A 72-year-old grandmother took control of a scary situation when she was confronted by someone trying to break into the Orange County home she shares with her WWII-veteran husband.
A burglar hopped a fence late Saturday, prowled through the backyard and broke into the Coopers’ Stanton, Calif. home in the middle of the night. Not even a barking Rottweiler scared off the intruder.
Armed with a .357 Magnum revolver, Jan Cooper called 911. 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.”
Brandon Perez, 31, was arrested in connection with the intrusion. Pictured below, Perez is currently on probation for burglary, authorities said.
At one point during her 911 call, Jan Cooper seems to calm down her recently awoken husband who says his wife’s protective behavior did not surprise him.
“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.
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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. “I’m not going to allow them to come into my home.”
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