No Charges For Woman Who Shot 12-Year-Old Vandal

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Sep 29, 2010 2:45PM

A woman, either 68 years old if you believe the Tribune or 74 years old if you believe the Sun-Times, will not face charges after she shot and wounded a 12-year-old vandal who, along with a 13-year-old accomplice, harassed her. The woman, who lives in the 7600 block of South Coles Avenue, returned home from grocery shopping to find her windows broken. After calling the police to report the vandalism, the boys returned and began yelling obscenities. That's when the woman came out of her house and shot at the boys, striking the 12-year-old in the shoulder. After investigating the incident, police decided not to charge the woman but did charge both boys, as juveniles, with aggravated assault of a person over the age of 60.

Here's where it gets interesting, though. The 12-year-old's grandmother insists the boys did nothing wrong: "He and his friend were walking down the street. And they saw a window broken at a woman's house, and as they passed by, they said she came out shooting. I hope they took her to jail, I hope so, something's wrong with her." But that contradicts statements from others in the neighborhood who said the boys have been terrorizing the woman for some time.

''The little boys have been harassing her, coming in her yard. They burned her grill up last year,'' neighbor Hilda Brunt said. ''They would curse her out. I told her last week we need to go and talk to his parents."

Neighbor Jason Jones, who was helping to board up the house while the woman was in custody, said he often had to confront the boys to get them to leave the woman alone.

''They did terrorize her,'' Tnoila McCoy said. ''Before, they tried to burn her house down."

Another neighbor said she had seen the two boys throwing things from on top of the garage an hour or so before the incident. Not to say the boys are automatically guilty or that the shooting was justifiable. That's not for us to judge. But if the neighbors' accounts are to be believed, these boys weren't exactly the angels the one grandmother has painted them out to be.