gwinnett County Police Department handing out food as thanks. When reporters approached, however, she refused to talk and quickly drove away.
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