Hunting season has been in full swing for a couple of weeks, at least in Niagara County, but the prey isn't deer or turkeys. Burglars have been dodging bullets.
Homeowners are mad as heck, and they're fighting back at the intruders.
Three times in Niagara County over a one-week period — and once in Buffalo last April — homeowners confronted home invaders with gunfire.
Not all the shots found their marks, but the four incidents left one burglar dead, another shot in the chest, and one homeowner who didn't hit anyone charged with two felonies.
Dennis F. Cherry of Royalton, the homeowner facing the felonies, a soft-spoken and polite Army veteran, said he was protecting himself from a home burglary at about 11:20 a.m. Jan. 21, when he fired 15 shots from a military-style assault rifle at the vehicle of a fleeing intruder.
This shooting occurred during the second burglary in three days at his Akron Road home, and Cherry said he believed the two burglars — one was his stepdaughter — had stolen a handgun. He claimed he knew they were on drugs, knew they were coming back and was afraid they were armed.
"I wasn't trying to kill anyone," he said in an interview in his Lockport attorney's office last week. "I didn't fire at the windshield. I fired at the radiator and the tires.
"I didn't want to wait two days later and have him come back and beat my head in with a baseball bat," Cherry added. "When people get into drugs, they don't care what they do. I wanted to stop him. What if the cops came eight minutes later and the cops had a problem with him? I don't know. I've gone through this in my mind a thousand times."
But the 63-year-old Cherry, a retired Harrison Radiator employee who served in Vietnam 38 years ago, now faces felony charges of reckless endangerment and criminal mischief for firing 15 shots. Fourteen of the 15 struck the vehicle. |