Posted on 01/10/2008 10:15:47 AM PST by jaydubya2
HAMMOND | A Hessville woman will not be charged in the shooting death of a man accused of breaking into her home in November and stalking her.
(Listen to the 911 call)
Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter said on Wednesday he was turning down any charges against the woman in the death of Ryan Lee Bergner, 41, considering her actions to be in self-defense and defense of property.
The Nov. 12 shooting of Bergner as he cornered the 51-year-old woman in an upstairs bedroom closet capped a month of escalating terror -- chronicled in a series of police reports filed by the woman -- which included break-ins, vandalism and assaults in her workplace.
They had briefly dated over the summer, but Bergner couldn't accept that she didn't want to be his girlfriend, and wouldn't take "no" for an answer, the woman said.
That fatal Monday night, she was watching television at 10:30 p.m. when she heard a window breaking, and called 911.
An audio recording of her conversation with the emergency dispatcher, from the initial break-in to her escape from the dying Bergner six minutes later, was released by Hammond police on Wednesday.
"I'm so scared," the woman said to the 911 operator, who told her to lock herself in a bedroom until police arrived.
Bergner had already broken into her house two days earlier, she reported to police, destroying a clock-radio and stealing several of her undergarments.
"I heard him turn a light on, a hallway light," she told the dispatcher as she hid in a closet, armed with a pistol a friend had given her for protection.
"What are you doing?" she can be heard asking over the sound of her bedroom door being kicked in. "Stop it! Please stop it! Just stop it!"
Gunshots can clearly be heard on the recording. She later said Bergner was on top of her in the closet, his hands around her throat, choking her.
"What are you trying to do, kill me?" the mortally wounded Bergner asked.
"Are you trying to kill me?"
Police found her in her front yard when they arrived moments later, and found Bergner, wearing black leather gloves and a brown leather jacket, lying partially in the bedroom closet with three bullet wounds to his abdomen, a 9 mm pistol on the bed nearby.
"That tape is absolutely chilling," said Hammond Police Chief Brian Miller, who worked for years as a detective with the department's sex crimes division.
Miller said he is regularly asked to speak at meetings of women's organizations and support groups for victims of domestic violence, and in the future will be taking the recording along with him as an example of what can happen.
"I didn't want it to turn out like this," the woman told The Times the day after the shooting, though she declined to comment for the record on Wednesday's decision by the prosecutor's office.
Just remember to have this particular story in mind next time someone in favor of gun control talks about 'waiting periods' and 'cooling-off periods' and thinks it ought to be illegal to loan someone a firearm. That and the 'We don't need a gun because we have police and 911 on our telephones.'.
Notice also that the cops arrived too late even though they were speeding to the residence knowing full well what was going on there. The woman was on the phone with 911 the entire time. All the 911 operator could do was hear her being attacked. If she hadn't had the gun, the police would have found her dead and may or may not have apprehended the wacko.
To all ladies reading this thread, if you haven't got a firearm of your own, be fully aware that these stories don't happen to other people far away from where you live. They can happen to you no matter how idyllic and safe you think that you are.
Walking into a gun store isn't like walking into a pornography store or into a den of derisive rednecks. Those guys who run the place are there to help you and think you should have come in sooner. A gun in the home is not like storing deadly plutonium or a faulty hand-grenade ready to explode at any moment, just like meat cleavers don't spring out of your kitchen cabinet and start slashing at people.
You can live the whole rest of your life never needing a gun. Of course, if it ever comes to needing a gun, you could live the whole rest of your life wishing you had one.
Even if you live in a place where the police can get to you in four minutes, it's still plenty of time for a madman to kill you cowering fearfully in your closet.
I bet those few minutes were the longest in that woman's life.
can’t get the link to play?
Thanks. I couldn’t listen at work and forgot about listening to the audio.
Thanks for the Youtube and link and I was the first to rank it with 5 stars. Well deserved DaveLoneRanger.
We left almost fifteen years ago when the area started changing.
Figured it wouldn't change for the better. It's sad really.
That’s great DLR. Your video should be a eyeopener to many! It says it all. Ex-region rat.
Absolutely true.
That was freakin’ sweet! Thanks for posting.
I concur but now it's time to give the gun that she borrowed back to it's rightful owner, take a class in the proper use and care of handguns, and then go and buy a handgun of her own (and then go out and practice with it - shoot some holes in paper targets)!
Finally, regarding the guilt, anguish, fear, relief or whatever other emotion that she feels - my Mom used to say, "This too shall pass." The Boy Scouts have saying (I believe it's their Motto), "Be Prepared" - if she doesn't ever want to go through that again, learn to keep and use her own gun!
I do wish people would stop believing this type of nonsense.
L
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