A man was at home with his girlfriend when he heard his back door being kicked in by four armed intruders. Instantly, the victim’s dog “Zeus” charged at the home invaders to protect his family and was shot. In the moments that followed, the punks realized what a big mistake they had just made, but it was way too late to avoid the wrath of the fed-up couple. They were more than ready for some payback.
The shocking home invasion took place on what should have been a peaceful Monday evening in Summerfield, Florida. The victim, who has been identified as 35-year-old Shawn Peterson, was at home with his girlfriend when he heard the loud bang of his back door being kicked open. At that moment, the four suspects burst into the house.
Both Peterson and his girlfriend barricaded themselves in the bedroom and locked the door, but their courageous pit bull “Zeus” charged toward the attackers. Zeus was shot three times, with one of the bullets hitting the 85-pound dog in the head. “He’s a good dog. He never leaves my side,” Peterson said.
“I just heard my back door get kicked in and next thing I know, my dog ran out and I heard a gunshot,” Peterson recalled. This is the moment the four criminals should have turned and run for their lives, but the “alpha male” of the group, identified as Shawn King, tried to stick his gun through the bedroom door to kill Peterson and his girlfriend instead.
“The next thing I know, a guy was meeting me at my door with a gun, stuck the gun in my door. I slammed the door and the gun just started going off,” Peterson said, Click Orlando reported. This is when the fed-up couple turned the tables on the brazen intruders. The four home invaders never expected their would-be victims would meet them with equal force, but they were so very wrong.
“My girlfriend was at the closet at the time and I yelled at her. I said, ‘Throw me my shotgun.’ She threw the shotgun at me like in the movies and I caught and I fired one time, and I guess it hit the guy in the chest or whatever,” Peterson said.
After Shawn Peterson knocked Shawn King to the floor with a shotgun blast, he was quickly picked up by his partners in crime, and they all fled the scene. An anonymous person dropped a fatally wounded King off outside the Ocala Health Summerfield Emergency Room, and he was declared dead a short time later, according to the Ocala Star-Banner.
Police decided to look into the incident to determine that the shooting was justified and quiet any concerns from the public. “We don’t take anything at face value,” said Marion County Sheriff’s Deputy Spokeswoman Lauren Lettelier. “We want to dig deep and make sure that we are seeing what we’re seeing and what we’re hearing is being confirmed by the evidence. So I assure you that this will be investigated fully to make sure this is indeed what happened,” she concluded.
To most people, it would seem like a clear case of self-defense and a waste of time to investigate, but there are people who file false police reports, so we have them to thank for the wasted tax dollars and police resources. When King decided to invade someone else’s home and attempt to rob and murder them, he received the consequences of his bad decisions. Case closed.
“It’s kind of unreal, like, I didn’t think when I was going to sleep last night that I was going to have to take somebody’s life for coming in my house,” Shawn Peterson remarked. “Now, I have to move out of my house. My girl, my roommate, they won’t even come here,” the victim added.
On a much better note, Peterson’s dog, Zeus, was taken to a nearby veterinarian hospital and treated for his gunshot wound. The canine hero is expected to make a full recovery. I think this qualifies for a happy ending.