Skyway, WA — One man is in the hospital and another is not facing charges after a dispute between neighbors turned violent.
The event happened on October 22nd, when police say a woman returned home to the apartment where she and her husband lived in the 6900 block of South 123rd street.
When she got to their front door of their ground floor apartment, she was alarmed to see the door kicked in.
The woman called her 34-year-old husband who was at work nearby.
The husband left work and came to see what was going on, and to assess if they needed to call the police.
When he arrived, he went into the apartment to look around to see if it had been burglarized.
As he made his way out of the apartment, he saw their 49-year-old next door neighbor coming towards him with a hammer raised.
Worried This Day Might Come
The neighbor and the couple hadn’t always gotten along and there had been trouble in the past.
King County Sheriff’s spokesman St. Ryan Abbott said that the homeowner told the neighbor to drop the hammer. Undeterred, the neighbor kept charging, hammer in hand.
The homeowner pulled out a legally carried weapon and shot the man one time in the abdomen.
Abbott recounted that the homeowner then secured his gun until the police arrived.
“Detectives interviewed the husband, and he’s been very cooperative,” he said. “Detectives believe he acted in self-defense.”
The wounded neighbor was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, and was in surgery as of 1:00 p.m.
Police reported that a deputy was guarding him there and that he will be arrested upon his release.
He will be charged with assault and burglary, as well as booked on a warrant from a separate issue.
Good for this husband for staying calm and making sure that he and his wife were alive and well at the end of the day.