Work On Your Aim, Damnit

American Scofflaw
Lisa Gallegos was taking a bath Wednesday morning when she heard a knock at the front door of her Eldorado-area home.

Assuming the person would leave, the 41-year-old construction contractor ignored it. Then she saw a shadow move past her bathroom window. Thinking it might be her father-in-law, who lives nearby and sometimes brings over paperwork, Gallegos called him on her cell phone. However, he said he wasn't there. He offered to come over, but Gallegos said she wasn't worried.

Next she heard a car engine and thought the person at the door was leaving. But the shadow passed by her bathroom window again.

"Then I hear a big bang," Gallegos said in a phone interview Wednesday evening, "and I knew someone was breaking into my house."

She jumped out of the bathtub, wrapped herself in a towel and grabbed the loaded .44 Magnum revolver she keeps by her bed.

"I thought, 'Someone is robbing my house and I'm not going to let this happen,' " Gallegos said. "I work hard for my stuff."

Holding her towel with one hand and the gun in the other, Gallegos crept quietly to the area of the home where she could hear two people rummaging around. One man was in her daughter's bedroom, while the other was in her office. Gallegos concentrated first on the man in her daughter's room.

"So I pulled up the gun and aimed it at the guy — he didn't see me — and I said, 'Get the (expletive) out of my house,' " she said. "He looks up and he comes toward me running. I was about to pull the trigger, and he sees the gun, and he goes to my right and out the door he came in."

The man had parked his dark blue, late 1990s sport-utility vehicle in her home's courtyard, and she saw him slam one of the doors shut. Gallegos said she was afraid he was going to retrieve a weapon, so she fired a round at his car. The man jumped into the vehicle, spun the wheels and drove out of the courtyard.

Gallegos then turned her attention to the man in the office, who shut the door when he heard the gunshot. She said she could hear him trying to get out a window. She went outside and saw the man in the SUV driving around her home, so she fired three more shots at him.

The man in the office fled out the window, and Gallegos saw him running across a field toward the SUV. Gallegos fired one shot at him and watched him fall to the ground. The man then got back on his feet and jumped into the SUV, and the vehicle sped away.