A quick-thinking 83-year-old Mableton man foiled a home invader's plans when he escaped being tied up and shot the bandit.
John Parrish saved the day Tuesday with a pair of scissors and a .22-caliber revolver, police and a grateful son-in-law said.
"John Wayne is what we call him now," said Danny Carlson, a tennis instructor who owns the home and was shot in the right calf Tuesday as the octogenarian and the suspect exchanged gunfire.
"I don't know what that guy would've done if he [Parrish] not come up here."
Tuesday before 1 p.m., an armed man entered the basement of Carlson's house on Nickajack Road and encountered Parrish's wife, Margaret.
The Parrishes occupy the basement's in-law suite.
She'd heard her puppies barking and went to the bathroom to check on them, Carlson said.
"As soon as she cracked the door, he grabbed her by the hair, put the gun in her ear and said, 'If you make a sound, I'll blow your brains out,' " John Parrish said Wednesday afternoon.
The intruder forced Parrish's wife to the ground, tied her hands and feet with duct tape, and put a blanket over her head.
Parrish said he went to find his wife, and soon met the same fate —- lying facedown with his hands taped behind his back.
"He told me, 'I don't want to hurt you. I just want your money,' " Parrish said.
He told the invader he didn't have any.
As the intruder stalked through the house, the retired freight dockworker hustled to free himself, twisting and wriggling his arms first, then crawling to the kitchen for scissors to cut his legs free.
"I had to get my gun," Parrish said.
Meanwhile, the intruder found a 10-year-old girl in the first-floor living room waiting to continue her tennis lessons with Carlson.
"He grabbed her and asked if anyone else was in the house," said Carlson's son, Chad, who came home from North Carolina after the incident.
The girl led the intruder to Danny Carlson's office on the second floor of the house. Carlson said, "When I looked up, he had his arm around her and the gun pointed at me."
The invader bound Carlson and covered his head with a blanket. "Then I just heard shooting," he said.
Parrish had found his gun, loaded it and sneaked upstairs. "I shot three times and heard him groan," Parrish said.
The intruder fired back twice, hitting Carlson once in the back of his right calf and just missing Parrish.
Police say the suspect, described as a 6-foot-tall, roughly 250-pound black man in his 40s or 50s, is at large and may be wounded.
Carlson was treated for the gunshot wound and a shattered tibia.
Parrish noted one thing he would do differently. "My wife never did want me to keep my gun loaded," he said, "but now she said she does."
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