Pregnant Florida woman heard husband being pistol-whipped. Then she got out her AR-15
A Tampa-area family of three is recovering after a home invasion left one armed man dead and another on the loose.
The Hillsbourough County Sheriff’s Office said two armed, masked men broke into the King family home in Lithia, about 25 miles outside of Tampa on Wednesday night. The men pointed guns at homeowner Jeremy King and his 11-year-old daughter and demanded money, NBC News reported.
When King told them he didn’t have what they were looking for, he told deputies one of the men started to pistol-whip him in the face and another kicked him.
That’s when his wife, who is eight months pregnant, heard the commotion from where she had been inside the back bedroom. She looked out and one of the men shot at her, King told Spectrum Bay News 9.
She ran back inside the bedroom, grabbed a semiautomatic AR-15-style rifle, and fired back, striking one of the men.
“When he came toward the back door in her line of sight, she clipped him,” a battered King told Spectrum 9. “He made it from my back door to roughly 200 feet out in the front ditch before the AR did its thing.”
King’s eye socket and sinus cavity were fractured. He also had a concussion and was given 20 stitches at an area hospital, according to deputies and reports.
King’s wife is not being named. She had the AR-15 in the house legally, Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Maj. Frank Losat told reporters, according to NBC News. He also said the armed man died in that ditch.
Hillsborough deputies are looking for the second man, CBS4 Miami reported.
The King family told deputies they did not know their attackers.
But deputies don’t believe the attack was random, Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
“This family was probably targeted,” Losat told reporters, according to NBC News.
