72 year old woman defends herself with gun

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Colorado Springs Gazette Aug 16, 2001

Woman recounts break-in

72-year-old testifies she shot suspect in three rapes

By Bill Hethcock/The Gazette

Jean Zamarripa had just said her bedtime prayers when she heard a strange noise toward the back of her house.

At first, the 72-year-old grandmother thought it was her humidifier, but she quickly figured out it was someone trying to break into the back door of her Knob Hill home.

Minutes later, she shot Anthony Allen Peralez and ended a string of rapes targeting women in their 50s, 60s and 70s, prosecutors said Wednesday on the first day of Peralez's trial.

Zamarripa told jurors she grabbed her loaded revolver from under her bed and braced her elbow on the counter to steady her trembling hand.

Barefoot and in her nightgown, she waited with the gun aimed where she thought the intruder would enter.

Outside, she heard him prop open her storm door.

Then he ran up to and broke through the locked door, ripping the deadbolt holder out of the doorjamb.

The intruder's momentum knocked him to the ground, but Zamarripa never adjusted her aim. When he stood up, Zamarripa wounded him with three out of four shots from about eight feet away before he scrambled out the door.

"I knew if I didn't shoot him, he would have raped me," she said.

Zamarripa said she knew of a 56-year-old woman and a 74-year-old woman in her neighborhood who had been raped shortly before the Nov. 18 break-in at her home.

She seemed calm as she testified. But she told jurors she was full of fear that night.

"In 72 years, I had never lived through anything like it," she said. "The only way I can describe it is sheer terror."

Prosecutors have charged Peralez, 41, with burglarizing, raping and beating a 56-year-old woman Sept. 2 on North Sheridan Avenue and a 74-year-old woman Aug. 6, 2000, on Eagle View Drive.

He also is charged with burglarizing, kidnapping and raping a 51-year-old Security woman Sept. 12, 1999.

In all three cases, the women lived alone, and in each case the women were forced to bathe or were cleaned after being sexually assaulted.

Those similarities, along with the women's ages and others, should convince jurors that the man who committed the three rapes is the same man who broke into Zamarripa's house, prosecutor Christian Schwaner said.

DNA evidence also connects the crimes, he said.

"This is literally every woman's worst nightmare -- to be home at night and have somebody brutally rape you," Schwaner said.

Public defender Eydie Elkins said Peralez made his only mistakes the night he allegedly broke into Zamarripa's house.

"His is the nightmare of false accusations," she said.

Elkins said the defense will show the prosecution's DNA evidence is not reliable.

She said differences in the rapes suggest different suspects did them.

One woman was raped at gunpoint, one at knifepoint and in one case the rapist used no weapon. One lasted more than six hours; another lasted less than one hour, Elkins said.

"Each one was different, unique," she said. "When you listen to the evidence, it is clear that they were conducted by different men, none of them Tony Peralez."

The victim of the six-hour rape said her attacker had chest hair but not a tattoo, Elkins said. Peralez has "an unmistakable tattoo" on his torso, Elkins said.

Police who investigated the break-in and shooting at Zamarripa's home testified that a trail of blood led them from Zamarripa's driveway north to San Miguel Street, where Peralez got in his car and drove away.

Two blocks away, the wounded Peralez hit another car and kept going, police testified.

From the site of the first crash on San Miguel, police followed a trail of leaking oil, antifreeze and car parts past a second hit-and-run crash he caused on Holmes Drive and eventually to the parking lot of a car dealership near Galley and Academy Boulevard.

That's where Peralez gave up, police testified. He had been shot once in the abdomen and twice in the arm.

Blood samples taken from Zamarripa's driveway and Peralez's car and clothes provided the genetic profile that linked him to the three rapes, Schwaner said.

Zamarripa was cleared of any wrongdoing under a state law reaffirming the right to defend one's home.



-- (feminismo @ don't tread.on me), August 16, 2001

Answers

shoulda shot him in the balls

-- (feminismo @ don't tread.on me), August 17, 2001.

Did I miss it, or were the Big Three television networks silent on this? I mean, we can't have the soccer moms forming the opinion that firearms are helpful, now can we? No, of course not. We all know that firearms are evil, and as such, only news stories that confirm this stance will be aired. None of this "Granny with a Gun" nonsense. Anyway, I'm sure that after another dozen or so rapes, the police would have figured out who the bad guy was.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), August 17, 2001.

At different times my husband has had to work for extended periods of time away from home. Over the years our family size increased, making a quick escape from an intruder impossible. I worked full time and functioned essentially as a single. exhausted parent, and I was afraid that I would sleep too deeply to hear a break in.

My solution was to have the kids sleep in one room. I slept among them on the floor. The dog was posted in the doorway. There was a clear path to the bathroom for the kids. The house was kept in total darkness. Any child who needed to go to the bathroom woke me up and was escorted there and back. In the darkness in the rest of the house, there were toys and chairs in odd places that an intruder would likely run into and make a noise. Our fire escape plan was for all of us to exit from a window in our common bedroom. No weapon was stored in the room with the children, or in any place a child could reach. The extra precautions were designed to give me time to deal with the need for a weapon.

It would be nice to say that these precautions were excessive and unnecessary. Unfortunately, we have experienced prowlers on a regular basis for over thirty years. Some of the prowlers are neighbors. It would be socially unpleasant to permanently affect the life of a local teenager prowling for kicks.

So...we took these strange precautions. On many nights prowlers would shine lights at the windows and all around the house. We've had drunk prowlers banging into cars, barns, and the side of the house. Small objects have gone missing from the yard. Parties have been held in our driveway, with all of the trash left behind. Our yard has been used as a latrine. We're not even talking about firewood theft here, as that usually takes place in broad daylight. We're talking about anonymous strangers wandering all over our place at night.

As long as they stay outside, they remain intact. If they break inside the house where my babies are sleeping, they will never be found. I'm a patient person, but I have my limits.

What astounds me is that in some states, self defense/ home defense is not *automatically* considered a reason to take aggressive measures against an intruder. I've seen cases where the victim of the break in had to wait a period of time before knowing whether charges would be filed against THEM. Unbelievable.

-- helen (home@defense.rules), August 17, 2001.


"I mean, we can't have the soccer moms forming the opinion that firearms are helpful, now can we?"

They are only useful in a self-defense situation to someone who is willing to pull the trigger. Just owning one of the things doesn't do a blasted bit of good without the training it takes to face an intruder and do the dirty deed, blood, smoke, nastiness and all.

The firearm isn't all there is to it. There is a human on both ends.

-- Miserable SOB (misery@misery.com), August 20, 2001.


Miserable SOB,

Yes, the owner must be willing to pull the trigger, but this does not negate my point that the major television networks choose only to broadcast stories where guns are used by criminals to harm innocents, and not to broadcast stories where guns are used by law abiding citizens to thwart criminal activity.

It is simply propaganda, and nothing more.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), August 20, 2001.


J, you say the major television networks choose not to cover such stories. Maybe so. I don't watch any television news anymore - national or local. They could do a tap dance on the news desk and I wouldn't go back to watching that crap.

But why the heck would national tv news want to report local crime story like this anyway? This wasn't a national story. It was local and it was reported by a local newspaper. That seems about right to me.

You want MORE of this stuff on national tv news? I'd want LESS! That's why the jokers lost me in the first place.

-- Miserable SOB (misery@misery.com), August 20, 2001.


They could do a tap dance on the news desk and I wouldn't go back to watching that crap.

I've got to agree with you on that. I spend an INORDINATE amount of time reading the news each day, and the news on T.V. touches NONE of it. On occasion, SO turns on the news and [if I'm already in the prone position on the couch], I watch with him. We both laugh when it's done and say things like, "That was IT, eh? THAT was the IMPORTANT stuff for which we actually WAITED?"

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), August 20, 2001.


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