A rural Oklahoma man says that if it wasn’t for his gun he doesn’t know what would have happened to him and his wife during a Wednesday night home invasion.
Eddie and Cindy Gilmore were in the living room of their Marshall County home when three masked men barged in and demanded they get down on the ground.
“Three people ran in and grabbed my wife,” Gilmore told KXII. “She stood up.”
The men took a screaming Cindy Gilmore into the couples’ bedroom at gunpoint and ordered him to lay on the ground near his couch.
“And I got over between the couch and the coffee table and when I did I went down and put my arm on the coffee table to kind of hide myself and I pulled the drawer open, which I had a gun in there,” Gilmore described.
Gun in hand, Gilmore said he stood up and began shooting, hitting two of the suspects. They fired back but did not injure the couple.
“They had a gun to her head,” Gilmore said. “They could’ve killed her and come right in here and killed me if I hadn’t had a gun.”
The three masked men, who were also accompanied by a female accomplice, fled the scene. Gilmore called 911. Police later arrested two of the men, Broderick Humphrey and Austin Braden, and the woman, Meridann Awalt. The other suspect, Freddy Cervantes, has not been apprehended.
Gilmore will not face any charges on the grounds that he acted in self-defense.
“I think Eddie did what he had to do to protect himself and his wife,” Marshall County Undersheriff Danny Cryer told KXII.
For his part, Gilmore says he’s sorry he wasn’t able to do more.
“I had some re-loads in this one gun, and they misfired,” he told KXII. “Next time they won’t misfire.”
