Granny Got Her Gun...

But The Fuzz Took It Away

"Ethel Sanders, 81, was startled awake by noise coming from her laundry room on Monday morning, she said. She grabbed her .38-caliber pistol and moved to the porch steps of her shotgun house in north Mobile.

Standing on two bad knees, without the aid of her walker, she opened the door to the laundry room to find a nearly naked intruder, apparently washing his clothes.

"There was a man, well, a boy," Sanders said. "He had all his clothes off. ... I just shot out.

The force of the pistol shot knocked her to the ground. She said she found herself in a puddle of the man's blood.

The man grabbed her pistol, pointed it at her and then snatched his clothes from the washing machine, she said.

As he ran from her home on Edwards Street, Sanders said, a neighbor called police.

About 8 a.m. officers found the nearly naked James Penn, 25, at the nearby Plateau Community Center, said police spokesman Officer Eric Gallichant.

Penn had been struck by a bullet that went through his leg to his stomach. He was taken to University of South Alabama Medical Center, where he was expected to survive, Gallichant said.

When Penn is released from the hospital, he will be charged with first-degree burglary, Gallichant said. The spokesman said that Penn is homeless and had broken into Sanders' home to do his laundry.

"Whenever I hear noise, I just go grab my gun," she said. Sanders' husband died in 1982. She still wears her wedding ring but on her index finger.

"I got no help, I do the best I can," she said. "My health's all right except for my knees." Her only child, a daughter, wants Sanders to come stay with her, but Sanders said no.

As long as she's on her own, she feels that the gun is necessary. But police took it Monday as evidence and told her she would get it back when Penn's case is over.

"I need it 'cause I stay here by myself," she said.

In the meantime, there is a hatchet sitting next to her bed."

And nary a one of these brave and intrepid full grown men calling themselves police officers could direct her to a legitimate source to acquire another gun until hers is returned all gunked out from their "examination"?