Homeowner has shootout with burglars

A Spokane man grabbed his rifle early Tuesday when he heard a crash in his attached garage. Minutes later, the South Hill resident exchanged gunshots with three men he had caught burglarizing his home, police said.

Then he called 911.

Tuesday morning’s shooting was the second time in two weeks that a Spokane resident has fired on an intruder, and that concerns Spokane police.

“Our caution to the public is before you go out with a gun, call police,” Deputy Chief Al Odenthal said during a press conference. “This could have had tragic results.”

The reminder from police comes three months after the department acknowledged that nearly 30 high-priority calls, including assaults in progress, weren’t answered within the usual three- to four-minute response time between January and September of 2005.

With residents firing on intruders and a recent fatal shooting of a would-be robber at a store in Stateline, police are emphasizing to residents that officers are ready and equipped to handle these types of situations.

Regarding the residential incidents Tuesday and on Dec. 26, Acting Spokane Police Chief Jim Nicks thinks the citizens responded the way they did because they believed they were in immediate danger – not because they didn’t think police would respond.

“It was them or me,” said Bob Boisjolie, 65, who awoke early Dec. 26 to the sound of someone breaking into his north Spokane home. “When you hear a guy saying ‘Get him, get him,’ what do you do? I think we probably would have been dead if I hadn’t had a gun.”

Boisjolie fired his gun at two intruders, hitting one of them, he said. “I think more people should have guns in their home, so these guys would think twice about breaking in.”

Spokane residents who arm themselves against intruders, and even fire at them, are within their rights to do so, officials said. But if it’s possible to call 911 first, that’s what police want residents to do.

A majority of the time, police can drop whatever else they are doing to answer a call where someone’s life is in danger.

“There’s no absolute on anything,” Nicks said. “There are times when we have all our people tied up in a priority-one call and another one comes in, but that doesn’t happen often.”

In the Tuesday incident, police responded to a home in the 4200 block of South Sherman Street about 1:30 a.m. after the resident and two neighbors called 911, Odenthal said. Neighbors had heard the gunshots.

Two suspects fled in a car, and a third took off on foot after the shooting, police said. A brief hunt and further investigation resulted in the arrest of all three men by Tuesday evening.

Phillip Chen, 25, of Spokane Valley, was charged with first-degree armed burglary and drive-by shooting; a 17-year-old youth and a third suspect, whose identities were not immediately available, will face similar charges, officials said.

Odenthal added that the area where the burglary occurred is not considered a hot spot for crime.