A 72-year-old grandmother in Anaheim, Calif., scared away a would-be burglar by firing her .357 Magnum and shouting at him to "get the hell out of here," NBC4 News reports.
Jan Cooper, the wife of an 85-year-old wheelchair bound World War II veteran, shot her weapon when she saw 31-year-old Brandon Perez breaking in her back door:
She was on the phone with a dispatcher when the intruder made it into her yard.
"Back up, you son of a b----," she yelled. "Back up! Get out of here! Get the hell out of here! Get your butt out! Now!"
Jan Cooper fired a single shot. It missed the intruder by just a few inches, deputies said.
"After I shot, there was rage that took hold," Jan Cooper said. "My husband — he’d never heard me talk like that before."
Perez, already on probation for burglary, was found hiding nearby and arrested in connection with the attempted break-in.
Jan's husband said she wasn't surprised by her heroics:
"I know her capabilities. I know what she can do, if she has to and she’s quite capable," said Bob Cooper, 85, an Army veteran and decorated intelligence officer.
Jan Cooper has been shooting guns since she was a teenager and said she wouldn’t change her response if someone tried to break into her house again.
"What is necessary to literally stop them," she said. "He was not going to come into my home."
[H/T RightScoop]