Paul Bibby
A local father fought off a young home invader armed with a gun who broke into his house in Mullumbimby in the early hours of last Wednesday morning.
Police say the father, who has asked not to be identified, woke at around 4am to discover that a youth armed with a 45 calibre Beretta pistol had climbed into his home through an open window.
‘The 18-year-old accused male threatened the male occupant, who was at home with his wife and three children,’ Detective Inspector Matt Kehoe of Byron Police said.
‘He then demanded money from him.’
‘A struggle ensued in which the father disarmed the accused and restrained him until police arrived.’
The father was not physically harmed during the incident, but The Echo understands that the youth suffered a number of injuries.
The accused was charged with specially aggravated enter dwelling with a dangerous weapon, and cannabis possession.
He appeared on Tweed Heads local court on Thursday and was refused bail.
‘The father certainly exhibited a tremendous amount of bravery when confronted with such a situation,’ Inspector Kehoe said.
‘It’s probably not something we would tell people to do, but that’s what he saw and what he felt he needed to do and we recognise his brave acts.
‘We would remind people to make sure their doors and windows are locked at night.’
Another good reason why we should be allowed to own a handgun in our own homes. If an 18 year old kid can get a Beretta it shows how weak the so-called gun laws are.
it would seem your IQ matches the calibre of pistol used.
If it was your house and family I think you may have a very different comment, especially if someone was killed or injured.
Jethro, if the story was one of the father’s three children having accidentally killed themselves or one of the other family members with an easily attained gun of the father’s then would you be agreeing with the comment? Also if we made the gun laws more lax then it wouldn’t only be good people who want to protect their family having more guns, it would also much much easier for the ones doing the breaking and entering that would have more guns.
The gun laws are fine. I don’t want us to be like America, where they’re all so scared af each other because they all have guns, so of course they have the highest rate of gun violence in the world and they aren’t even at war. It’s no way to live.
The only way to get a bad guy with a gun is to have a goo……… the puerile nonsense spouted by those NRA morons.
Suggest you have a chat with Paw lean
Agreed
No Jon what would that do? Some dead people? Who? The intruder? Or the occupants? Have a decent dog. They are wonderful companions and make you live longer as you walk them daily as a responsible dog owner. win win
Maybe @Jon is just being a troll but if not I’m happy most people commenting here have their heads screwed on properly 🙂
No! That would be a dangerous race to the bottom and then we will all be living like the US with everyone armed to the teeth, trigger happy and paranoid with thousands of gun related deaths each year.(Some 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured [those figures exclude suicide].
Guns breed more guns! The solution is not to arm everybody. The solution is to shut down the avenues where people can access these guns and intervene with these kids at an earlier age so that it doesn’t get to this.
I know it is the harder path (even that is debatable, with the money spent on incarceration maybe it could be just as well spent on youth programs) but we really need to invest in our youth provide real youth services, youth centres, provide real support and services for struggling families and single mums, deal with the ridiculous crisis in low income housing. Support the amazing organisations that are doing the hard yards- the uncle project which is just about dying due to lack of funding, the byron YAC etc….
We don’t need more guns!!
Are u serious Jon ? You could move to America instead !!
A few little bumps that’s lucky thats all he suffered!
Any fool who thinks this is enough of a reason to change Australia’s gun laws so you can keep a loaded gun in your house “for protection” should just go to Google News, and do a search using “accidentally shot, thought they were an intruder”.
You’ll find plenty of stories of what the NRA likes to call “Good guys with guns” shooting their wives and kids by mistake. This happens on an almost daily basis in America.
Then go and do a search on Google News for “Accidental toddler shooting” and see how many kids in the USA pick up Daddy or Mummy’s handgun and shoot either themselves, another kid, or their stupid parents each week. The numbers are staggering.
According to the US medical publication New England journal of Medicine, based on Emergency Department statistics from America, statistically you are “43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend or acquaintance, and 22 times more likely to kill yourself than an intruder.”
If you want to hug a gun, move to the USA.
Take Pauline Hanson, James Ashby and Steve Dickson with you when you leave.
And One Nation are hell bent on getting rid of our gun laws…
At the very least Tim it could be said Jon knows that a sentence should start with a capital. Which makes you considerably more stupid than him or were you just to busy protesting climate change instead of being at school?. The same either way, I guess.
Whether someone uses correct grammar has nothing to do with their intelligence, just their English skills and/or level of laziness while writing the comment. It’s a pretty stupid thing for you to focus on.
“too busy
Ha nice burn Tim
the adolescent that wrote the original comment writes reactionary stuff like that on many articles here, just to get a bit of attention. Which deserves pity. Great, intelligent responses from everyone – but unnecessary usually given the precept ‘don’t feed the trolls’. I am fairly sure they are also pro-Belongil rock wall and West Byron Developments, but thats another story.
And, thanks to the self seeking behaviour of the penultimate comment, everyones attention has been distracted from where it counts –
Congratulating the brave man who put their life at risk, by responding in the face of
An unknown occupant in the night;
of unknown mental health status;
armed with a potentially lethal weapon.
All to protect their family. This is a truely heroic act deserving of a medal. It’s no wonder they wish to remain anonymous though. Someone in Sydney was in an almost identical situation recently. The intruder was killed in the home by the man waking to protect his family.
Can you imagine the suffering the man and his wife and children continue to endure as a result of that?
Do a youtube search for ‘Jim Jeffries gun control’ He is an Austalian stand up comic who did a piece on all the issues with guns, including the ‘ i need it to protect my family’ nonsense. The short piece (it’s very funny and wise) became so famous it blanketed the news reports across the US and sent Jim Jeffries career into the stratosphere, where it remains
One of the most concerning aspects of this story for me is that this young person, whom I have had contact with recently, is a local who is suffering from mental health problems which he has been unable to conquer and has somehow managed to get hold of a gun!! Obviously this is an extremely distressing for the family and I do not want to take anything away from their ordeal…..I do however think that unless we acknowledge that this kid, who at 18 really is still a kid, has been ‘free falling’ for quite some time’. He is known to police and has been using an alarming cocktail of drugs. Many people have tried to help him and it’s terrifying to think of someone so mentally unstable and heavily affected by drugs, also having access to a gun! A lot of us with teenagers in Mullum are probably not as shocked by this story as we should be. We have huge problems here and guns are the last things we need to add to the mix.