Old woman scolds armed intruder for making mess

Ninety-nine-year-old Doris Rucker Wasden was sleeping when a man entered the home and came hurtling into her bedroom. It was sometime after 1 a.m. Saturday in West Valley City, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City.

For nearly two hours, the armed intruder held her hostage.

Officers from the Unified Police Department of Greater Salt Lake arrived quickly, as they had been trailing the suspect after he allegedly fled a nearby shooting. They surrounded the place.

At the home Wasden shared with her granddaughter, CJ Montoya, and her granddaughter’s fiance, Jim Gabbard, the suspect shot out a sliding-glass door to enter, the Deseret News reported. Montoya and Gabbard were awakened, but when Gabbard investigated, he came face to face with the suspect, who was pointing a gun at him.

“He said, ‘Give me your car keys or I’m going to kill you,’” Gabbard told news station KSL.

But the couple somehow managed to get to a door, where police pulled them outside.

Inside, the intruder yanked Wasden out of her bed, leaving her on the floor “on my bum,” she told Fox 13. She eventually climbed back into bed.

“He tried to talk to me,” she told Fox 13, “but I said, ‘I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you.’ Then he realized I was a very old woman, so he was pretty nice to me after that.”

It was only after she scolded him for making a mess that he let her go, Gabbard told KSL.

“He was rifling through her drawers, making a mess, spilling things all over and she has her 100th birthday party one week from today,” Gabbard said. “And her words to him were, ‘I just had this house cleaned for my party and you’re messing it up. You better knock it off.”

Freddy Alexander Velasquez, 18, was apprehended as he attempted to flee in a car parked inside the garage. He was charged with six felonies, including aggravated assault, aggravated burglary, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, felony discharge of a firearm and receiving or transferring a stolen vehicle, according to records.

— The Associated Press, Washington Post and wire reports