12-Year-Old Shoots, Kills Home Invader: Cops

Police in North Carolina say that a 12-year-old boy shot and killed an intruder Saturday during a home invasion robbery, ABC reports. A 73-year-old resident of the apartment where the attempted robbery occurred was shot by one of the suspects, the Goldsboro Police Department said in a statement, and was being treated for non-life-threatening injuries. Investigators say that two masked people forced their way into the apartment around 1am, demanded money, and shot the resident, a woman, in the leg, per WTVD. The robbers fled after the 12-year-old boy shot at them in self-defense.

Responding officers located Khalil Herring, 19, nearby. Herring had a gunshot wound and is believed to be one of the robbers. He was taken to a hospital, where he died. “They came in the house—I open the door, I open it, and they came in there. One guy had a gun,” Randolph Bunn, the son of the injured woman and great uncle of the 12-year-old, tells WTVD. If the boy hadn’t acted, Bunn says, the armed intruder “would have shot him too. He would have shot me too. He would have killed us all.” An investigation is ongoing, police said, but charges against the boy are not expected. (More home invasion stories.)