Jon Sokol wasn’t trying to be a hero when he confronted a burglary suspect who had brazenly broken through the front door of his home in St. Paul.<\/p>\n
Sokol, 49, said his adrenaline was flowing as he crept up the stairs, revolver in hand, from the basement bedroom he shares with his wife.<\/p>\n
His wife had been awoken at about 4:45 a.m. Wednesday by their alarm system and initially thought Sokol had — again<\/em> — opened the door to get the newspaper without turning off the alarm. But there he was, sleeping right next to her.<\/p>\nThen she heard footsteps. “I think there’s somebody in the house,” Sokol recalled her whispering. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘Noooo.'”<\/p>\n
Sokol said he’d gotten to the second step when he saw somebody cross the room upstairs. “Oh my, there is<\/em> somebody in our house,” he thought.<\/p>\n“I grabbed our gun, which we keep for protection,” he said.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Of course, it was all a terrible misunderstanding.\u00a0 He was just a Japanese exchange student, or a drunk college kid or…<\/p>\n
…or….<\/p>\n
…er, no.\u00a0 He was a dirtbag with a criminal record longer than Bill McGuire’s portfolio of backdated options, armed – according to the Saint Paul police – with a knife and possible a fireplace poker.<\/p>\n
\n“As I stepped around the corner, he hit me … right between the eyes,” Sokol said. “And I fired the gun.<\/p>\n
“Down on the ground he went and I insisted, in a not very nice way, that he not move,” he said. “I held him at gunpoint until the police arrived.”<\/p>\n
Michael G. Spencer, 31, of St. Paul, has been charged in Ramsey County District Court with two felony counts of burglary. He has a lengthy criminal record, including convictions for theft and burglary as recently as last year.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Now, all joshing aside for the moment – nobody claimed that having a gun was a panacaea.\u00a0 Having to use a gun to defend oneself is pretty much always the second <\/em>worst option available to you.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n[Sokol] ended up with a small cut on his forehead and a somewhat shattered sense of security. He and his wife dead-bolted themselves in their bedroom Wednesday night, and still he stayed awake all night keeping watch while his wife slept.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
But it could have been much, much worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As, indeed, Sokol seems to realize:<\/p>\n
\n“It’s a happy ending, I guess,” Sokol said. “The good guy’s still alive, for the time being. And the bad guy is captured. It turned out like you see in the movies.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Perhaps.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Beats the hell out of the alternative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another law-abiding homeowner with a gun became possessed by the spirit of his\/her firearm, and ran amok, killing indiscriminately. Well, no.\u00a0 Actually, a Saint Paul homeowner apprehended a violent scumbag with a knife who’d broken into his house. The really amazing part about this story?\u00a0\u00a0The Strib carried it: Jon Sokol wasn’t trying to be a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,22],"tags":[346],"class_list":["post-2518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-victim-disarmament","tag-a-good-guy-with-a-gun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57949,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2518\/revisions\/57949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}