It was a lazy Sunday afternoon in Azalea Park, Florida. Then, Virginia Morrison, 69, heard a noise.
“I heard the door handle kind of rattle. And then the door opened, and the guy stepped in my house,” she said, according to WESH-TV.
“I didn’t know who he was. I looked at him, and I said, ‘Who are you, and what do you want?’ [He said] nothing. The whole time the guy was here he never said one word, and I never saw his eyes move. Total blank,” she said.
The man was later identified as Ezequiel Rosario-Torres, 38. Morrison said she tried to swat the intruder with a broom, but that failed.
“I didn’t know what he was going to do, but I knew I was going to protect myself. I’m a fighter. I’m going to defend myself,” Morrison said, according to Fox News.
This is why our 2ndA is so important. In any other country she’d just be another rape/murder statistic.
70-year-old Florida woman shoots, kills suspected home intruder: ‘I’m a fighter’https://t.co/WMWXOTkswp
— Africanjon@live.com (@Africanjonlive2) May 24, 2022
Morrison ran to the bedroom and yelled to her partner Charlie, who is almost 80, that someone was in the house.
“I looked at him, I said, ‘Get your gun!’ because he had a 45 laying on the bed. ‘Get your gun,'” she said, WESH-TV reported. “That gun never fazed this guy. Just a total blank.”
She said a warning shot from Charlie and a call to 911 produced no reaction from the intruder.
“I said, ‘I’m getting my d*** gun,’ so I went to my bedroom and got my gun. I went out the back door, and I came to the fence, and he sees me. He starts toward me,” she said. “I fired a shot above him. ‘Back off, dude, I’ll shoot you.’ He just keeps coming toward me. So I shot him.”
At first, she was not sure what happened.
“I didn’t realize I hit him, but once I looked, he had a hole in his t-shirt, and I thought I got him,” she said, according to Fox.
After the police and first responders arrived, Rosario-Torres was taken to a hospital, where he died. Morrison said she did not want to cause anyone’s death.
“I have feelings,” she said. “I have God in my life. That’s my main thing, wondering if God’s going to forgive me for taking a life. It bothers me.”
Morrison said it was the first time she had fired the gun.
“Keep your doors locked. Anybody can walk into your house now,” she said, according to WKMG-TV.
“I feel bad for his family. But you just can’t walk in people’s homes,” Morrison said, WESH-TV reported.
The Florida State Attorney’s Office will decide if there are criminal charges to be filed.
Across America, homeowners rely upon the Second Amendment for protection, as noted by Amy Swearer in an Op-Ed for the Heritage Foundation.
“The right to keep and bear arms is based on the natural, immutable right to defend oneself and one’s liberties from crime and tyranny,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, too many well-intentioned people today advocate severely restricting the ability of law-abiding Americans to defend themselves and others with the most effective firearms.”
“They believe that Americans rarely use firearms to protect their rights and liberties, and they think commonly proposed gun control laws will meaningfully address gun-related violence. But the reality is quite different.”
“Americans use guns in self-defense on far more occasions than criminals use them to commit crimes. Yet those defensive gun uses rarely receive the amount of attention given to criminal gun uses,” she said, calling everyday Americans who defend their homes “underreported good guys using a gun.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
