Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
The fatal shooting Friday of an intruder in a Eureka home is believed to have been self-defense, police in the North Coast city said.
It was the city’s second homicide in three days.
Friday’s confrontation arose from a disturbance in a residential neighborhood around 2:30 a.m., said a press release from the police. A resident went to his porch and told the people who were making noise to leave the area.
They “confronted the resident and became hostile toward him and entered onto his property,” the report said. The man sprayed them with pepper spray as he retreated into his house.
At least one of group entered the house. The resident shot him several times with a handgun. Gunfire also struck a person who was on the porch.
The person shot inside the house was declared dead at the scene. The other person, shot in the leg, was taken to a hospital with a non-life-threatening injury.
Investigators made a preliminary determination that the shooting was in self-defense, and no one was arrested.
“This has been a long and tough week for our officers, detectives, and dispatchers,” said a post on the police department’s Facebook page, alluding to the discovery on Wednesday of an 84-year-old man dead under suspicious circumstances in his Eureka home. The method of death was not revealed, and the investigation is ongoing.
In February, a Eureka woman was arrested for the fatal shooting of her 17-year-old son. She has pleaded not guilty to voluntary manslaughter.
Eureka, a city of 27,000, had four homicides last year.