79-year-old sends burglary suspect to the hospital
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79-year-old sends burglary suspect to the hospital
Homeowner fires warning shot into ceiling; bullet ricochets, hits intruder in head
By SARAH NEWELL
Record Staff Writer
Thursday, July 5, 2007
HICKORY - A would-be burglar got more than he bargained for after attempting to rob the home of a 79-year-old Hickory man late Tuesday.
At about 10:15 p.m., Dwight Cook and his wife were watching TV in the den of their home on Eighth Street Drive, NE. They heard banging on the sliding glass doors, followed by knocking on the front door, said Lt. Hank Guess with the Hickory Police Department.
When Cook got to the front door, no one was there. About three minutes later, he heard the sliding glass doors break. Cook sent his wife to a neighbor’s for safety and went to investigate, Guess said.
“He tried to throw a big flowerpot into the (glass) door ... but it bounced off, so he grabbed a rock and broke the door with that,” Cook said. “He came in and I saw him go into the spare bedroom.
“I went to get my .22 caliber gun that I keep in the hallway. I had it in my hand, and I asked him what he was doing. He turned around, and I saw that he had something in his hand. I didn’t know what it was, so I fired a warning shot up into the ceiling,” Cook said.
The bullet ricocheted off the ceiling and part of it hit the intruder in the forehead, Guess said. The suspect fell onto the bed, and Cook held the gun on him while he called 911.
“I wasn’t aiming for him. I’ve handled guns since I was 12, and (I) was a sharpshooter in the Army. If I wanted to hit him, I would have. If he’d moved, the next shot would have stopped him,” Cook said. “I stood to the side of him until the police got there.”
The intruder, Derek Scott Frenceschini, 23, of Hickory, was arrested for felony first-degree burglary. He was transported to Frye Regional Medical Center, where he was hospitalized for the bullet fragment in his skull and a fractured right hand injured during the break-in.
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