A Vietnam veteran who uses a walker to get around also used his .45-caliber handgun last week to scare off a couple of would-be burglars trying to break into his home.
And now, 68-year-old Joseph Sapienza of Gastonia, N.C., is issuing a warning to anyone else thinking about robbing him.
“[If] you try to break in my house again, I will be waiting on you,” Sapienza wrote on a note now hanging on his front door. “Enter at your own risk.”
According to the Gaston Gazette, Sapienza was at home Thursday evening when someone began breaking prying the lock off of his front door.
Sapienza, who has been disabled since 1980 when he was hit by a car while riding a bicycle, says he grabbed his .45 and put it in a holster on the side of his walker.
The Marine Corps went down the hallway of his house and announced that he had a gun. He opened the front door and saw two masked men standing outside.
“It was like a ‘Keystone Cops’ scene,” Sapienza told the Gazette. “When they saw the .45, one ran one way up the street, and the other went the other way.”
“People see me as an easy mark,” Sapienza said, adding that someone tried to rob him two years ago. “They probably thought, ‘We’re going to get this man’s money.'”
Sapienza is confident that he can deal with anyone else who tries to bust into his home by using the gun, though he hopes it doesn’t come to that.
“I’m pretty proficient with it,” he said of the weapon, while adding “I don’t want to have to shoot anybody else.”