Robber Shot in the Eye After Tussle with Feisty Grandma
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Jupiterimages/Thinkstock(TAMPA, Fla.) – A robber was shot in the eye by his own gun during a struggle with a feisty Florida grandmother.
Teresa Martin, 50, said she was alarmed by a “loud, crashing” noise early Saturday morning at her Tampa home.
“I thought my roommate had gotten up and stumbled into something,” she told ABC News. “I got off my bed and the next thing I knew, my bedroom door flew open and there was a man standing there with a gun pointed directly at my face.”
That man was identified by police as Leonard Porter, 34.
“He said, ‘ I know you have money.’ He kept insisting, ‘I know there’s money,’” Martin said.
When she told him she had none, she said the suspect grabbed her by the hair, threw her on the bed and said, “[Y]ou’re fixin’ to die!”
“The next thing I know, I heard him cock the gun and I saw his hand on the trigger. I started thinking about my granddaughter and my son,” Martin said. “I decided I was going to go to town and not go out without a fight.”
Martin started kicking and punching. A few seconds later, the suspect was on the floor, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the eye.
After she woke up her roommate Jerry, who called authorities, Martin had a few words with her attacker.
“I smiled as big as I could and said, ‘Karma’s a mother, ain’t it?’” she said.
Martin said she believes Porter was sent by Johnny Acevedo, her daughter-in-law’s sister’s husband, because he knew she had received two recent checks.
Acevedo and a woman named Audra Steadman have been arrested in connection with the botched robbery, Tampa police said.
Porter, who was wanted by police for a previous home invasion, is in critical condition.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio