Posted on 07/27/2009 2:26:27 PM PDT by Old Forester
COTTONWOOD - One day after the prison escapees allegedly tried to break into her home, Cassidy Lockett got a bigger gun.
"I'm definitely more prepared," said the petite 28-year-old mother of three young children. "We bought a 12-gauge shotgun."
Lockett was recently recognized by the Idaho County Sheriff's Office with a certificate of achievement that reads: "Her actions that day show others the true meaning of courage in the face of danger."
The June 30 incident, Lockett said, still preoccupies her thoughts.
"It was just an adrenalin rush. I was really scared, but the minute he stuck his head in, I was, I guess, mad."
Brandishing a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol, with her children hidden behind a couch, Lockett took aim down a hallway as she said an inmate from the North Idaho Correctional Institution forced open a window of her trailer home and began to pull himself inside. She said a second inmate was trying to come through a locked front door.
"Then he looked down the hall at me," Lockett recalled, explaining that the one intruder had eased through the window about to his waist. "I was pointing the gun at him and, you know, I used a few choice words and told him to get out or I was going to shoot."
Richard Daniel Nieves and Ben Westley Perez, both 20, are now facing a bevy of charges in connection with their escape the night before the incident at the Lockett home. Nieves was serving a four- to seven-year term for injury to a child in Blaine County, according to records. Perez was serving three to 10 years for forgery and burglary in Minidoka County.
Now, according to court records, the two each face a felony count of escape, four felony counts of burglary, one felony count of grand theft, and misdemeanor counts for malicious injury to property, petite theft, driving under the influence, driving without privileges, minor consumption, reckless driving and unlawful entry.
"She did good," Lockett's husband, Stan, who was away from home at the time, said of his wife's actions. "I would have killed them. I mean, plain and simple. I wouldn't have thought anything about it."
Cassidy Lockett said she was "very close" to pulling the trigger. "I didn't want to do it unless I had to. But I told him to leave or I was going to shoot him. If he had moved another inch, I would have pulled the trigger. I was aiming at his head."
At that very moment, Lockett said, she was also on the phone with a sheriff's office dispatcher after having called 911 when she realized the men who drove up to her house on four-wheelers were actually escapees. The Locketts live about a mile up Cottonwood Butte from NICI and have never had trouble with previous escapes.
"They've never come up here," Stan Lockett, 30, said. "They usually go the other way."
But the two men on four-wheelers (alleged later to be stolen vehicles) appeared just below the house, Cassidy Lockett recalled, and drove around erratically for awhile before stopping. Her children, Justin, 6, Lanie, 5, and Kaylie, 2, were playing inside the house. The family dogs, Gunnar, an English mastiff, and Macey, a boxer, were outside, but apparently not much of a deterrent.
"He was petting my dog," Cassidy said of one man who approached the house. "She was barking at first and acting protective. But as soon as you talk to her, she starts wagging her tail."
Lockett said she was talking to a friend on the phone who told her to call authorities. She did, and ordered her children to come into the living room. The youngest didn't. So she went to get the child and retrieved her pistol from the bedroom.
"I jacked one in and it kind of jammed for a second," Cassidy Lockett said of loading the weapon. "I thought, oh my God. So I jacked another one in."
The two oldest children obediently hid behind the living room couch, but the youngest one wanted to jump on the cushions. The older Lockett children eventually got her under control.
"Mommy, remember Kaylie was screaming," Lanie recalled. "We were crying."
Lockett, with the dispatcher still on the phone and police rushing to the scene, said a state of resignation slowly settled over her. "I grabbed the gun and sat on the floor, because there were two of them. I didn't know if one was going to try to come in this end and the other in the other end."
She was certain, however, that the men knew she was inside. She'd stood at the front window when they arrived, her car was in the driveway, the kids' bicycles were just outside the door, the dogs were home and there was an obvious commotion inside.
"So they were trying to get the door open. Then I couldn't hear anything because the air conditioner was on. Then the window slid open and he leaned in through the window, probably to his waist, or so."
Lockett said she had never pointed a gun at anyone until then, and never wants to be put in the position again. "He pulled his head out right away," she said of the intruder's retreat after hearing her warning. "I heard them get on the four-wheelers and I told the (dispatcher) and she said, 'Which way did they go?'
"But I'm like, 'just get somebody here now.' And it wasn't, just like a few seconds, and she said the cop is there now and he's got them."
One intruder crashed as they sped away, authorities said, and the other returned to help when sheriff's Deputy Mike Brewster arrived at the end of the Lockett driveway and arrested both. "They went without really much fight," Sheriff Douglas Giddings said. "Of course, he (Brewster) had his gun on them, too."
Preliminary hearings for Nieves and Perez are scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Friday in Grangeville. Lockett said she hopes the legal system will impose stiff penalties on the men who tried to invade her home, both as punishment and as a deterrent to other inmates contemplating escape.
She's also shot the new family shotgun, feels comfortable with the weapon and knows from experience that she's capable of pulling the trigger to defend her family.
What about anti-gun critics who might say introduction of a weapon could have made the situation worse?
"You know what. I actually hear more, 'Why didn't you shoot them?' "
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Johnson may be contacted at djohnson@lmtribune.com or (208) 883-0564.
Buy that woman a drink!
LOL!
Don’t get between a Mama and her babies......I am so proud of her for not allowing herself to be a victim.....
Will Obama be issuing a statement that SHE acted stupidly, too?
great town. not sure why you would mess with any of the inhabitants. they love their guns, beer, and trucks.
” but the youngest one wanted to jump on the cushions.”
I just laugh at that. The kid doesn’t realize that two felons are about to break in and Mommy is getting the gun and she wants to play.
Atta girl!!
Lady didn’t want a mess in her home. Dead buzzard is icky.
That got a chuckle from me too.
bump
right ON!
Way to go, lady!! Good job!
(but yeah, shooting them would have worked, too, and saved the taxpayers some money).
This was in Idaho. Gee, I don’t think criminals should take the idea of unarmed citizens being the norm in ID and certain other states. But then, criminals and other feral types aren’t exactly rocket surgeons.
More guns, more ammo, better shots = depressed criminals.
Less guns, more gun grabbers, more bed-wetting bureaucrats = happy criminals.
And one for her husband, too. No doubt he insisted on the guns and taught her to shoot.
Good man!
A “real” pistol-packing mama.
Love that kind of woman. She’ll protect her family at all costs. A liberal would have negotiated away one of their kids.
As I read the story, I kept picturing Sarah Palin in my mind.
BANG!
Well you can’t file this one under stupid criminals. When she issued her warning he reversed engines and sped away! Not stupid anyway.
Palin would have had the two perps gutted and stuffed with their heads and balls mounted on the wall before the police ever got to the trailer.
Then her husband would help make moose stew out of these calabouse escapers.
Some people know how to live as well as how to protect their families. Some call cops “stupid.”
:) LOL!
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