Police in the Philadelphia suburb of Abingdon Township, Pennsylvania have charged a man with robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and illegally carrying a firearm after he allegedly trailed a woman from a nearby casino and tried to rob her inside her home.
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Cops were called out to the residence early Monday morning on reports of a home invasion, and when they arrived they found Khabir Shepard on the front lawn of the home with gunshot wounds to his arm and back. The homeowner told police that she had just gotten home from a nearby casino when a stranger was able to get inside the residence and demanded her money at gunpoint.
The man, identified by police as [Khabir] Shepard, allegedly pushed the woman on the ground and grabbed her purse from the dining room table.
Police said the woman yelled for help, waking up her son who was in the back bedroom. According to police, the woman’s son grabbed his legally owned gun and ran out to see what the commotion was. After the son saw Shepard had a firearm on him, police said, he fired two shots at him in defense of his mother’s safety.
The bullets hit Shepard in the back and arm, but he ran out of the home before collapsing on the front lawn, according to police.
Police then arrived at the home on Horace Street and took Shepard into custody. Authorities said a handgun believed to be Shepard’s was also found on the front lawn.
At last report, Shepard was out of the hospital and being held in the Montgomery County Correctional Facility on $250,000 cash bail.
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Neither the homeowner nor her son were injured in the encounter with the home invader, and the son isn’t expected to face any charges for shooting the man who was threatening his mother’s life.
“We do know the suspect was watching her, she was targeted,” Abington Township Police Chief Patrick Molloy said. “This was not a random crime. They knew there was cash in that purse.”
Police are warning others to be aware of their surroundings, especially people who are transporting cash.
“I would say if you are at a casino and you win money, take some precautions. … There are bad guys who put a lot of work into this,” Molloy said.
That’s good advice, but it’s also a fact that most casinos and legal gambling establishments are “gun-free zones”, by policy if not state statute, which means that it may not be possible for folks to have their firearm with them for self-defense. Some establishments even ban firearms from the parking lots or garages on their property, so even leaving your gun locked up while you play the slots or roll the dice at a craps table isn’t an option.
Given the large amounts of cash floating around a casino, I can understand why those businesses would want to ban guns from the gaming floor (though a “no guns allowed” sign isn’t going to prevent an armed robbery from taking place). Making the entire property a “gun-free zone”, on the other hand, just encourages criminals to prey on unsuspecting and unarmed individuals.
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In this case, thankfully, the attack on the woman didn’t take place until after she was inside her home, which allowed her son to hear her screams for help and quickly respond to the threat. If the armed robber had accosted her in her driveway or in the casino parking lot, however, it’s likely that he would have gotten away with her cash, and could have easily hurt or killed her in the process. Gun-free zones don’t stop criminals intent on carrying out their plans. They only stop the rest of us from defending ourselves from the predators in our midst.
