Disabled North Carolina man sees someone trying to pry open his window and shoots. Then the alleged burglar calls 911 with a lie

A 75-year-old disabled man in Gastonia, North Carolina, shot at a person he saw trying to break into his window, according to Gaston Gazette. Police say the man who was hit then called 911 and claimed he had been the victim of a random drive-by shooting.

The break-in happened at Donald Bolynn’s home on Ware Avenue at around 7:13 a.m. on July 12. Bolynn has lived in the brick house since 1996 and said he has been robbed and broken into multiple times over the years.

This time, he said he had his gun ready. Bolynn told the Gaston Gazette that he was walking toward his front door after hearing banging on it when he spotted a man at his window. “I looked outside and there he was … That is why I got my gun,” Bolynn said. “Looked like he was trying to come in so I shot him.”

Man says he fired after seeing someone at his window

Bolynn fired one shot, and later told police he was not sure if he had hit anyone, but he knew the gunfire made the break-in stop, according to a Gastonia Police Department news release. Confrontations with unexpected intruders don’t always end with a call to the police. In one case, a homeowner who found a stranger inside his house said the intruder turned around and accused him of wrongdoing instead.

A few minutes after the shooting, police said they got a 911 call from Cedric Ford, 57, and Sanja Stallings, 47. The two reportedly told police that Ford had been shot by an unknown driver near South Washington Street and Overman Avenue. Ford was reported to have been taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound.

Police investigated the claim and said they found that Ford and Stallings were actually the ones involved in the attempted break-in at Bolynn’s house. Both were reportedly charged with first-degree burglary and obstruction of justice.

Investigators said Ring camera footage from Bolynn’s home, along with audio picked up by one of Gastonia’s 158 Flock gunshot detection sensors, helped them determine that Ford had been shot outside the Ware Avenue home, not in the location Ford and Stallings described.

Assistant Police Chief Nancy Brogdon said on July 22 that the Flock sensors have microphones that only turn on after the system detects what it identifies as a gunshot. Tonya Taylor, director of the city’s Real Time Crime Center, said the technology can tell gunfire apart from fireworks and cars backfiring. She added that the sensors do not record audio all the time, and only start recording once a gunshot is detected.

According to the police release, once a sensor picks up a gunshot, it sends an alert straight to the Real Time Crime Center, and crime analysts there review the information and pass real-time updates to officers responding to the scene. Disputes involving guns and North Carolina residents have taken different paths through the courts before, as seen in one instance, a North Carolina woman’s legal fight over her mother’s death ended in a courtroom shooting after a lawsuit against police did not go her way.

Stallings is reported to be held in the Gaston County jail on $25,000 bail, and Ford also faces a separate burglary charge connected to an earlier break-in at Bolynn’s home on July 2. He is being held without bail, according to court records.